Thanks for the informative intro. It couldn't have come at a better time for me, as I'm evaluating BI analysis and reporting tools. I've looked at QlikView, Tableau, Tibco Spotfire, and MicroStrategy ReportingSuite, along with PowerPivot. I want to get a working demo environment for PowerPivot set up, and I'm wondering if you can tell me a bit more about the SQL Server 2008 R2 November Community Technical Preview (CTP) requirment, specifically, is it really necessary? If the client is in Excel, and it has the capability to connect to multiple data sources, what capability does R2 deliver/add to the app?

Thanks!