Data management's hottest pair
Improve decision making and performance—use Microsoft Dynamics and SQL Server 2005 together
Updated: January 3, 2006
Reporting and decision making can never be as painless as relaxing in your recliner after work. But, Microsoft has a pair of integrated financial and data management solutions capable of delivering such fast, valuable, and customizable information, they might help you get in the spirit.
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Bringing SQL Server and your business applications together
For business managers grappling with inflexible reporting tools and users who can't get the information they need without harassing IT and accounting departments, salvation lies in the quick creation and distribution of personalized, comprehensive reports. Authorized users also need secure access to data from any source in your company's suite of business applications, without jumping through endless hoops.
You are well on your way with the integration of Microsoft Dynamics business management applications and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, just released in November 2005. Integration can mean the difference of working on the weekends—or not.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 provides more advanced and flexible data management and business intelligence capabilities for Microsoft Dynamics products—including solutions for financial supply chain and customer relationship management—and for add-on reporting applications such as Microsoft Forecaster. SQL Server 2005 adds enhancements in security, Web services, and integration. And SQL Server enhancement releases are coordinated with the releases of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 and the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 development system.
Analysis—how, when, and where you need it
"The improved, integrated business intelligence platform—especially in the areas of reporting capabilities and OLAP [online analytical processing] cubes—is creating a trend in which businesses are not only making their new investments in SQL Server, they are actually standardizing on the SQL [Server] 2005 platform," says Raman Kohli, senior program manager for SQL Server 2005.
Microsoft Dynamics and SQL Server 2005 together enable the following analytical functions:
| • | Structuring Microsoft Dynamics data and tables into multidimensional cubes so the information can be reviewed in the format and context most useful to each user |
| • | Building and analyzing data warehouses of any size |
| • | Accessing diverse report types (such as Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office Access) from applications such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which can boost employee productivity |
The new SQL Server Reporting Services functionality enables users to combine data from their enterprise resource management (ERP) systems and other applications into custom reports. Without this automated report building tool, customers might endure a painstaking and error-prone manual process of transferring data from multiple applications into a data warehouse and/or cutting and pasting data from different reports into an application such as Microsoft Excel to create the report.
SQL Server Reporting Services is a server-based reporting environment embedded and managed through Web services, enabling users to create reports and deliver them in a variety of formats. SQL Server Reporting Services now integrates with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, which can save companies money for Microsoft Dynamics user licenses by freeing up reports to business portal, built on SharePoint. This capability currently is only available for Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly Microsoft Great Plains) and Microsoft Dynamics SL (formerly Microsoft Solomon) customers.
| • | There's also the option of using Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager for capturing and displaying key performance indicators pulled from Microsoft Dynamics databases via SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services. This helps to easily bring key metrics to your work force. For example, the forthcoming 2006 release of Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Microsoft Axapta) will include SQL Report Builder, which enables ad hoc report authoring for business users. This gives your IT department more time for critical IT tasks rather than for creating reports for users. For an overview of SQL Server 2005 benefits, see Microsoft SQL Server 2005 features at a glance. |
| • | As an option for Microsoft Dynamics NAV (formerly Microsoft Navision), Microsoft SQL Server 2005 makes it easier for employees to access, extract, and analyze business data and information to improve business decisions. Employees can unlock the value of business data and share relevant information across the organization in a secure way. They can access and work concurrently with accurate data and configure Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes easily by using a set of forms within Microsoft Navision. |
Fitting your budget
If you acquire the latest version of Microsoft SQL Server, will it be too much for your budget, you wonder? SQL Server 2005 is licensed per processor, not per core. This reduces the database cost by a factor of three or more. For more information about pricing, read SQL Server 2005 total cost of ownership and cost comparisons.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 comes with one price point so you don't have to pay for extra features such as advanced data mining and integration services. Also, with the help of Microsoft BizTalk Server, subsidiaries and divisions of large enterprises can implement Microsoft Dynamics and integrate it with ERP and business suites from companies such as Oracle and SAP (that is, companies that might be too large and too expensive to operate at the division level).
Growing with your business
Given the demands in corporate America for real-time information, it's hard to keep up with all the data that is available. Fortunately, processing speeds are getting faster and faster and so is capacity. SQL Server 2005 enables support for up to 4 GB of memory in 32-bit implementations and almost unlimited memory in 64-bit implementations. In a recent benchmark test of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Dynamics GP 9.0, year-end processing was completed in less than one hour (based on 30,000 employees), and 300,000 payroll codes were processed in less than eight hours. In another test, 1,000 users of Microsoft Dynamics GP processed 1.6 million transactions in eight hours.
But performance is not only about speed. Your business systems must also be reliable—consistently available and manageable. Microsoft Dynamics databases have thousands of indexes, and this can mean lagging response times for users trying to access data. Now, you can segment a large table and associated indexes into smaller, manageable pieces to avoid these slowdowns. Other improvements include 300-percent faster queries in Microsoft Dynamics and database mirroring capabilities. Mirroring helps to ensure that users can access a standby copy of the database in the event of system failure. During financial reporting deadlines that happen at regular intervals during the year, speed and reliability are paramount.
But can SQL Server 2005 grow with your business? Or will system performance slow down as your company adds users and data? You can rest assured in performance: Customers are currently operating multiterabyte SQL Server databases and achieving more than 99.998-percent availability. This corresponds to less than one hour of downtime per year.
Protecting your data
When it comes to keeping your systems well-tuned and protected, enhancements for your IT staff include: An easier interface for scheduling SQL Server backups, online indexing that helps to reduce downtime during database maintenance, and better database development tools for debugging and integration.
Tight integration with SQL Server 2005 means better overall security for your business applications. The latest versions (releasing over the next 6 to 12 months) of Microsoft Dynamics programs will incorporate SQL Server password policies and security enhancements such as secure by default settings. "We can now leverage the complete Windows/SQL stack to unify security administration," says Matt Gustafson, senior program manager for Microsoft Dynamics GP. "The ultimate benefit of this is the ability to provide increased security with less complexity."
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5 ways to optimize employee skills, IT investments with SQL Server 2005 1. | Help all your employees make better decisions
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services helps employees at all levels build reports from a variety of data sources in the format they choose (such as Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Word, PDF, instant messaging, and more). | 2. | Access SQL Server Reporting Services from your business applications
This feature lets you view information between applications without switching between applications and screens. | 3. | Expand your business intelligence capabilities
Use online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining features to drill down on relationships and trends in the data. SQL Server Integration Services enables you to extract data from multiple databases, translate the data into a consistent format, and then export it to a data warehouse or other enterprise system. | 4. | Reduce development and maintenance costs
New management tools help your database administrators combine crucial management and authoring tools into a single tool that can manage SQL Server components. | 5. | Protect your information
Use the new security model to match security privileges to specific roles and individuals. This will allow users to access information they need to do their jobs, but prevent them from accessing information they don't need or shouldn't see. Automated backups and monitoring and tuning tools help to ensure that your system is running at peak performance—and alerts you when it's not. |
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