Central to the suite is a a new planning module which allows users to create budgets, plans and scorecards, and use these to measure corporate performance.

Microsoft Business Intelligence Architecture

Microsoft BI is delivered through three layers or workloads:

data warehousing
reporting and analysis
performance management.

Together, these components provide a consolidated, comprehensive data source and tools to help improve decision making.

Microsoft BI is designed to help decision makers at all levels of the organization have confidence that their decisions support your company’s goals and initiatives.

Integration

This module is tightly integrated with the suite's Business Scorecard Monitoring functionality and its analytics capabilities [based on ProClarity].

The integration helps automate the entire corporate performance management (CPM) lifecycle.

There is also tight integration with Office and SQL Server, which will help distribute performance management functionality across the business.

Business Benefits

Setting, monitoring and analysing strategies and budgets is a common process and having this full lifecycle functionality reduces the time to develop these processes from months to weeks or even days.

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007 helps improve operational and financial performance across all departments and all levels of the organization.

Monitor progress
Analyze what is driving variances
Plan your business from budgeting to creating management reports.
Schedule metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and reports delivered to every desktop through intuitive scorecards, dashboards, and MS Office 2007.
Understand how performance can align with personal and departmental goals and objectives.

Product Details

The suite has been priced to encourage widespread adoption, with prices starting from £13,420 for the server and £130 per client access licence.

IDC forecast that PerformancePoint Server 2007 could be "very disruptive" for the established performance management market. Especially in the midmarket, going right up against Oracles BI Standard Edition One. This a space Microsoft has not played in previously, which could prove interesting on the sales front.

The next version of Microsoft SQL Server, featuring enhanced BI and data warehousing functionality, is due during the second quarter of 2008.

A Service Pack for PerformancePoint Server 2007 would be launched next year to ensure it supports SQL 2008.

More information on Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007

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