We've just concluded the formal conference season - with the completion of Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston and Microsoft's internal MGX Sales Conference in Atlanta. Having just completed a phenomenal fiscal year we typically spend the first two...

In case you weren't aware of this...last week we released the Service Pack for PerformancePoint Server 2007. With this new Service Pack, enhancements have been made to the monitoring, analyzing and planning functionality found in PerformancePoint Server...

The PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning Data Migration Tool is now available on TechNet and the MS Download Center. Norm Warren has provided some great additional guidance to support this here . Documentation: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us...

A wealth of new content (templates, project plans and worksheets) has been made available on TechNet to assist partners and customers with implementing PerformancePoint Server 2007. There are links to this content below: Project Plan Framework (.pptx...

This three-part webcast series has been created specifically for Microsoft partners and will provide guidance and best practices around implementing PerformancePoint Server 2007. The first two webcasts will take partners through the suggested phases of...

  Completely off topic but I saw this post today from Seth Godin which prompted me to share this. Ever since I was a child Puma has been my sports footwear of choice. Why? Put simply my best friend's father was a brand manager for their footwear...

  Great news - We've decided to create THE BI BLOG . I've been asked to contribute (which is a great honour) and we'll look to make sure there's something in here for everyone from the customer, partner, developer, and implementer. For the BI BLOG...

So SAP/BOBJ are using Sir Mixalot as their unofficial mascot with the release of Baby got BI. Our approach is a little different but here's how the Softie's do it. I'll leave you to be the judge of who's best in the "war on talent".   Technorati...

  This is a great set of resources from Jeff Carr that expands upon the information I posted earlier on the PerformancePoint Planning and Architecture Guides. Jeff's taken this one step LEAP further - This is your PerformancePoint Bible: Help, How...

The PerformancePoint Server 2007 Planning & Architecture Guide, Deployment Guide, and Operations Guide are now available as downloadable books from TechNet. Information about how to plan a PerformancePoint Server deployment in a large enterprise environment...

Here's a great tool that allows you to build your own search engine. Live Search Macros . Norm Warren has created a search macro for PerformancePoint which you can use to find documentation, whitepapers, VPC's, and other information around Microsoft BI...

Vendor consolidation has prompted a number of customers and vendors to look at BI differently. This is certainly different. Hat-tip to the Performance Guys .   UPDATE: This is written with no agenda, prejudice or ulterior motive but it seems this...

Lot's of news this week from Oracle's decision to buy BEA , Sun's decision to purchase MySQL , Cognos 8.3 launch , and a joint announcement from SAP and BOBJ . Phew. I like the Performance Guys take on this weeks news. If you've not added this to you...

This is a great series of sessions as part of the Microsoft Partner Academy presented by Mike Tejedor and Alyson Powell Irwin. Here's the session abstract and joining details: Description: This is the first in a series of sessions that will explore advanced...

The 2nd Annual Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2008 will run from October 6th-8th 2008. This is great news - the first conference was a fantastic 3 days and I'm sure with the launch of SQL Server 2008 this will provide a great opportunity for...

Not sure I like the title - but this is an interesting read from Sean Gallagher @ internetnews on the year ahead for the business intelligence market. Perhaps the most interesting note in this article is that business intelligence has become a major...

I read this post from Hugh MacLeod just before the holidays - and it got me thinking about the role of extracting intelligence from ERP (or for that matter any transactional systems) and perhaps more critically from barely repeatable processes (BRP)....

  So off the back of my post on business/IT alignment here's some more bedtime reading that perhaps add a further dimension to this. Effective Performance Management programmes require extreme clarity of roles and responsibility . According to TDWI...

Completely off topic but thought it was worth sharing. Via Seth Godin 's blog. Quite extraordinary.

This video was pulled together just before the launch of PerformancePoint, but I think it frames our strategy nicely. I've never been one for using video's in presentations but I think this is a great way to position Microsoft's vision around Performance...

Here's a link to the second part of a three part series of articles on business/IT alignment from Linda McHugh . She discusses how IT can apply realistic and established tactics to address the alignment challenges through planning and project methods...

My good friends Adrian Downes and Nick Barclay have now released the first of their books on PerformancePoint Server 2007. This first book covers deployment as well as implementation tips to help customers and partners understand what PerformancePoint...

Found this via Seth Godin's blog . It's a pretty simple and highly addictive site - especially if you consider yourself a bit of a wordsmith. Check out Free Rice here . Technorati Tags: Seth Godin , Free Rice

These seminars have been run really successfully by the UK ProClarity team in the past. They are a great introduction to PerformancePoint Server designed for both customers and partners and provide a unique insight into the way Microsoft position performance...

Having moved from CTP to RTM last month and now that PerformancePoint is available under volume licensing we now have Microsoft forums set up under both TechNet and MSDN. Despite being non-technical I get quite a few support questions submitted by readers...