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PerformancePoint Server really is a new animal in the Microsoft Zoo (Official Launch September 19th 2007). The competive positioning among Hyperion, Cognos or Business Obejects (Cartesis) suggests that deep knowledge of subjects like financial planning or statutory consolidation will be necessary beside all the technical knowledge needed to build the models and user interfaces. The technical knowledge needed is vast - the components involved beside PerformancePoint Server are SQL Server along with its Analysis Services and Integration Services components, Excel and SharePoint. And so many Microsoft partners who have implemented infrastructure solutions or data-warehouses with a technical approach up to now, have started to embark on the PerformancePoint journey ramping up their technical skills.
Adrian Downs of B(iQ) asks the question about specific certifications on PerformancePoint for Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) which I think is a good idea. Given the mostly technical background of most Microsoft partners today I think there will have to be a hell of a lot of Controlling, Accounting and Business knowledge packed into those certifications.

A new day for BI - but also one for Microsoft. And an excellent opportunity for those Microsoft partners who talk the talk and walk the walk in Performance Management.
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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Microsoft

Ten years ago, when Microsoft bought Panorama to enter the Business Intelligence market space, many thought that Microsoft would instantly dominate the arena. It has taken a little longer but here they are ten years later Microsoft is a long term player and Steve Ballmer has made it clear in his key note speech at the first ever Microsoft BI Conference in Seattle at the beginning of May. We are dead serious he said. Full Article

For years it seemed specialist vendors of point solutions for planning, budgeting or statutory consolidation had found the ideal habitat to grow endlessly. Their strongest competitors were enormous Excel sheets that travelled the world via mail and none of the global software giants seemed able or willing to enter this market. Microsoft’s determination to change this fact for the business intelligence arena has shown in earlier developments around the BI platform of SQL Server and Analysis Services. Real corporate performance management however with all the bells and whistles such as feedback loops, process support for budgeting, forecasting or consolidation were really hard to implement on the Microsoft platform unless you chose a third party product based on SQL Server from vendors such as Outlooksoft, Panorama or Winterheller (strong in Germany and Austria). With PerformancePoint Server 2007, which should be available for public beta by November this year and is expected to be released in Q2 2007, Microsoft will once again change the shape of the whole marketplace in CPM. Microsoft Partners such as Outlooksoft, Panorama, MIS/Infor or Winterheller who have depended on Microsofts platform are now facing Microsoft as a powerful competitor.

Here are some reasons why I think PerformancePoint server will have such a big impact on the market:

• Microsoft Excel 2007 is tightly integrated as a front-end
• As is Sharepoint Portal
• SQL Server and Analysis Services serve as the backend infrastructure and thus become the core of the Microsoft CPM architecture

The business functionality covered include and can be expanded by VAR’s or MSP’s

• Budgeting
• Financial Planning
• Forecasing
• Management Consolidation
• Analysis (ProClarity product set)
• Scorecarding (Business Scorecard Manager)

The most important reason of all are the thousands of Microsoft Dynamics Partner globally who have lots of business and finance knowledge and sure are waiting to expand their business towards CPM. CPM is mainstream now!

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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Microsoft

Today Microsoft has announced the takeover of ProClarity…It has paid for ProClarity to focus their great dashboard and visualization suite exclusively on Microfoft BI technology. And Microsoft have proven once again, that they take their corporate performance management (CPM) mission seriously and complemented to their analytic offering. Now we are waiting to do business modelling, planning, forecasting and risk management with Microsoft Technology. Are the expectations for Biz# (Biz Sharp) too high? Or will Microsoft continue to acquire IPR - maybe Outlooksoft?

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Business Intelligence
Corporate Performance Management
Microsoft
Reporting

Microsoft is launching the long awaited SQL Server 2005 along with all the new schnick schnack BI components. The launch tour started on 7th November in San Francisco and goes around the world within the next two months. The fact that the product itself is not available yet is a minor imperfection considering that hundreds of “friendly customer implementations” worldwide have already taken place throughout 2005.
While everyone seems to recognise the new BI features, market experts seem to focus their contemplation around SQL Servers competitiveness versus the other OLTP/RDMBS players and the lethargy of SQL 2000 shops in replacing a working system (See Stephen Swoyer’s article on tdwi.org).
I believe the new BI components will have a far more changing effect on the market of established BI/CPM players such as Business Objects, Cognos or Hyperion than on the OLTP/RDBMS market.
The suite is quite complete and slashes the licence prices to a level where even the carpentry of the town with 25 employees can afford a proper Reporting System, Scorecard or Data Mining that until now was limited to very large organisations. The market gets bigger and the established players who can no longer hide in their cosy niche market are in urgent need of some creative brain stormings…

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Business Intelligence
Business Objects
Hyperion
Cognos
Microsoft
Reporting

Considering that Microsoft is eager to win the battle around the business intelligence and reporting market against Business Objects, Cognos and Hyperion, BO’s recent announcement to acquire Infomersion comes as a surprise (I would have guessed Microsoft will…). Infomersion are the authors of a flash-based quite smart report-visualitzation tool called XCELSIUS which nicely fits into the MS BI architecture, is very simple to handle and delivers highly professional dynamic reports, which among many other methods can be delivered via web or dynamically integrated into Power Point presentations. According to Microsoft sources XCELSIUS is even being used quite extensively for internal purposes at Microsoft.
Strategically it could definitely have been a good move to snap this relatively small company from it’s competitors…

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Business Intelligence
Business Objects
Microsoft
Reporting

For years now Microsoft has had a pretty good BI platform around SQL-Server, Analysis Services and DTS. Yet, looking at the poor integration and BI functionality in Office or Sharepoint, it seemed the different groups at Microsoft did not speak to each other a lot. These times seem to be over now. Have a look at Marco Russo ’s account of the first EXCEL 12 (projected release Q4 2006) presentations…Sharepoint 3 seems to promise a much better integration too!

The Business Intellingence software market has so far been quite protected. The dominating players such as Hyperion, Cognos and Business Obejects and a number of smaller players e.g. MIS AG or Geac used to charge fortunes for their software licences (compared with paying almost nothing as with Microsoft) which were mostly sold to large organisations. These software vendors offer solutions for controlling departments, planning and reporting, management information systems etc. that will be implemented by implementation consultants in a project manner. In principle every company, even the smallest, needs such solutions, but due to the high price of such solutions and the need for extensive consultancy Business Intelligence remained a niche market until now. With Microsoft SQL Server 2005, which is due to be launched coming November Microsoft has got a realistic chance bring significant unrest to this cosy niche market and at the same time enable smaller companies to adopt state of the art technology instead of messing around with Excel only. The renewed OLAP component Microsoft Analysis Services is now significantly improved for performance, scalability, modelling capabilities and features, with Reporting Services, the launch of which Microsoft even brought forward by a year, Microsoft is attempting to replace competitive products from the lower end (e.g. Chrystal Reports from Business Objects) to the higher end (e.g. Actuate) at virtually no additional costs. Also the new ETL component which is now going to be called Integration Services promises to be nearly as powerful as traditionally very costly components such as Informatica or Business Objects Data Integrator. Even on the frontend side, which currently is covered by
Panorama, Outlooksoft, ProClarity or MIS AG, some very close Microsoft partners Microsofts Office and Applikation groups are going to offer their own products.
Those product and solution initiatives will mean for the other participants of the BI market that they will have to step up to the challenge in the short term. They will have to deliver higher quality software at far lower prices and or move into new niches…it’s going to get very interesting!

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BPM
Performance Management
Business Intelligence