Cubegeek

Shameless Self-Promotion

LOS ANGELES, CA—September 13, 2007—Solver, Inc., a Business Intelligence solutions provider, has announced that Michael Bowen has joined the company as Vice President of Services. Michael Bowen is a Business Intelligence (BI) industry veteran of 17 years, now working with his fourth-generation of BI tools. As a practitioner he has been responsible for the design and implementation of over 200 data marts into production in various industries.               

“It's always interesting to see new technology enter the BI market. With Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft has the ability to leapfrog a generation of software and bring many more customers into the previously pricey club of Performance Management. I am excited to be at the cutting edge of implementing this next-generation technology which will redefine the size and scope of the BI marketplace. Solver is at the heart of expanding this market and dedicated to excellence. This is the place to be,” says Bowen.

Prior to joining Solver, Bowen’s BI consulting career began at Pilot Software, and has worked at Arbor, Hyperion and his own consultancies. At Hyperion, Bowen was Americas Domain Lead for DW and BI Tools and WW Business Development Manager for eCRM Analytics. Bowen is noted as a keen observer of both business and technical trends in BI having worked C Level Sales and International Channels as well as with DW staff and product engineering groups. Prior to joining Solver as VP of Services, he was Manager of BI Best Practices at Answerthink. 

“Michael’s extensive background from the Business Intelligence Industry is adding significant value to the Solver organization and the overall strategy for delivering quality solutions for PerformancePoint solutions for both Monitoring and Analytics, as well as his strength from large Hyperion implementations will safeguard the quality of the way Solver will be able to deliver high quality  solutions to large Fortune 3000 companies based on Microsoft’s new ground breaking technologies in the Business Performance Management field,” says Per Solli, Co-owner and CEO of Solver, Inc.

Performance Point Kickoff

       

Thursday, September                   20, 2007 New York City                    Drive Business Performance with Microsoft Office                   PerformancePoint Server 2007                    As a business person, you know the                   value of developing and managing business success across all                   business operations. Learn how PerformancePoint Server helps                   you drive alignment, accountability and actionable insight                   across the entire organization, while reducing                   complexity.                                      At this launch event, you will hear how                   PerformancePoint Server 2007 enhances your business in four                   ways:                    Improve business performance with an                     integrated application for monitoring, analysis and planning                     Drive alignment and accountability across                     the organization                     Enable more decision makers to impact                     business performance                     Ensure transparency, security and                     auditability with an enterprise-grade solution                                       Who Should Attend?                    CFOs                     CEOs                     Finance managers / directors                     Operations managers / directors                     Marketing and sales managers /                     directors Business intelligence architects                    What You Will Get                    A morning of business content presented                     by corporate vice president and CFO of Microsoft's Business                     Division Peter Klein, customer presentations by Energizer                     and Skanska, as well as Michael Treacy,                     chief strategist and co-founder of GEN3 Partners, and                     co-author of the New York Times bestselling book,                     "The Discipline of Market Leaders."                     Afternoon technical information about the                     Office PerformancePoint Server release from Microsoft, and                     information about solutions from technical representatives                     of key Microsoft BI partners.                     Insider's view of how Office                     PerformancePoint Server can improve business performance                     capabilities.                     Chance to win an Xbox 360, Bose SoundDock                     system, and other prizes.                    Join SQL Server Magazine,                   Business Finance, and independent experts as our                   guest on September 20, 2007, for the in-person                   PerformancePoint Server 2007 launch event. But hurry -                   seating is limited!                    Go                   Here For Your                   Complimentary Registration                              Copyright 2007 Microsoft             Corporation. www.microsoft.com/bi              Legal | Privacy

Colossus

Among the perks of my new gig, I've gotten a Linksys IP phone and a new laptop. I haven't figured out where to put the phone, nor do I even know the number yet, but I have named my laptop Colossus.

It's a Lenovo T60 Think Pad, the sweetest portable machine I've ever had. What's stunning about that is that it's actually lighter than the T41 (Caruso) that it's replacing. This one's got the wide aspect ratio screen, 1680 x 1050 a dual core 2GHz chip and 1GB of RAM. That sounds a little bit underpowered by my lights, but HA, I don't code any longer, buster! All I have to do is play iTunes, and work Office 2007. With 100GB of disk, I'm not going to have to lug around an external USB drive any more either. Whoohoo!

The battery is perfect. I can run the giant for 3 hours which is perfect for a nice fat DVD on the plane. I can even charge my Treo through the USB. I've got three USB 2.0 slots by the way, and that's just lovely. And no, I'm not about to upgrade to Windows Vista.

The more I play with 2K7, the more I like it. Finally a spreadsheet with more than 64K rows! That's what I'm talking about. Since I'm sleeping with the Borg, I've actually bothered to figure out Excel pivot tables. Not bad. Ugly, but not bad at all. The UI is killer, I must confess. Now I am going to try the built-in speech recognition. This should be cool.

One more thing. I got a PCMCIA smart card reader today. What the heck am I supposed to do with that?