Oct 19, 2009. Today, Microsoft announced the official name of Project "Gemini",  now Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel. PowerPivot for Excel helps drive timely and informed business decisions by empowering end users to access, integrate and analyze massive amounts of data on the desktop and share information using the familiar Microsoft Excel tools.

PowerPivot consists of two components – PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010.

PowerPivot for Excel is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love — Microsoft Excel. Leveraging familiar Excel features, users can transform enormous quantities of data from virtually any source with incredible speed into meaningful information to get the answers they need in seconds. PowerPivot for Excel consists of the following components:

• The Excel 2010 addin that delivers the seamless PowerPivot user experience integrated within Excel.
• The VertiPaq engine that compresses and manages millions of rows of data in memory with blazing fast performance.

PowerPivot for SharePoint enables end users to effortlessly and securely share their PowerPivot applications with others and work seamlessly in the browser using Excel Services. PowerPivot for SharePoint also helps IT improve their operational efficiencies by tracking PowerPivot usage patterns over time, discovering mission-critical applications, and improving system performance by adding resources. PowerPivot for SharePoint consists of the following components:

• PowerPivot Gallery – the Silverlight based gallery where users can share PowerPivot applications with others and visualize and interact with applications produced by others using Excel Services and Reporting Services.
• PowerPivot Management Dashboard – the dashboard that enables IT to monitor and manage the PowerPivot for SharePoint environment.
• PowerPivot Web Service – the “front-end” service that exposes PowerPivot data via XML/A to external applications such as Report Builder.
• PowerPivot System Service – the “back-end” service that manages the PowerPivot application database, load balancing, usage data collection, automatic data refresh, etc.
• Analysis Services – the Analysis Services server running the VertiPaq in-memory engine and integrated with SharePoint to load and manage the data within PowerPivot workbooks.

For more information on PowerPivot for Excel, visit http://www.powerpivot.com .

Source - Microsoft SQL Server News Blog and Gemini Team blog.