Thanks to Steve Tullis for putting together this post.

Before delving into Excel Services 2010, I want to recap a point that some readers may not be aware of.  The Excel team is delivering two browser-based solutions as part of the Office 2010 wave of products.  The quick synopsis - here are the two solutions:

1. Excel Services: Version two of our real-time, interactive, Excel-based reporting and dashboard capabilities which ship as part of SharePoint Server 2010. Also included are APIs which enable rich business application development.


2. Excel Web App: The companion to the Excel client which extends the ability to create, view, edit, and collaborate on Excel workbooks using only a browser.

In the enterprise, these two offerings can be installed together – at which point, all the benefits of both are realized:  A lightweight spreadsheet authoring and collaboration tool AND an enterprise BI and application development tool.

Today’s post is the first post of a series which introduces, then explains in detail, Excel Services 2010.  Later on we’ll have a series of po