Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Extends Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Solution

As part of its commitment to providing industry-leading business intelligence solutions, Microsoft Corp. has launched Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007, an application that enables companies to drive performance through monitoring, analyzing and planning their business using one integrated solution. Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) allows more people at all levels of an organization to make better decisions, and has the vision of reaching every decision-maker and adding value to every decision. With Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft is building on its existing BI solution to enable companies to drive strategy development, alignment and accountability across the entire organization.

“First we built a highly scalable BI platform, then we built BI tools with an unparalleled ease of use. Today we are extending customer value by bringing an integrated performance management application to market,” said Chris Caren, general manager of Office Business Applications at Microsoft. “Our goal as a leading BI provider is to deliver the most complete and integrated BI product line with unparalleled ease of use, and this matches what customers have been waiting for.”

Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 takes the same approach as the rest of the Microsoft Business Intelligence product line — Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is simple to use because of the familiar look and feel of the Microsoft Office interface, and it puts intelligence right where people work and collaborate. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is built to meet the functional and performance requirements of a large enterprise, but its competitive pricing allows companies of all sizes to use the application broadly throughout the organization. The application is very flexible, allowing businesspeople to build and manage plans, workflows and rules, while IT centrally controls security and information.

Strong Customer and Market Momentum

“Microsoft has developed and assembled and is launching a formidable business intelligence and performance management (BI/PM) strategy that will change market dynamics…,” said John Hagerty, vice president of AMR Research Inc. “Because of Microsoft’s ubiquitous presence within enterprises of all sizes, its BI/PM products will certainly have long-term impact on how buyers perceive and purchase information-based products across all areas of their companies.”

Customers have expressed their interest in implementing a performance-management application from Microsoft, as witnessed by the overwhelming size of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) program. In fact, at more than 10,000 organizations, the CTP program was larger than most performance-management application vendors’ installed base. Many of the customers involved in the CTP program were large, multinational organizations with very complex requirements.

“Timely and easy access to business data from multiple systems, delivered through a familiar interface, is critical in support of effective decision-making,” said George J. Carlin, director of business integration at Merck Research Laboratories. “Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is intuitive and seamless, and has shown the ability to mine the data in developing answers to key business questions, allowing us to stay competitive in our field.”

Greater Business Opportunities for Partners

Microsoft’s complete and integrated Business Intelligence product line consists of SQL Server™ and the Microsoft Office system, and it gives solution providers and systems integrators a greater opportunity to develop comprehensive BI solutions that are customized to meet needs specific to a particular customer or industry. Microsoft has already extensively trained almost 1,000 partners worldwide on the application.

“Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 has expanded our portfolio of custom solutions and now enables us to more easily meet the needs of our existing customers,” said Eddie Short, vice president and global lead of business information management at Capgemini. “There’s been such a growth in customers wanting solutions to truly help improve business performance, and with Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, the open platform allows us to create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and dashboards that are tailored to our customers’ needs, and helps us build a revenue stream around BI.”