MS launches Reporting Services

Though it was initially scheduled for launch along with Yukon, Microsoft launched its much-awaited Reporting Services tool recently. The early launch surprised many, says RAHUL NEEL MANI as he takes a closer look

TARUN MALIK points out that enterprise customers can be catered to by boutique consultants, but on a mass scale you need to have all value additions built into the product

THE wait for a Reporting Service along with SQL Server 2000 is over. The product is now commercially available throughout the world, including India. Though Microsoft was originally supposed to launch this reporting tool with Yukon—the next generation database product—it was aware that the total business intelligence (BI) market worldwide is expected to rake in $4.7 billion (IDC figure) by 2007, so it decided to launch this reporting tool ahead of Yukon. With this, the company’s vision to make business intelligence more broadly accessible will be put to the test. Reporting applications, a subset of the overall business intelligence field, generate reports that summarise historical information (such as daily sales records) and schedule the delivery of reports. With its entry into reporting services, Microsoft has now joined the league of the other established companies such as Actuate, Business Objects and Cognos, who were the niche BI players so far.

There will be four editions of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services available for users. These are the Evaluation Edition, Developer Edition, and the Standard and Enterprise Editions. The Evaluation edition is designed for users to test it in their labs. If they like it, they can upgrade to the Developer edition, which is basically the Enterprise edition licenced for development use only. The Standard edition is the basic offering for users. Microsoft has proposed grand designs for the Enterprise edition, which provides a user more than two gigabytes of memory and beyond four CPUs. The enterprise edition also provides a ‘Web farm’ scenario. This will provide network load balancing across 10 reporting servers. Custom authentication is also provided with the Enterprise edition, which allows for non-Windows-based security authentication, or even another LDAP directory. Further, Enterprise edition allows for data-driven subscriptions.

Microsoft claims that there was huge customer demand for a comprehensive solution with all the features built into the SQL Server 2000 product offering. This feature has ultimately given way to mass customisation. Demand has basically originated from the mid-market space where no such tool was present. Tarun Malik, product manager, Business Tools, Microsoft India, says that enterprise customers can be catered to by boutique consultants. But on a mass scale you really need to have a product which has all value-additions built into the product. “That’s why the Reporting Service was launched, and we are hopeful of cracking this segment,” says Malik.

In a cool reaction, Sanjay Deshmukh, business development director, India and SAARC, Business Objects, says that it will not affect his company (which acquired Crystal Reports, a reporting software major) because enterprise customers have heterogeneous database environments, and when they choose reporting software the criterion is to buy a product that can access data from all applications and databases and not just one database like MS SQL Server. Says Deshmukh, “Only small or medium-sized customers who have one database application like MS SQL server might consider the new reporting solution from Microsoft. These customers are also less likely to go for the Microsoft reporting solution because it’s only the first version and lacks the functionalities offered by mature and leading products like Crystal Reports.” He says there is little scope for Microsoft to enter this market. “Small customers will also go in for Crystal Reports. It is worth pointing out that Crystal Reports is still bundled with the Visual Basic and .NET technologies of Microsoft.

Defying this logic, Microsoft officials are very peppy, and expect to see the Reporting Service grow by leaps and bounds. There are already 23,000 registered users worldwide testing the broad Beta2 release of the new reporting tool. While users in non-Microsoft environments are yet to weigh in on the new offering, users of Microsoft’s SQL Server database and .NET technologies say that the software giant has hit the mark with its first effort. Countering Deshmukh’s view, Malik says, “Reporting Services features an integrated environment within which customers can author, generate and view reports based on data stored in Microsoft’s SQL Server database and other major databases that have ODBC drivers and OLE data providers, including Oracle, Ingres and IBM’s DB2.” But only time will tell whether or not it really integrates well with the heterogeneous database environment.

