PPS - Performance Point Services
Yes, you read it right, the initials have changed... Though I missed the release over the weekend, I really wanted to note it on the blog as it is such big news.
Microsoft has announced that PerformancePoint Server is no more (though looking at the home page for the product wouldn't reveal anything about it, not at the time of writing this post). Rather, the plan is to release SP3 for Performance Point Server Mid 2009, put the Analytics and Monitoring part of PPS into SharePoint Server Enterprise Edition and turn the Planning part to FRx Forecaster. All of this makes posts about comparisons on creating your Dashboard in SharePoint Server or PerfomancePoint Server seem quite funny in a way...
It's hard for me to say whether this move comes as another way for Microsoft to further strengthen SharePoint Server or Excel as they are planning with SQL Server 2010, or whether it comes as a result of slow adoption to PerformancePoint Server. There has also been quite some criticism on PPS even before which I should imagine didn't help in adding to the product's low popularity...
I admit I feel slightly disappointed though. This may turn out to be a good move for Microsoft economically (which I guess is what counts), but I don't know if it also promises further investment into Proclarity as a cube viewer. There are still problems with Excel 2007 as a cube viewer.
For a complete coverage of all the aspects concerning this matter, I strongly recommend you look into the relevant posts at Chris Webb's blog.