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Milliman chooses Power BI Embedded for their Integrate application

As written on microsoft.com

Today, we’re excited to share how Milliman, a global market-leader in actuarial-products and services, has integrated Power BI Embedded into its solutions. Saptarshi Mukherjee, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Microsoft Power BI, met up with Paul Maher, Principal and Chief Technology Officer of the Life Technology Solutions Practice at Milliman, to welcome him and talk more about their solutions.

Saptarshi: Can you tell us more about Milliman and your market-leading cloud solution, Integrate™?

Paul:  Milliman is among the world’s largest actuarial and consulting firms, with offices in major cities around the globe. The Life Technology Solutions practice provides products and services to the actuarial community. Powered by the Microsoft Azure Cloud, Integrate is the first solution to effectively tear down silos and replace old tools and protocols with a state-of-the-art platform that improves financial and risk management, maximizes operational efficiency, and enables strategic allocation of human capital. Insurance companies can now access unlimited computing resources with Microsoft Azure to perform compute-intensive, mission-critical work.

Saptarshi: How are you using Power BI Embedded in Integrate?

Paul: Power BI Embedded enables Integrate users to quickly create and share data through interactive dashboards and reports, all in the cloud. Power BI Embedded provides a rich immersive experience that allows Integrate users to visualize and analyze data in one place, simply and intuitively. Using Power BI Embedded, Integrate delivers a scalable and cost-effective solution that meets the ever-growing BI demands of users.

The ability to embed Power BI in Integrate was key to ensuring that the end-user experience was seamless for all dynamic BI requirements.

Saptarshi: Why did you choose Power BI Embedded?

Paul: After extensive research on so-called “best of breed” offerings in the market today, it was clear that Power BI Embedded was the right choice for Integrate. In summary, some of the key capabilities that made Power BI Embedded so compelling are:

• Cloud-scale analytics service that could be embedded in our solution

• Ability to visualize and analyze data in one place, simply and intuitively

• Unlimited data visualization possibilities through open-source custom data visualizations

• Scalable and cost-effective, and able to meet ever-growing BI demands of our customers, in a pay-as-you-use pricing model

• Power BI Embedded is a cloud service, which allows the user to constantly take advantage of new features and improvements as they are rolled out

Saptarshi: Data security is obviously very important in your industry and at your company.  Can you tell us more about the security details implemented in Integrate?

Paul: All access to Integrate by our customers, end-users, and by our Milliman team, is governed through industry-standard security processes.  These include customer-managed authentication through SAML 2.0+ and ADFS 2.0+ single sign-on, and role-based access control.

With the establishment of single sign-on, all authentication and role assignment responsibilities are given to our customers, allowing them full control over assigning and configuring access for their personnel. The role-based access control allows customers to craft custom roles based on their needs, using a robust set of granular permissions.

This ensures that each user is only allowed to perform the specific role they have been assigned, and controls what data they have access to. The app-token based authentication and row-level security in Power BI Embedded allowed us to continue using our existing security methods and make it transparent for the end-users.

Saptarshi: What are your customers saying?

Paul: The reaction has been extremely positive from our customers. The addition of dynamic BI in Integrate by leveraging Power BI Embedded and Azure Cloud Services gives users access to data, and the ability to interpret data in ways that have never before been possible! Being able to do all of this in a secure and cost-effective way was a key requirement. Other capabilities include:

• The ability to secure data in a multi-tenant application using Power BI Embedded, with row-level security. Users can create one set of reports and datasets, and then use them with multiple users and customers. Each customer can view the same reports, but only see the data that they are allowed to see.

• The simple billing model, which uses report sessions, has been well received by end users.

Integrate provides business insights and real-time information to help decision makers react quickly to known and unknown risks, and to help them make decisions to protect their company.

Saptarshi: Those are all great insights on Integrate and Power BI Embedded. Thank you, Paul, for taking the time to talk with us. It’s been great to hear how Milliman has been able to fully leverage Power BI Embedded. We look forward to staying in touch with the work you’re doing.

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Office 365 Case Study: PATH

As written on Microsoft.com

Saving lives through innovation and IT 

PATH, a Seattle-based global health nonprofit that innovates better solutions to help the world’s most at-risk groups, also tackled an equally daunting logistical problem: “With a piecemeal infrastructure struggling to keep pace with 38 offices and nearly 1,300 employees, most of whom work in the field in hard-to-reach locations, the organization needed to improve its own technological vitals. In short: “Our global footprint had expanded beyond our investment in IT,” explains chief information officer Erik Arnold.

A global rollout of Office 365 not only standardized its infrastructure; the cloud-based tools helped staff work faster and smarter to pursue projects in the most remote corners of the world—where its life-saving work is most needed. They now

• overcome in-country connectivity issues,

• strengthen coalitions with outside organizations,

• break free of physical IT hardware,

• expand without extraordinary expense, and

• collaborate with colleagues around the world.