SANJAY DESHMUKH believes that customers are less likely to go for the Microsoft reporting solution because it’s only the first version, which lacks the functionalities offered by mature products like Crystal Reports

When we talk of this mass-market product, the question that comes first to mind is whether Microsoft has planned to penetrate mid-sized companies with this new product. Malik says databases are used in all markets—small, medium or large, and that “what matters most is the use of this tool.” For example, enterprises will use it for more mission-critical apps where the user will have SQL clusters or database clusters, while a mid-sized company will use just some basic application like ERP. By introducing Reporting Services to SQL Server 2000 Microsoft claims to have provided a solution that was much required and awaited. With this, the company completes the whole value chain of products needed to deploy a BI solution, i.e. Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2000 database with the reporting tool to churn the data, and the Microsoft Office System on the client side. Now with Reporting Services the Microsoft customer gets a Reporting tool, Report Manager and Report Authoring tool. “Customers can make changes in reporting…they get the benefit of pre-defined templates in terms of reports, and the Reporting Server, which can generate information in a usable format,” says Malik. These things that were customised earlier are now given free of cost by default.

Competitors now?

A question that is making the rounds is what will happen to those BI companies which were working with Microsoft as partners to provide reporting services for SQL Server 2000. Malik says that Microsoft will continue to work with its partners, and rubbishes the suggestion that by introducing the Reporting tool for SQL Server 2000 the company intends to encroach their area. “On the contrary, we have given them a more handy tool to work with. In a mid-market, price-conscious space where those companies had no presence, Microsoft will now make its presence felt,” states Malik. The company says it is providing customers with a tool with which they can do data crunching in-house. The top-end market will be left for conventional BI vendors where the mission-critical apps require a lot of customisation. But the fact remains that with its entry into Reporting Services, Microsoft will join many of these established companies like Actuate, Business Objects and Cognos, and will eventually start competing with them. Even though these companies’ products need to work closely with Microsoft’s SQL Server database, Microsoft could create more than a competitive threat for them, particularly if we talk about existing Microsoft customers. Company officials are adamant that Microsoft’s reporting software will not hurt the prospects of those companies. “It will appeal mostly to customers with predominantly Microsoft environments. Microsoft’s tool for authoring reports, Report Writer, is offered as an add-on for Visual Studio .NET, Microsoft’s development environment,” says Malik.

But where reporting software/BI companies typically charge a particular amount of money for their software, Microsoft is making this available to businesses as a free add-on to those who have a licence for SQL Server 2000. This arrangement will induce people to take decision in favour of Microsoft Reporting Services. So far, companies that filled the vacuum of a reporting service in the database environment were third-party software vendors like Crystal Reports.

The move by Microsoft will consolidate the BI market, as evidenced by Hyperion Solutions’ acquisition of Brio Software, and Informatica’s acquisition of Striva Corp; the two were lesser-known, yet prominent reporting service vendors.

Deshmukh has a different version of the story. “For mid-size and large enterprise customers, we have Crystal Reports for reporting applications. Crystal Reports is almost a reporting standard in user organisations across the world, irrespective of revenue and size of the company. Business Objects is more positioned for ad hoc query and OLAP analysis applications,” says he.

The flip side of the story is that authoring and storage of business intelligence should ideally be an integral part of any database solution. To date these solutions were broken up, so you had Crystal Reports and other reporting tools filling the gap. With Microsoft Reporting Services it will be part of the database; this means that users, especially developers, can devote their resources to providing a better solution to the market rather than building tools. Deshmukh of Business Objects is confident that Microsoft will not be able to replace earlier database reporting tools because users are looking at common reporting platforms across the enterprise and not just one RDBMS or one application. On the other side, companies like PeopleSoft and Talisma are not into reporting, and the applications built by them bundle standard reporting software. For example, PeopleSoft bundles Crystal Reports for all reporting needs, and Business Objects for any ad hoc query and OLAP analysis. To top it all, Business Objects still continues to be a partner of Microsoft since Crystal Reports is bundled in Visual Basic and .NET. But will the scenario change in the wake of this new development?

The Yukon aspect

The Yukon debate forms another part of the issue. The company, according to the defined plans, will be unveiling the next generation database product this year itself. SQL Server 2000 will give way to Yukon in a few months time. But just a couple of months before Yukon is released for beta testing around the world, Microsoft launched this Reporting Service to attract more customers. Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for the company to launch this new reporting tool in sync with the launch of Yukon? Why did Microsoft make haste in launching it now?

