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NEW ORLEANS -- Today at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2003, Microsoft Corp. announced the release of the first public beta of SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services beta 2. Reporting Services provides companies and information workers with a powerful new reporting tool that can increase business insight by providing the real-time information needed from any data source to any device. As a result, employees at every level will have better access to information that will increase their ability to make more-informed decisions and provide more business value to the company. Integrated Business Intelligence Provides More Value to Industry Partners SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services offers a broad business intelligence (BI) platform that can enable partners to easily build custom business intelligence applications. This flexibility and interoperability provide customers with powerful business intelligence solutions tailored to their specific needs. Today, industry partners are benefiting from Reporting Services in numerous ways, as illustrated by the following examples: Cizer. According to the PACTS ECM Reporting Team lead, "Our users require an easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain reporting solution for the high-speed reporting done on a daily basis in our offices across the 94 U.S. District Courts. We have used the Cizer Server with our PACTS ECM application to publish reports for several years, but we needed to give our end users the power to access the data themselves in a secure browser-based environment. The Cizer Report Builder, and especially Cizer Quick Query, use Microsoft Reporting Services and will provide us with new reporting technology that's both powerful and cost effective, leveraging our current investment in our Microsoft-platform servers." Configuresoft. "Coupling Microsoft's powerful SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services with Enterprise Configuration Manager's (ECM) enormous repository of system data enables our customers to quickly access the information they need and display it in clear, graphical and easy to understand formats. SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services allows ECM data to be tailored for the various constituencies in a corporation that rely on our tool to make strategic IT management decisions," said Randy Streu, vice president of Product Management at Configuresoft. MaxQ Technologies. "Reporting Services delivers the extensible framework that we have been waiting for. As a business solution ISV, we can invest in adding more business value to our solutions rather than on technical architecture. With its extensible framework (multiple rendering formats, Report Actions, RDL, Security, Authoring, delivery tools, etc.), Reporting Services will give us the opportunity to extend the reach of information to the entire enterprise by making analytics a ubiquitous part of all the business solutions we offer," said Anthony Peccerillo, vice president of Software Development at MaxQ Technologies. MIS. "Reporting Services is an important step in implementing MIS' and Microsoft's joint vision of bringing business intelligence to every desktop of an enterprise," said Stefan Sexl, executive vice president of Marketing at MIS. "Our customers can leverage Reporting Services to roll out MIS' powerful financial reporting and analysis solutions throughout the enterprise quicker and at a lower TCO than before." OutlookSoft. "OutlookSoft has been a beta partner during Microsoft's development of Reporting Services," said Perlie Voshell, vice president of Technology for OutlookSoft. "This new offering provides excellent SQL reporting and is very flexible. It integrates nicely into our Business Performance Management product, OutlookSoft Everest, providing exciting new functionality and benefit to our clients." Panorama Software. "Panorama views the introduction of Reporting Services as an incredible opportunity for current customers to enhance the value of their Panorama NovaView installations, or new customers to implement BI solutions to help their organizations achieve great business results," said Janice P. Anderson, CEO at Panorama Software. ProClarity. "We are pleased to see Microsoft making a significant investment in the reporting industry, as it perfectly augments the best-in-class, interactive analytic solutions that we work with Microsoft to provide. A significant portion of our customers have a need for both report delivery and Web-based analytics, so we intend to fully embrace and support the new reporting offering. We look forward to continuing the success we have experienced with Microsoft in helping our mutual customers improve efficiency and productivity and ultimately achieve their business objectives," said Clay Young, senior vice president of strategic marketing for ProClarity Corp. Reporting Services Enhances Microsoft's Comprehensive, Cost-Effective BI Offering With the addition of Reporting Services, SQL Server provides the single most comprehensive data management and BI platform on the market, with integrated analytics that include online analytical processing; data mining; data warehousing; extract, transform and load tools; and reporting functionality. This helps companies realize the value of better decision-making while lowering total cost of ownership. As with SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, a valid SQL Server 2000 license is required for each server on which Reporting Services is deployed. Microsoft expects to ship SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services by the end of the year.