I don't know that much about the state of products offering reporting/analytics, but I first got into OLAP in the late 90s, with a data warehousing tool, but then didn't touch it again for a while. My vocabulary on the topic may not be precise.
I have data in a SQL Server 2008 R2 database. The application putting data into it is not certified for SQL 2016, but SSRS 2016 (SQL Server Reporting Services 2016) has caught my eye. It seems to have the features I'd like to use with this application. I am adding reporting capabilities to a 3rd party application.
Can I create a new machine with just SSRS 2016 (which is a feature of SQL Server as a whole) and point it to the SQL 2008 R2 server with the database such that I can then start doing reporting on the application database?
What are the ramifications if the SQL 2008 R2 server is also an Enterprise server (or cluster) with many other databases on it?
This is not related to Sharepoint. The 3rd party application is not a Microsoft application.