Microsoft BI Roadmap Update – SharePoint gets Performance Point - itaysk

Microsoft BI Roadmap Update – SharePoint gets Performance Point

Posted Saturday, January 24, 2009 3:37 AM by Itay Shakury

Microsoft has updated it’s roadmap for Business Intelligence products.
The new roadmap consolidates into SharePoint Server, leaving SharePoint, Excel, and SQL Server the primary components of a BI solution.

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I have summarized the important notes and implications of this announcement:

  1. Starting today, Businesses that operate under SharePoint Enterprise CAL SA licensing, can use Performance Point Server at no additional cost.
  2. Performance Point Server’s features will be incorporated into future versions of SharePoint Server.
  3. Service Pack 3 for Performance Point Server will be the last investment in Performance Point as a stand alone product. But existing customers will continue to be supported .

In my opinion this strategy relates to recent trends that shows large investments in BI, probably because of the unstable economic situation we are at right now.
By making these changes, Microsoft can help businesses manage themselves better at these times, by reducing the total cost of BI solutions.

Furthermore, I think it is a wise (and predictable) move. SharePoint Server already have BI features such as Excel Services and KPI. Adding Performance Point’s capabilities into SharePoint Server, makes it a complete BI platform, and allows concentrating on development within a single product.

I am looking forward to see what’s coming up.

 

-- My name is Itay Shakury and I’m a SharePoint Consultant --

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# re: Microsoft BI Roadmap Update – SharePoint gets Performance Point

Friday, January 30, 2009 8:06 PM by Oudi Antebi

While the recent announcement on PerformancePoint “moving” into SharePoint might sound like a good move, People don’t really understand the full picture.

here is our analysis on the recent announcement: www.panorama.com/blog

# re: Microsoft BI Roadmap Update – SharePoint gets Performance Point

Friday, February 06, 2009 1:33 PM by Itay Shakury

Hi Oudi, Thanks for you comment.

I couldn't follow the link you provided, but I have reviewed your blog, and was very impressed.

About your comment:

Your statement that this move by Microsoft is a bad move, is  based on your point of view of what customers want.

As I interpret your point of view, you think it's a bad move, because it means there is no dedicated product for BI from Microsoft, and that might be a downer for some high end BI customers that expect more development effort in their product.

I think that this is only part of the large picture of reality:

In my experience in consulting, I have a chance to get to know a lot of different businesses. (note: I'm a MOSS consultant, so I don't handle pure BI customers)

Many times, as part of the process of planning an internal portal, and only as part of that process, I am required to implement some kind of BI in the portal.

In that example, the business would not have think of a BI product if it weren't for another process that required it, and most likely, this requirement will end up unhanded due to lack of budget to invest in BI.

In this case it's best for the customer to have a platform that already provides some kind of BI capabilities.

I think that this example represents a large part of the SMB customers.

What about larger customers? I am not specializing in BI, so I can't compare PPS against other products, but I think that many times businesses will tend to prefer using an existing platform, espacially if it's "free", and even if they will have to compromize for features.

What about those "pure BI" customers that want real hardcore BI? I guess you are right about them.

If the next PPS will be as good as PPS vNext could have been? I don't know. but I think many customers would be very happy to receive a "free" one included in the SharePoint 14.

After all, Microsoft envisions MOSS as the base for most of the business needs. If MOSS want's to be something like that, it has to have BI decent features.

Itay.

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