Local Microsoft development powerhouse 3fifteen, a subsidiary of Britehouse, has announced a new MIS initiative that allows customers to roll a full-blown business intelligence (BI) solution out into their existing IT environment at a fraction of the cost and time associated with the more traditional and prescribed approaches circulating the market today.
The solution, aptly named '3fifteen BI Fast Track', builds directly on Microsoft's SQL Server Fast-Track Data Warehouse initiative, which consists of a purpose-built appliance that combines a comprehensive Microsoft software stack with a tailored hardware platform from Hewlett-Packard.
“To enable the same rapid deployment and cost savings to be replicated further up the value chain, 3fifteen has added its extensive expertise and proven best practices in the BI space into the mix,” explains Rian Durandt, 3fifteen's Business Unit Manager for Business Intelligence solutions.
“This results in a proverbial 'BI solution in a box' - granting customers the kind of quick time to value realisation that would have previously been nothing more than a dream,” he adds.
Frikkie Bosch, Application Platform Marketing Manager at Microsoft comments: “The SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse Platform deploys a high performance, enterprise-class warehouse, up to 32 terabytes, without the high cost of traditional systems. Fast Track Data Warehouses offer customers a solid roadmap to large-scale enterprise data warehousing on SQL Server, as the hardware is methodically tested and tuned, which in turn eliminates guesswork, saving customers months of configuration, set-up, testing and tuning.”
Durandt says that part and parcel with 3fifteen's 'BI Fast Track' solution, customers get 25 pre-built data marts and cubes, as well as a wealth of SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) routines that both populate and keep these marts and cubes updated.
“From the customer's perspective, it substantially simplifies the discipline of BI,” he says.
Ironically, Durandt says all of the tools required to reach a comparative level of functionality are natively available in SQL Server 2008 today.
“The process of selecting and procuring the correct hardware, setting up the operating system and accompanying software on that infrastructure and then going about configuring the entire solution, before 3fifteen's experts can add their value around architecting and building the customer's BI solution is extremely time-consuming and hence, costly,” he says.
“By allowing us to begin adding value from day-one, this data warehouse appliance initiative from Microsoft has done a great deal to simplify and reduce the cost of BI.
“Further speeding up that process, 3fifteen has pre-packaged its intellectual property up so that it can be rolled out onto an appliance with the same level of simplicity,” Durandt explains.
“It gets us into a place where the time between deciding on a BI solution and seeing value from it falls to a couple of weeks as opposed to months. That, coupled with the reduced costs this approach adds into the mix, makes BI accessible to a completely new list of corporates and enterprises that previously felt it was beyond their reach.”
“It's the perfect solution for the difficulties being faced by the market today and one we feel will fare extremely well over the coming months,” he concludes.
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