Congratulations to Microsoft for being named 2012 Channel Champion for Business Intelligence Software by CRN. CRN provides news, analysis and perspective for VARs and Technology Integrators. Both SharePoint and SQL Server are Gartner Magic Quadrant technologies.

From the article by Rick Whiting

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) was tops in this year’s Business Intelligence Software category, besting competitors SAP (NYSE:SAP), IBM (NYSE:IBM) and Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL). But Microsoft’s margin of victory this year was much narrower than in 2011.

The company has been steadily gaining market traction with its business intelligence offerings, including such BI tools as PowerPivot in its Excel spreadsheet, PerformancePoint in SharePoint Server, and the ReportingServices and Analysis Services to the SQL Server database.

Microsoft outscored its rivals in overall technical satisfaction, including such criteria as product configurability or customization tools. That doesn’t surprise Mike Burger, Microsoft senior solutions architect at Perficient, a St. Louis-based Microsoft partner.

“We really use the entire Microsoft BI stack to tailor our solutions for our clients’ specific needs,” he said. “SharePoint integration and the BI semantic model in the upcoming SQL Server 2012 “have really enhanced [the technology's] ability to deliver business intelligence across a spectrum of users.”

Microsoft expects its momentum to continue this year with a new Apache Hadoop-based service for the Windows Azure cloud platform that customers can use to pull “big data” from multiple sources and build predictive analytics applications, said Michael Kiselman, senior product marketing manager.

Microsoft also outscored competitors for overall support satisfaction and in financial factors–sweeping all criteria in the latter, in fact. “The price point is one of the key selling factors we always bring up with clients,” said Burger.

Burger also praised Microsoft’s partner training and support, including the multiday SQL Server 2012 “ranger training.” “What’s great about that is it gives partners some lead time to work with the new technology,” he said. Microsoft also helps Perficient cover the costs of developing proof-of-concept systems. “It’s a fantastic way for us to get our foot in the door and make the customer not only comfortable with the technology, but working with us as well.”

Perficient’s ONC Certified solution for Stage 2 Meaningful Use & ACO reporting – Health BI also received a mention in CRN’s article on Microsoft’s Collaboration Software win. From the article which you can read in full here

“SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaboration platform, has been one of the company’s biggest-selling products since it debuted in 2001. Offering a number of capabilities, including document and Web content management, the server is also the core of Microsoft’s collaboration and social networking offerings.

“Social is hot right now,” said Jared Spataro, senior director of SharePoint product management, citing a recent Harris Interactive survey that found that 59 percent of businesses believe it’s necessary to integrate social networking with corporate IT networks. And while implementing social networking technology is a growing business for solution providers, Spataro said the real opportunity is developing change management services to handle the cultural and business process shifts.

For example, Perficient, a leading Microsoft solution provider partner, relies on SharePoint for a number of collaboration and analytical solutions for the health-care industry. Perficient’s Health BI Solution combines SharePoint with Microsoft’s SQL Server database to create its Health BI software, an analytics system that helps hospitals and other health-care organizations track performance metrics.”