This year is going to end, Maya failed their predictions and while this is bad for predictive industry, it’s also good for all of us!
We’ve seen many news in Microsoft BI stack:
- Excel 2013 has been RTM’d – its General Availability is expected in early 2013 but many early adopters are already using it daily (myself included)
- PowerPivot and Power View are both integrated in Excel 2013 and I think that they are the most compelling reason to upgrade your Excel. Power View alone worth the effort
- SQL Server 2012 has been released and I’m seeing the first SSAS Tabular projects going in production in these days.
- I, Alberto and Chris published the book Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model, which has good reviews and is selling well. It’s clear that the interest is high in this new technology for Corporate BI
- We also run several SSAS Tabular Workshops, many sessions about Tabular topics in conferences and user groups.
- I stopped writing blogs/article in the last weeks, but don’t worry, it’s just that I and Alberto are just writing another book…
- We recorded several videos about DAX for Project Botticelli and we’ll enhance this library in 2013.
So what’s next in 2013? Let’s see some anticipations and personal predictions:
- SharePoint 2013 and Office 365 are going to further innovate Self-Service BI. Maybe that this process is not so fast as Microsoft hopes, but it’s a clear direction and I hope that new features in this area will appear with a sooner release cycle, we simply cannot wait other 3 years to get more features on the cloud.
- Mobile BI with Microsoft Technologies is going to be a real thing in 2013. And Office for iPad should be real, too. Power View for iPad as a native application is also another important step.
- I will speak at PASS BA Conference 2013 in Chicago, IL (April 10-12, 2013) – at that time, I hope much of the MS Mobile BI tools will be available to anyone.
- In March 2013 our new PowerPivot book Microsoft Excel 2013: Building Data Models with PowerPivot will be published by Microsoft Press. We are working hard these days in order to complete the drafts, we listened to all of the feedback we received, especially from Excel users. Time will tell if we did a good job on that.
- We will publish other content on SQLBI web site and we have some interesting news for PowerPivot users and Tabular developers… but it’s too early to discuss that. Just stay tuned! Why not registering to our newsletter? (hint – scroll down to the end of the page to insert your email)
- We will announce a new PowerPivot Workshop for Excel 2013 (we are working on an updated web site – it should be ready by the end of January)
- In January we will announce new dates for our SSAS Tabular Workshop and the new DAX Advanced Workshop.
- I hope DAXMD will be released this year, it is already available as CTP. If you create canned reports for SSAS Multidimensional, consider using DAX as a query language when DAXMD will be released.
- DAX will be always more important…
Economy is not going well in many countries, and I’ve seen this impacting also our ecosystem. Sometimes you might think that your efforts are worthless, but in the long term the investments in updating skills produces a good return, at both company and individual level. Don’t give up!
I wish you a Great 2013!