Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Announcement:
Microsoft is announcing an update to its Microsoft Business Intelligence roadmap. Microsoft’s strategy is to deliver BI to everyone in the organization through the broadly adopted tools of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Office Excel, and built on the scalable Microsoft SQL Server BI platform.

Based on customer feedback, we are moving the scorecard, dashboard, and analytic functionality from Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server into Office SharePoint Server Enterprise, making these capabilities available throughout the organization at a lower TCO.

In mid 2009, we will release PerformancePoint Server 2007 “service pack 3” which will include updates to the current product’s planning module. Thereafter, customers should not expect further investment in standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server. However, ongoing support of our planning customers is a high priority. These changes enable customers to deploy a complete BI solution with existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel, the most widely used analysis and planning tool in market today.

Q&A:

1. What will happen to PerformancePoint Server?
   PerformancePoint Server 2007 will no longer be a standalone item on the Microsoft price list as of April 1, 2009. For organizations interested in PerformancePoint Server, it can be obtained by purchasing SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise CAL with Software Assurance. In the future, the monitoring and analytics capabilities will be included in the next release of SharePoint Server and will be available to SharePoint Enterprise CAL customers. Customers with rights to PerformancePoint Server SP3 will be able to download it mid 2009 (please contact your account manager for details). Performance management is a critical component of business intelligence and Microsoft will continue marketing and R&D investment in this area in future product releases.
2. What about from now until SharePoint ‘v-next’?
   How will I obtain the current PerformancePoint monitoring and analytics functionality for broad BI deployment?
   From the date of this announcement, PerformancePoint Server will be a license entitlement for SharePoint Server 2007 E-CAL customers with Software Assurance only. The technical requirement to use PerformancePoint planning will continue to be SQL Server Enterprise Edition. Customers will be able to use BI throughout their entire organizations simply by deploying SQL Server, SharePoint Server, and Excel.
3. What about support for existing PerformancePoint Server planning customers?
   Customer care is our primary focus during this transition. We will keep our commitments to deliver improved planning capabilities in PerformancePoint Server 2007 SP3 in mid 2009 that addresses many of the features and functionality required by our customers to leverage in their planning projects. We will continue to support all PerformancePoint customers per our existing support policy. For further details on this policy visit: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=12922.
4. What about legacy products such as ProClarity and Business Scorecard Manager?
   ProClarity Analytics Server is part of PerformancePoint Server 2007. ProClarity Desktop Pro is a separate product and is not connected with PerformancePoint licenses, with or without SA. Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) is a downgrade right of PerformancePoint Server 2007. The core ProClarity capabilities that made that product successful will migrate to SharePoint and Excel over the coming releases. As for Business Scorecard Manager and ProClarity Desktop Pro, we don’t anticipate any further customer demand for this.
5. Will customers still be able to purchase PerformancePoint Server if they require more licenses for an existing deployment?
   No, not as a standalone product. If customers require additional PerformancePoint Server 2007 CALs, they should purchase SharePoint Server 2007 E-CALs with Software Assurance to be entitled to PerformancePoint Server 2007 CALs.
6. If I have additional questions, who do I contact?
   If you have additional questions, please first work with your Microsoft account team. If you have additional questions following that, you can contact PerformancePoint Server Roadmap Announce team pps_an@microsoft.com.