Business IntelligenceBusiness Intelligence For the Common Man Pete Zerger Principal Program Manager, MVP Cireson Lee Berg Concurrency

@LeeAlanBerg Microsoft MVP 10 Years 10-Time Microsoft MVP 18 Years Foods (and people) of the world Lee Berg Pete Zerger

Agenda What is Business Intelligence? Dataset and Personas BI Tools (free & commercial) Data Dimensions “Flattening” Relational Data Selecting the Right Data Visualizations Optimizing for Scale Shortcuts to Advanced Insights Next Steps

The process of analyzing raw data to provide actionable information to the business for making decisions. What is Business Intelligence? OLAP OLTP Data Mining ETL Data Mart Semi-Structured Data Unstructured Data Structured Data Warehouse

DELIVER RELEVANT & RELIABLE INFO TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME What is Business Intelligence? BIBI

DELIVER RELEVANT & RELIABLE INFO TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE AT THE RIGHT TIME What is Business Intelligence? BIBI BETTER DECISIONS FASTER

Wisdom Knowledge Information What is Business Intelligence? Maturity Level Utility (Usefulness) Data Interpret Understanding Relations Apply Context KPI, Dashboard Display Understand Causes Apply Patterns Improve Business Processes Make Business Decisions Gain Competitive Advantage BI solution maturity stages

Aggregate Data Database, Data Mart, Data Warehouse, ETL Tools, Integration Tools Present Data Enrich Data Inform a Decision Reporting Tools, Dashboards, Static Reports, Mobile Reporting, OLAP Cubes Add Context to Create Info, Statistics, Benchmarks, Variance to Plan or LY Decisions are Fact-based and Data-driven Enrich Data Today, we’ll streamline the 1 st step & get right down to business! From Data to Decision

Data Analytics Tools Free ToolsCommercial Tools

Demo The possibilities of free & open source BI tools

Maximus Pharmaceuticals Company Profile Global conglomerate developing groundbreaking new drugs and treatments Offices in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia Managing drug trials in more than 2,000 clinics around the world Service desk processes 100’s of thousands of incidents per year

Work Items (incident, problem, service request, change & release) Users (analysts, support staff, end users, etc) Other Cis (applications, services, computers & other devices) DisplayStrings (display values to match GUIDs in other tables) Our Sample Dataset ITSM Data for Global Enterprise ~1 million records. A big dataset. We’ll discuss optimizing performance at scale Relationships (reference table containing relationship type, source & target objects)

Data Dimensions Dimension: Work Item Dimension : Time Dimension: Assigned Analyst Incidents Problems Changes John Mary Sam Mar Feb Jan Dimension : Classification Dimension : Status Closed Resolved Open Hardware Applicatio n Facilities

Deliver the right information to answer the key questions… Using the optimal data visualizations… Fully leveraging the dimensions in our data… With good performance at scale… Scenario Objectives Our focus in this 120 minutes… Alicia Thomber Service Desk Manager Arturo Lopez Chief Information Officer Cesar Garcia Desktop Support Technician focus technical business

“Flattening” Relational Data Simplifying data for easy analysis Relational data is often complex Consolidating data into fewer tables can Make performance easier to manage Streamline process visualization and analy sis Enable small scale ETL possible Don’t confuse this targeted simplification process with an enterprise data warehousing strategy!

Demo Quick Dive into the Sample Data

Well-crafted data visualizations help: make large data sets coherent uncover trends, realize insights, explore sources, and tell stories transform and shape data provide insights to guide decisions Choosing Data Visualizations based on dataset and target audience Which data visualizations are best will be influenced by the data, the stakeholder and decision criteria

Demo Advanced Data Visualizations

Query performance degrades at scale There are several things you can do to help Server Resourcing (faster storage, more memory) Indexes (the right indexes) Statistic Creation & Update Tune the Engine Fast Dashboards for Big Datasets Optimizing performance at scale The Database Engine Tuning Advisor can help…even if you are not a SQL expert. MS

Demo SQL Indexing & Server Tuning

Shortcuts to advanced BI capabilities Many enterprise management solutions have databases with complex schemas Many BI solutions have canned solutions for specific products and scenarios

Demo Content Packs for Power BI

SandDance is a recent project to come out of Microsoft GarageMicrosoft Garage Start it up in your browser upload a data set (TXT, CSV or JSON) visualization options including 3D scatterplot, maps, charts and histograms Custom BI Visualizations Extending Power BI with Project SandDance Available (FREE) from Available in two parallel versions: Stand-alone web- based UI Custom Power BI visual

Demo Extending Power BI with Custom Visuals

Resources Commercial & Open Source Business Intelligence Solutions SCCM Dashboards for Power BI swarm swarm SQL Indexing Tutorial Tutorial: SQL Database Engine Tuning Advisor (3 lessons) Project SandDance

Resources Performance best practices for SQL Server in Azure virtual machines The difference between a clustered index and a non-clustered index

Next Steps Start small. Find a manageable scenario and dataset in your org Start playing with a BI tool in your budget Use the tips and tutorials in this deck to get comfortable with basic SQL tuning Try cloud-based solutions (like Power BI) to short cut the journey to advanced BI

Evaluation s: And Then … Please provide session feedback by clicking the EVAL button in the scheduler app (also download slides). One lucky winner will receive a free ticket to the next MMS! Discuss: Ask your questions-real world answers! Plenty of time to engage, share knowledge.