• I'm pretty new to the BI game, so bear with me.

    We are currently transitioning to SSAS/SSRS from a reporting module built on top of MS Access that exports data to predefined Excel templates.

    As we are using 2008 R2, SSRS looks pretty dated, but the team cares more about the data than looking pretty. This is a very good thing for me because I couldn't handle a situation like yours where someone cares more about vanity than functionality! 😛

    Regardless, we also need reporting for our website and clients. That changes thing. Vanity is pretty important when it comes to clients, but functionality is also as equally important too. Therefore, I've been testing Tableau for our external reporting that can out the box, integrate right into our website with minimal effort. It's very attractive, sexy and easy to use with any setup or data source. The only issue is that it can be pretty pricey the first year, but significantly drops therefore after. Costs are broken down by seat (login) and report builder.

    Check it out. Free trials are available. They also just introduced a cloud version as well. I believe the data space for the cloud is like 100GB per seat.

    http://www.tableausoftware.com/[/url]

    Fully Interactable Dashboard Examples

    http://www.tableausoftware.com/solutions/business-dashboards

    Tableau Server

    Delivers web-based analytics from any workbook created by Tableau Professional

    Delivered as a complete solution, no other prerequisite software required

    Connects to all Tableau supported data sources, including relational databases, cubes, Hadoop, cloud data, and desktop files

    Publish content to the server from Tableau Professional

    Microsoft® Windows® Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2003 R2 sp2 or higher; Windows® 8 or 7 (see Note 2)

    32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows (see Note 1)

    Minimum of a Pentium 4 or AMD Opteron processor (see Note 3)

    32-bit color depth recommended

    Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and 6 (IPv6)

    Data Sources

    Actian Vectorwise 1.5 or later

    Amazon Redshift

    Cloudera Hadoop Distribution via Hive (CDH3u1, which includes Hive .71, or later, with options for Beeswax server and Kerberos)

    Cloudera Impala 1.0 or later

    DataStax Enterprise Edition 2.2 or later

    EMC Greenplum 4.x or later

    EXASOL 4.2 or later

    Firebird 2.0 or later

    Google Analytics

    Google BigQuery

    Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) 1.1 or later

    HP Vertica 4.x or later

    IBM DB2 9.1 or later for Linux, UNIX, or Windows

    IBM Netezza release 4.6 or later

    MapR Distribution for Apache Hadoop

    Microsoft Access 2003 or later

    Microsoft Excel 2003 or later

    Microsoft PowerPivot 2008 (whether or not published in SharePoint) or later

    Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2008R2, or 2012

    Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005, 2008, 2008R2, or 2012 (Multi-dimensional mode only)

    Microsoft Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket

    MySQL 4.0 or later

    OData

    Oracle Database 10.x or later

    Oracle Hyperion Essbase 11.1.1 or later

    ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB) version 3 or later

    PostgreSQL 8.3 or later

    Progress OpenEdge 10.2B patch 4 or later

    Salesforce.com, Force.com, and Database.com

    SAP HANA 1.0035 or later

    SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse 7.00 with SP20+ recommended; also requires SAP GUI for Windows 7.20 Client or later

    SAP Sybase ASE 15.5 or later

    SAP Sybase IQ 15 or later

    Splunk Enterprise 6 or later

    Teradata V2 R6.2 or later

    Teradata Aster Data nCluster 4.5 or later

    Teradata OLAP Connector 14.10 or later

    Text files -- comma separated value (.csv) files

    Also, many databases and applications that are ODBC Version 3.0 compliant