“This solution ensures we maximize the amount of our funding that goes directly to the activities that advance our program missions.”  - Chief Information Officer Erik Arnold

Technology overcomes global barriers

Adapting to on-the-ground realities

PATH works in what Arnold generously calls “challenging places”—where internet connection, electricity and even roads aren’t reliable. Office 365 enables staff in remote areas to communicate with other locations, make deadlines and most importantly meet health needs. Mobile access to SharePoint, for example, allowed field staff in Kenya to send invoices and time cards to the Nairobi office, replacing their old system—delivering paper documents via motorcycle and airplane.

Employees can also check out documents to their laptop or mobile device from SharePoint, make edits then check the file back in—all so changes aren’t lost if the internet connection fails. “That feature means our teams in Tanzania and Zambia can use it more easily, helping them buy in to the system,” says Laurie Werner, deputy director of PATH’s Better Immunization Data Initiative.

Building partnerships

“The cloud is the only way our teams can efficiently collaborate not only within the organization but also when we partner with corporations, universities, governments and other nonprofits to build coalitions and partnerships,” Arnold says. “Office 365 is the obvious solution.” He has seen how adding Zambian health officials’ edits in real time to a diagram of health supplies distribution using Visio, flow chart software available at a steep discount to Office 365 Nonprofit recipients, strengthens relationships and streamlines workflow.

Another example: The Better Immunization Data Initiative, which uses data to improve countries’ delivery of vital vaccines, used SharePoint to collaborate on literature reviews, initial assessments and other documents at its onset; now that the project is underway, it provides updates to its external evaluator via the same platform. And because PATH depends on outside alliances—to develop lifesaving medicine and track children’s immunization schedules, for example—these tools are literally saving lives.

Staying flexible

PATH’s footprint is continually changing—it opens and closes offices as needed, moving personnel as they meet milestones and tackle new health crises. “We are cloud first—we have to be,” Arnold explains.

Instead of relying on on-site servers and other hardware, PATH safely stores all data in the cloud for immediate access anywhere, anytime and from any device. “We can move more quickly, scale up teams and spin up new solutions in sites in different countries,” Arnold says. “It’s so much easier when we’re not managing physical boxes and configurations.”

Scaling up

PATH is always evolving to meet the world’s health needs: It has seen double-digit growth for more than a decade. Modernizing its IT system provides scalability without a huge expense. “As a nonprofit, it would be irresponsible to build a large, complex, and expensive IT organization,” Arnold says.

“This solution ensures we maximize the amount of our funding that goes directly to the activities that advance our program missions.”

Collapsing distance and time zones 

“SharePoint reduces my workload but increases our ability to communicate,” says Werner, who manages an international team from Seattle. She has set up alerts when staff from other offices update documents or complete tasks, so she always knows the status of any given deliverable. With all important documentation uploaded into SharePoint, she no longer has to hunt for information buried in her email or rely heavily on conference calls spanning multiple time zones.

“Office 365 gave us an efficiency we didn’t have,” she adds. “We have been able to develop interventions and ramp up our projects more quickly even though our teams are dispersed.” From the Peruvian rainforest to far-flung villages in Myanmar, that means PATH can build healthier communities—and save lives.

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Aluvii stands apart from the competition by offering cutting edge data visualization with Power BI Embedded

By The Power BI Team as written on Microsoft Corporation

The Power BI Team is excited to highlight a new story blog series of notable ISVs who have integrated Power BI Embedded into their offerings to differentiate and innovate their solutions. Our immediate story post comes from Aluvii, which offers SaaS POS solution for amusement parks and leisure facilities. With Power BI Embedded, Aluvii aims to stand apart from the competition, bringing rich data visualization to life all inside their application offerings. How did they integrate Power BI Embedded into their product offering? Read more below, and stay tuned for additional story posts coming your way.

Aluvii, an all-in-one POS software platform for the amusement and leisure industries, recently released their flagship SaaS product and are experiencing a very positive response in the marketplace. The cloud-based software includes a comprehensive set of modules needed to efficiently run an entire business including ticketing, point of sale, e-commerce, memberships, events & reservations, inventory, HR, scheduling & timekeeping, sales & marketing, member portal, online waivers, and much more. Because Aluvii is cloud based, it’s accessible anytime, anywhere, and on any device. In addition, all registers, customer data, and reports are always available, safe, and up to date.

We at Aluvii recognize automated business intelligence and reporting are critical to customers. As such, we selected and utilize Microsoft Power BI Embedded as our cutting edge reporting and dashboard technology solution.

The primary reason for our selection of Microsoft Power BI Embedded was the need for a single reporting platform that could be deployed across multiple operating systems, web portals, and applications. Microsoft’s Power BI is an excellent platform for the deployment of dashboards and reports, but it lacked the flexibility of embedded application inclusion. With the release of the Power BI Embedded solution, we were able to leverage everything we loved in the standard Power BI framework into an integrated product. We researched other solutions but each did not truly allow for embedded application deployment. And many required convoluted integration architectures that had greater possibility of breakage. Since Aluvii is built on top of Azure, the Power BI Embedded solution was seamless, and drove down the total cost of ownership.

