Project Gemini aka PowerPivot for Excel

wesback — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:23:00 GMT

Yesterday the official name for Project Gemini was announced during the keynote of the SharePoint Conference, as of now Project Gemini will be known as PowerPivot (for Excel).
Personally I feel this name is very well chosen since it really expresses what Gemini is about, in the end it is a PivotTable (or Chart) on steroids. Of course there is a lot more happening behind the scenes but that is exactly what you should not be worrying about, the 'tricks' behind the scenes are not what Gemini is about, it is about giving flexibility to the end user to get to information and improve his insight. But before all the end users in the world start cheering and partying, remember that IT still has control over the sources and even more insight in what you are doing than before ;-)

And of course, with a new name comes a new website: http://www.powerpivot.com.
I hope you are all looking forward to the next public CTP of SQL Server 2008 R2 including the new PowerPivot add-in.

The hardest part for me is always to stop using the name Gemini, we have been talking about Gemini for over a year internally which makes it kind of a habit :-)

SQL Server Kilimanjaro and Project Madison

wesback — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:42:00 GMT

Wikipedia says "Kilimanjaro with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is an inactive stratovolcano in north-eastern Tanzania rising 4,600 m (15,100 ft) from its base, and is additionally the highest peak in Africa at 5,895 meters (19,340 ft), providing a dramatic view of the surrounding plains."

But this week the BI Conference has kicked off with an amazing announcement! There will be a BI focused release of SQL Server codenamed Kilimanjaro which is expected H1 2010 with CTPs available within the next 12 months. Kilimanjaro is focused on "People Ready BI".

A key component of Kilimanjaro is "Project Gemini", this is all about self-service BI using Excel. The vision behind Gemini is to free IT resources by giving business intelligence analysis and reporting capabilities to the end-users without IT losing control.

At the same time we will be releasing "Project Madison", this is the integration of Datallegro which will offer you an easy scale out solution to support data warehouses of up to 100s of terabytes.

This is very exciting news and I will keep you up-to-date whenever I get more information about this release.

Check out the press release.

You can see the keynote here, it contains a nice demo about the possibilities already in SQL Server around 00:35:00, Project Madison around 01:10:00 and Project Gemini around 01:27:00. If you have time however look at the complete keynote!

Other resources:

WesleyB's Blog : Project Gemini

Project Gemini aka PowerPivot for Excel

SQL Server Kilimanjaro and Project Madison