Microsoft’s continued investment in delivering high-performing, low-cost BI solutions for all business users via the Microsoft Office experience and SQL Server 2005 has customers taking notice.

“Like most companies, we experience a constant flow of change. Having the ability to monitor my business, analyze key business data, act on it and see real-time results gives me the competitive edge my business needs to survive,” said Michael Saunders, corporate vice president and chief information officer for Kellwood Co. “Microsoft has given us the ability and confidence to allow our employees at all levels to make informed decisions.”

SQL Server has established itself as an enterprise-class data platform. A recent BZ Research study found that 74.7 percent of enterprises use SQL Server, compared with 54.5 percent for the nearest competitor.

The Rise in Demand for Pervasive Business Intelligence

In its analysis, IDC states that the BI market grew by more than 11 percent in 2006. The BI tools market continues to be driven by the need for improved performance management and, to a lesser extent, compliance. “Performance management can take on the form of various decision-support and reporting functions to improve revenue, profit and operational efficiency; decrease costs; uncover new opportunities; or mitigate risk,” said Dan Vesset, an analyst with IDC. “Microsoft had another strong year in this market.”

To give businesses a step in the right direction, Microsoft will launch Microsoft Office PerformancePointâ„¢ Server 2007 on Sept. 19, and SQL Server 2008 is scheduled to ship in the second quarter of 2008. Customers are invited to attend an event on Sept. 20 to learn more about Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.

“We are focused on helping our customers achieve higher levels of business performance by allowing them to take advantage of the rich BI capabilities offered through Microsoft business intelligence,” said Chris Caren, general manager of Office Business Applications at Microsoft. “We are excited to help companies integrate efficiently with one another to ensure all employees are held accountable for their actions across the entire business.”

In preparation for the upcoming releases, Microsoft issued its fourth and final community technology preview (CTP) for Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 as well as the July CTP for SQL Server 2008.

Bridging the BI Divide

Both releases promise significant enhancements to the BI landscape. PerformancePoint Server 2007 helps organizations align their processes by streamlining into a single application the monitoring, analysis and planning activities needed to improve business performance. By deploying PerformancePoint Server 2007, businesses can achieve better results by allowing individuals across the organization to improve performance. SQL Server 2008 will help organizations deliver a more secure, reliable data platform for storing business-critical information and delivering the right information to all users, while reducing the time and cost of managing data.

PerformancePoint Server is tightly integrated with the familiar and easy-to-use Microsoft Office system, allowing organizations to better align employees across divisions and make them accountable for their actions. In addition, PerformancePoint Server 2007 takes advantage of the enterprise-grade reliability, high performance, security technology and scalability of SQL Server 2005, enabling more people at all levels of the organization to transform disparate enterprise data into shared information they can use to make decisions and take actions that improve business outcomes.

“TCS and Microsoft are working together to invest in developing industry-leading, world-class BI solutions that enable our customers to experience certainty,” said Santosh Mohanty, global director and head of the Business Intelligence and Performance Management practice at Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. “We are seeing significant market momentum and double-digit growth for BI solutions built on the industry-leading Microsoft technology stack. This growth, being fueled by demand from some of the largest corporations in the world, has enabled us to aggressively push our strategic objective of building a $100 million BI practice on the Microsoft technology stack.”

Office PerformancePoint Server CTP 1 will combine the planning, budgeting, forecasting and financial consolidation capabilities of the product code-named “BizSharp” and the scorecarding functionality of Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager Server 2005. CTP 2, scheduled for early 2007, will incorporate the functionality of CTP 1 and analytics from ProClarity(R) 6.2. Microsoft plans to release either one or two additional CTPs before the general availability of the product scheduled for mid-2007.

“We continue to invest in our business intelligence solution to bridge the gap between people and the information needed to drive business success,” said Chris Capossela, corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Division. “Today’s milestone brings us one step closer to our goal of enabling decision support and superior performance management across the enterprise.”

Office PerformancePoint Server CTP Available for Download

The CTP process provides an opportunity for customers, partners and Microsoft to collaborate on the validation of the product strategy, implementation and road map through an array of activities focused on building better software together. Beginning today, users can download the CTP by visiting http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?siteid=181 . Also on this site, registrants will have access to training materials and peer-to-peer news groups. They can even register there to qualify for private training sessions.

TAP Customer Reports of Success

A Microsoft Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, which includes participants from Global 2000 companies as well as midsize businesses and spans numerous industries, has been under way since April 2006.

“We believe PerformancePoint Server 2007 has the potential to combine the familiarity of Excel(R) with a disciplined, rule-driven, centrally managed environment to meet a number of planning and reporting needs across the business,” said Brenda Jansen, director of Business Analysis Services & Support for Energizer. “The idea of enabling performance management among all of our employees to advance the goals and objectives of the business was also particularly appealing. We’re in the early stages of testing, but we’re impressed with the ability to integrate our strategic business planning processes with our specific field account level planning and budgeting.”

Industry partners are also reporting strong momentum around the performance management application, citing the fact that functionality is delivered in front-end tools such as Microsoft Excel and other Microsoft Office products, and that customers are able to use and expand their existing Microsoft IT investments that include SQL Server(TM), the Windows Server(R) operating system and Office SharePoint(R) Portal Server.

“The same business customers that have historically rejected unfamiliar third-party budgeting, planning and analysis tools are embracing PerformancePoint Server 2007 because they can now do meaningful planning and analysis with the user interface common to all business users: Excel,” said Scott Stein, business intelligence (BI) practice director at Avanade. “This has a significant positive impact on CIOs in large organizations struggling to drive standards and unify the 10 to 15 different performance management and custom business intelligence technologies across the enterprise.”

“The revolutionary PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a collection of incredibly powerful monitoring, analytics and planning tools built on SQL Server and Microsoft Office,” said Per Solli, CEO of Solver Inc. “By integrating some of the best of Microsoft technologies, business users will now finally be able exploit the power of a centralized data repository while performing their planning and analytics in Excel. PerformancePoint Server unites two critical paradigms: ‘one version of the truth’ and ‘information at the end-user’s fingertips.’”

In addition, Microsoft’s Corporate Finance department implemented Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 for revenue forecasting earlier this year.

Pervasive Performance Management

With PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft aims to bring performance management to all employees in an organization — not just a small percentage of BI power users or financial analysts — to help companies better manage their business.

“Visibility of performance information is critical to decision support, but in many organizations much of this information is accessible by finance and not operations,” said Kathleen Wilhide, research director at IDC. “Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 delivers integrated performance management information into the desktop tools that both finance and operations workers use every day, and with an attractive per-user price point, has the potential to enable truly pervasive performance management.”

More information about Microsoft’s complete and integrated BI solution can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/performancepoint