The same architecture that allows for rapid deployment of reporting is also being managed through the Azure API Management services. This allows our more advanced clients to build their own custom Power BI Desktop reports and dashboards. With the API Gateway created by the Azure API Management, API Management, Aluvii is able to setup subscription models that provide access to data and other features. Billing clients is also streamlined through this process.

Our development team has leveraged Microsoft Azure as its PaaS, the core API architecture used by the company which has allowed for increased flexibility in development and deployment. And by kick starting the business using the Microsoft BizSpark program, we were able to test and utilize the best of Microsoft’s product line, ensuring a state-of-the-art solution at affordable prices.

The Azure SQL Database product, which is used as the backbone of the Aluvii Software Suite, allows for quick integration within Power BI Embedded. The write-once-deploy-everywhere software process ensures that our reports can be integrated within our web portals, desktop applications, and mobile platforms with minimal development and cost. Microsoft Power BI’s flexible visualizations offers our Aluvii product the ability to develop truly unique reporting solutions across allof our various feature sets and using multiple data sources. At this time, Aluvii is unique in providing dynamic, multi-tenant reporting services built into the core application among all of its other software features.

Overall, Aluvii credits their growing success to its diverse product offerings, the scalability of the Microsoft Cloud Azure Platform, and innovative development teams. Since the initial release of their flagship SaaS offering, Aluvii has received tremendous interest from customers across the globe. The Power BI Embedded reporting feature allows Aluvii to differentiate itself from its competitors, granting deep insights into its customers’ operations.

Leaked Pinterest Documents Show Revenue, Growth Forecasts

As written on by Katie Roof (@Katie_Roof), Matthew Lynley (@mattlynley) on Techcrunch.com

TechCrunch has obtained documents that show Pinterest has been forecasting $169 million in revenue this year and $2.8 billion in annual revenue by 2018. Pinterest was also expecting to grow its monthly active users to 151 million by the end of 2015 and 329 million by 2018.

Andreessen Horowitz used this information to solicit limited partners to invest in its special investment fund for Pinterest earlier this year, valuing the social media company at $11 billion.

The venture firm said that Pinterest is “striving to build a platform with the scale and engagement of Facebook and the purchasing intent of Google.”

The documents say that based on the fourth quarter of last year, Pinterest’s “revenue run rate” stood at $90 million. As the WSJ noted in June, this means that Pinterest brought in less than $25 million in revenue last year because the company first introduced its “promoted pins” in late 2014.

The papers show that Pinterest is generating $1.44 per active user, based on its 2015 projections. It expects this number to grow by $9.34 by 2018.

While Target is already a confirmed partner for some of Pinterest’s e-commerce initiatives, the company was “in discussions” with Burberry, Walmart, and Nordstrom as of February 2015.

The documents also reveal that over half of U.S. women between the ages of 18-54 have signed up for Pinterest. The social media service showed strong growth amongst male users, growing 133% last year.

Pinterest is seeing its strongest growth outside of the U.S., accounting for 60% of new users. The fastest growing markets last year were the UK, Japan, France, Germany and Brazil.

The data also shows that roughly half of Pinterest users log in. As of January 2015, the company had 176 million registered users, but only 88 million active users. (In September, Pinterest confirmed that it had surpassed 100 million active users).
Related Articles
Pinterest Expands Buyable Pins To More E-Commerce Platforms, Reaching Thousands Of Merchants
Pinterest Brings On A New Head Of Its Advertising Partner APIs

Pinterest’s primary advertising product is Promoted Pins, which gives marketers a way to get their pins in front of more users. It uses traditional advertising models like cost-per-click advertising, but can also charge marketers based on “engagement” — such as a re-pin, a close-up or a click on that pin.

The primary reason Pinterest is so valued by advertisers is it hits almost all points in which people can be targeted on the web. Pinterest users casually browse for ideas or inspiration, which can help drive brand awareness and justify purchasing promoted pins. But they also search on Pinterest for specific things, giving marketers a way to capture that intent and drive traffic — and potentially sales — using Promoted Pins. Promoted Pins give marketers a way to capture that intent or get visibility, while other platforms are generally good at capturing specific moments — such as Google with search.

Pinterest is also still releasing new products for marketers. For example, the company released Cinematic Pins — its take on a video-based advertisement that essentially plays only when the user scrolls — in May this year. It also released a new pricing model at that time that allowed marketers to pay based on engagement with their Promoted Pins. And it also earlier this year released Buyable Pins, a way for users to purchase things directly through Pinterest — and while merchants keep 100% of the sales, it gives them an incentive to promote pins on Pinterest in order to further drive sales.

All of this taken together gives advertisers a gold mine of sorts that might not necessarily be available in other outlets. Given the high engagement its users have, part of the sales pitch is that they have a much higher conversion rate than other platforms. Pinterest is super sticky and people wander around on it at basically all points of the funnel.

The social media site has raised over $1.3 billion in capital from notable investors including SV Angel, Rakuten and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Pinterest declined to comment. Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to a request for comment.