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Microsoft Adds BI to Deliver Business Scorecarding, Analytics and Planning

By Sophia Mayengbam

Microsoft Corp. has added another server to its Office 2007 line-up, expanding its line of business intelligence (BI) products with a new focus on performance management solutions. The new Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007 includes business scorecarding, analytics and planning functionality to help companies plan and manage their businesses more effectively.

"People think in terms of, 'Should we sell more of this product? Should we go into this new sales territory? Should we open that store? Should we hire some more sales reps? Should we consider another supplier?’ These are questions that are actionable, and BI software should help people think about these questions and take action,' said Lewis Levin, corporate VP of Microsoft Office Business Applications.

PerformancePoint Server puts the data and business rules for BI on a centrally managed server and makes scorecarding, analytics and the entire performance management cycle much easier and less time-consuming.

"We’re transforming BI by making it cost-effective and accessible to everyone," said Lewis Levin, corporate vice president of the Office Business Applications group at Microsoft.

Business Modeler is modeling component of PerformancePoint that enhances the partnership between IT and business analysts without the need for IT’s intervention. It helps the business analysts to describe the business and create the KPIs and the business rules in the application directly while relying on the infrastructure and security provided by their IT counterparts.

PerformancePoint uses a model-driven approach that allows business users to create strategic plans and detailed budgets and scorecards and link them together with rules that express their relationships. There will be a new upgraded version of Business Scorecard Manager in PerformancePoint.

It will also be integrated with Office Excel, Outlook and the newly announced SharePoint, which is due to ship with Office 2007 later this year.

"For collaboration and visualizing your business intelligence data, we integrate with the 2007 Microsoft Office system so that you can use your familiar end-user tools like Microsoft Excel to perform your analysis and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to share and collaborate on that analysis," said Levin.

Further, Microsoft’s new acqusisition ProClarity will also be integrated to the new server.

The Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 will go into beta in November and ship in mid-2007.


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