Explains Malik, “The development of any software product is an ongoing process. The public beta for Yukon is yet to be announced. RTM (ready to market) data is still far away. But till that time what would customers do? They don’t want to wait for 8-9 months when the Yukon is commercially available.” But the fact is that alongside catering to customer demand for a reporting tool, Microsoft actually came to know that if such a tool wasn’t introduced and aligned with SQL Server, then it would be too late for the company to snag the desired market share. The reporting tool will provide the required boost to SQL Server sales, which might not be looking northwards now. With the launch of Yukon deferred until later this year, Microsoft planned to offer reporting capabilities with SQL Server 2000 only so that customers didn’t have to wait so long—and that they stuck to Microsoft. On the other hand IBM, Oracle and the other main database vendors already support reporting capabilities. However Microsoft has developed an edge over the others since its reporting service is being given free with the server product.

This leads us to another compelling question. What will be the process of upgrading from SQL Server 2000 to Yukon? “It’s a licencing question. Anyone who has a licenced copy of SQL Server now will have to buy a fresh licence for Yukon. But those who are covered by Microsoft’s Software Assurance are automatically covered for any upgrades within two years of that agreement. “Most enterprise customers go for the software assurance programme so they will have a win-win situation,” says Malik.

Cost-benefit analysis

The pricing for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services is the same as that for the SQL Server 2000 database. Users can opt for the Server CAL (client access licence), which lets a customer buy a server and client access licences, or they can licence per-processor. Per-processor licencing starts at $5,000 for the Standard edition and $20,000 per processor for the Enterprise edition. Malik says that it presents a greater value proposition than rival products because Microsoft is offering a lower licencing cost. Unofficial reports mention that Cognos’ ReportNet can cost in the $80,000 range. Malik also says that Microsoft’s goal is to make software that doesn’t require ‘an army of consultants’to implement.

The question that will now make the rounds is how the company will create an additional revenue stream if it offers this product free of cost? One situation is that new customers who want to buy this reporting tool will have to get a licence for SQL Server 2000 first. This has its cost. The second situation is more important. A customer needs an SQL Server 2000 licence for each server on which he runs the reporting software, so if he runs it on the same server as his Microsoft database he won’t have to pay extra. To run it on a separate server he’ll need an SQL Server licence for that system, which starts at roughly $5,000 per processor. Most customers are likely to run the software on a separate server only to avoid slowing their main database with the additional workload; this is the situation where Microsoft sees money coming in.

Product benefits

Microsoft Reporting Services will fit better with .NET infrastructure and is easier to manage as well. The Web services available in .NET applications and the new reporting service will make for more seamless applications (at least from a development standpoint), and make it easier to manage and deploy solutions. It is also integrated into the Visual Studio .NET 2003 development environment, which users are beginning to use more and more for new development works. There are two major groups of users that Reporting Services will benefit. The first is users who want reports that contain predefined navigation. The second, enterprises that require robust distribution. Through the nineties, getting reports out to groups of hundreds or even thousands of users required the writing of code. By contrast, Reporting Services offers multiple means of caching, distribution, storage of report histories, scheduled report distribution, and data watches that can be programmed to deliver alerts when preset data events occur.

Conclusion

Microsoft’s Reporting Services is the talk of town today. As a free add-on service to SQL Server 2000, it will be a preferred combination along with the other Microsoft platforms like Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft Office, etc. With the open APIs, the product will also be streamlined with the .Net platform of Microsoft. But this free add-on may or may not be entirely free of cost. If the Reporting Services have to be loaded on a separate server then the proposition becomes entirely different.

But one thing is sure: customers who have a standardised Microsoft platform all across the enterprise should certainly benefit from this offering.

Interactive reports
Feature	Description
Parameterised reports	Parameterised reports filter data to provide only that which is appropriate for users.
Hidden report items	Hidden items on a report can toggle in and out of view based on user actions.
Hyperlinks	Hyperlinks embedded in reports direct users to Web pages.
Drill through links	Drill through links open another report from within a report, such as a detailed report in summary. The originating report typically passes parameters to the drill through report.
Bookmark links	Bookmark links direct users to another area of the current report.
Document maps	In HTML Viewer, a document map appears as a table of contents next to the report. Users can click an item in the table and the browser jumps to that item in the report.

Flexible report design options
Report Layout	Description
Tabular	Fixed number of columns
Matrix	The number of columns depends on the query results
Chart	Data represented graphically (pie, line or bar chart)
List (free-form)	Data arranged free-form on the page; useful for creating forms

rahul@expresscomputeronline.com