Over the past decade, the way people use technology to conduct business and the level of regulation that affects IT have shifted dramatically. Users can collaborate efficiently, analyze mountains of data, and work from virtually anywhere, while government regulations and corporate governance policies have put increased pressure on IT to place tighter controls over data and workflows.
A joint data platform composed of Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 R2 and the latest Intel® Xeon® processors is an enterprise-grade solution to data management challenges. With advances in scalable performance and virtualization, in addition to reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS), the combination of Intel hardware and Microsoft software offers a powerful, yet cost-saving alternative to costly proprietary architectures and older versions of the platform.
Microsoft® Office Excel® is easily the most popular data visualization tool on the market; it's both familiar and powerful. Developers have built countless business intelligence (BI) applications in Excel using connections to data warehouses (or cubes), which Information Worker (IW) Producers, also known as power users, can manipulate with pivot tables and charts. Now, Microsoft® SQL Server® PowerPivot for Microsoft® Excel® 2010 takes the self-service BI capabilities of Excel to an unprecedented level.
Technical decision makers are faced with many challenges in today's economy: help users get more work done faster and with fewer difficulties, protect the network and individual systems from attacks or malicious code, and reduce administrative overhead and the associated costs. The underlying hardware platform can provide a foundation for making the best use of new software capabilities. The all new Intel® Core™ vPro™ processor family complements the new Windows® 7 operating system by building effective trusted computing and management mechanisms into the hardware.
