Viney@rd and PowerPivot: no overlap but synergy

I've been asked about how Viney@rd relates with the environment that Microsoft is designing with PowerPivot, Excel 2010 and SharePoint 2010 upgrades (Gregory and Rob, thank you for considering!). I didn't have had the occasion to dig deep in all those applications yet, so I want to lay only few points that appear quite acquired so far.

I must confess that there has been a moment when I feared that Viney@rd was doomed to become a poor copy. Luckily, some of the ideas which Viney@rd is based upon are such that the others are too snob to implement them ;o)

1) Power Pivot takes Excel ability to handle and analyze the result of a complex dataset to the next level. Viney@rd, though it can organize query results in tables, can address a single cell or a single row, removing headers from tables. So complex Excel layouts can be preserved upon query refresh with no intermediate "database" sheets or VBA.
This reconciles Excel layout versatility with the ability to refresh data from the DB.
I've seen so many controllers or sales analysts flaunting an Excel printout at me saying: "I do not need drill down, I need this. It takes half a day to make, make it refresh with the click of a button", that I decided to build the app.

2) PowerPivot can coalesce data from multiple data sources in a single, high performance "blob"; Viney@rd gently takes you to incrementally creating a datamart federation. The business user, likely, is not even aware of what's doing. PowerPivot requires a database working knowledge, Viney@rd does not require any.
Anyway, nothing forbids the experienced user to consume Viney@rd data from PowerPivot. She can go on tables directly or use the flat view which is created together with every model.

I'm also looking to PowerPivot high speed engine as a mean to boost Viney@rd performances.

3) The entire Microsoft's castle is devoted to reporting, ad hoc query, data analysis etc. but cannot modify data. With Viny@rd you can move, change and enrich data with no technical knowledge.

All these points deserve more attention but, by now, Is unwise to go deeper without a thorough analysis of what the new applications can do. I'm just waiting to see some nearly final versions to run an extensive test. Meanwhile Office 2010 is not supported,

Enjoy