SSAS2008-Info.com

Since Microsoft’s 1996 acquisition of the Israeli-based Panorama Software, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence platform has been continually refined and is spearheaded by the later renamed Analysis Services analytical platform! Analysis Services continues to rank as the number one OLAP product according to such institutes as Gartner, IDC, and the OLAP Report. With each iteration that passes Analysis Services continues to ‘up the ante’ in the OLAP market.

Analytical platforms in general are growing and are realizing more mainstream use. Every potential business and industry can benefit from analytics and thus the larger field of Business Intelligence! Competition is fiercer today in business than ever before and the ability to reap more value from your existing corporate data then your competitors is one of the many ‘winning factors’ in business today!

Every major area of the SQL Server product has been enhanced in the 2008 release including Analysis Services. The new enhancements as described later touch both multidimensional and data mining objects. Analysis Services 2008 improvements are substantial and thus warrant an evaluation of Analysis Services 2008 and the potential benefits it may bring to your organization!

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In this post we have reviewed why an organization should consider upgrading their existing Analysis Services (and OLAP Services) installations to Analysis Services 2008. Much like the DTS to SSIS 2008 migration, Analysis Services migrations (particularly from SQL Server 2000) are a somewhat difficult yet high value proposition. A second parallel is having a solid, well thought out migration plan and effort estimation phase completed.

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