I just received some bad news and found out that a friend passed away today. Reed Jacobson was one of the early leaders in the Microsoft Business Intelligence community. Somewhere around 2004-2008 I worked with Reed at Hitachi Consulting in Seattle where we travelled, taught classes and worked on client projects together. He was one of the earliest adopters and gurus in the BI community working for a small start-up called OLAP Train who helped bring SSAS (aka “OLAP Services”) to the masses. He spoke at many conferences and taught a lot of classes.

Not only was he one of the smartest people I’ve known when it came to solving business problems with Analysis Service & MDX but he was a kind, friendly man who really enjoyed helping and connecting with people.