PowerPivot is a Self-Service BI Tool from Microsoft. It is basically a data mashup and data exploration tool allowing us to analyze millions of records from variety of different sources in a matter of few minutes or even seconds. It is based on a in-memory technology known as “xVelocity”, which operates in memory and does all the necessary calculations within memory thereby offering a very high-speed data analysis/exploration.

It comes in two flavors:

• PowerPivot Add-In for Excel (Excel 2010 and above)
• PowerPivot for SharePoint

Here are some of the salient features of PowerPivot:

• Similar to Excel, making it easier for business users, data analysts, and excel users etc.
• Is available freely as an add-in for Excel.
• Can be installed in just few minutes and you can get started with analysis.
• Supports a wide variety of data sources.
• PowerPivot formulas/expressions (DAX) are very similar to Excel formulas/expressions.
• Due to it’s similarity to Excel, it’s very easy to adopt, and can be quickly adopted.

I have been playing around with PowerPivot for quite sometime now and it has been quite exciting so far. I will be writing a few articles in the coming days on how to work with PowerPivot for Excel.

More Information: www.PowerPivot.com (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/Products/PowerPivot.aspx)

Until next time, happy learning!

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