Power Pivot

Power Pivot is an add-in to the spreadsheet application Microsoft Excel. It extends the capabilities of the pivot table data summarization and cross-tabulation feature with new features such as expanded data capacity, advanced calculations, ability to import data from multiple sources, and the ability to publish the workbooks as interactive web applications.^[1] As such, Power Pivot falls under Microsoft's Business Intelligence offering, complementing it with its self-service, in-memory capabilities.

Prior to the release of Power Pivot, Microsoft relied heavily on SQL Server Analysis Services as the engine for its Business Intelligence suite. PowerPivot complements the SQL Server core BI components under the vision of one Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM), which aims to integrate on-disk multidimensional analytics previously known as Unified Dimensional Model (UDM), with a more flexible, in-memory "tabular" model.

As a self-service BI product, Power Pivot is intended to allow users with no specialized BI or analytics training to develop data models and calculations, sharing them either directly or through SharePoint document libraries.

Product History and Naming

PowerPivot first appeared around May 2010 as part of the SQL Server 2008 R2 product line. It included 'PowerPivot for Excel' and 'PowerPivot for SharePoint'^[2] While the product was associated with SQL Server, the add-in for Excel could be used independent of any server, and with various types of data sources. SQL Server 2012 contained the add-in PowerPivot for Microsoft Excel 2010, this was also made available as a free download for Microsoft Excel 2010.^[3] Sometime after that, the PowerPivot followed its own release cadence, seperate from SQL Server. As part of the July 8, 2013, announcement of the new Power BI suite of self-service tools, Microsoft renamed PowerPivot as "Power Pivot" (note the spacing in the name) in order to match the naming convention of other tools in the suite.^[4] In Excel 2013, Power Pivot is only available for certain versions of Office.^[5]

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