Michael Tejedor on Business Intelligence Software

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

In today’s IT landscape, reams of data flow endlessly: revenue, inventory levels, staff activity, budgets. Making sense of this surging river of data is the purpose of business intelligence software. BI software’s ability to display many essential data streams on easily viewable screens makes it invaluable for business decision makers.

To gain insight into the Microsoft business intelligence platform, I spoke with Michael Tejedor, Senior Product Manager, Business Platform Division at Microsoft. (The interview took place over a Skype video connection.) If you’d like to skip to specific questions in the interview, look below the embedded video for the running times.

As noted in the interview, if your business runs the Windows platform, you likely already have the basic building blocks of a business intelligence solution. The Microsoft BI platform is built on products that are largely ubiquitous: SQL Server, SharePoint and Office. SharePoint is hugely popular in the enterprise, and Office has hundreds of millions of users.

Questions for Michael Tejedor

Tejedor spoke about the BI market in general, about how the software is used strategically by companies. He also discussed how his company’s BI applications are leveraged in real world situations, and how business intelligence can be a market disrupting force – in a positive sense.

1) What do you see as the greatest benefit from a business intelligence platform — what are some key ways companies are using it to help their operations?

Running time: :32 – 1:21

2) The foundation of the Microsoft BI platform are applications that many businesses already have, Sharepoint, SQL Server and Office. So leveraging business intelligence can be done with no extra investment, true? Or do companies need an additional application to get the most from Microsoft BI?

Running time: 1:40 – 4:20

3) How do you see the Microsoft Dynamics AX application fitting into the Microsoft BI platform?

Running time: 4:26 – 5:09

4)What about the idea of “self service” business intelligence – enabling an IT pro or business rep to help themselves. How does the Microsoft BI solution address this idea?

Running time: 5:23 – 6:12

5) I see on your LinkedIn profile that you are “enthused by market disrupting technologies.” Does this apply to today’s business intelligence platform?

Running time: 6:21 – 8:25