Intelligent Insight on PerformancePoint : PerformancePoint

Partner Training/Readiness Resources

btamblyn — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:41:00 GMT

Here's a wealth of useful online information around training, technical whitepapers, upcoming webcasts and demos. Also note the availability of the quick start PerformancePoint competency beta exam is available through till November 9th.

Online Training

Learn the basics of PerformancePoint Server 2007 through self-directed learning courses, which have been designed to give you a quick start on building your performance management solution. Click here to get started.

PerformancePoint Server MS Beta Exam: Now Available until 9/11/07!

Exam Name = TS: Microsoft(R) Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007, Applications

Exam Beta Number = 71-556

Prometric Promo Code = TSPPS

Registration Information

You must register at least 24 hours prior to taking the exam.

Please use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: TSPPS

Receiving this invitation does not guarantee you a seat in the beta; we recommend that you register immediately.

To register in North America, please call:

Prometric: (800) 755-EXAM (800-755-3926)

Outside the U.S./Canada, please contact:

Prometric: http://www.register.prometric.com/ClientInformation.asp

Technical Information

The most in-depth technical information about PerformancePoint Server 2007 is located at the PerformancePoint Server 2007 TechCenter on TechNet and the PerformancePoint Server 2007 Developer Center on MSDN.

Webcasts About PerformancePoint Server 2007

View these live and on-demand webcasts to learn more about how the integrated monitoring, analytics, and planning features in Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help you manage and improve your organization’s performance. You’ll also discover best practices for scorecards and dashboards and learn how to overcome common challenges.
Each webcast lasts about an hour.

Upcoming

Momentum Webcast: Keeping a Pulse on Your Business with Dashboards and Scorecards (Level 100)
10/29/2007 | Duration: 60 Minutes
Discover how you can use dashboard technology to help enhance decision making and performance in your organization. Learn how you can take advantage of dashboards and scorecards with your existing investments and how their flexibility can accommodate the diverse and growing needs of your organization.

On Demand

TechNet Webcast: Business Intelligence with Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Level 300)
2/13/2007 | Duration: 63 Minutes
Find out how Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help you improve your organization’s business performance processes. Learn more about how the product successfully integrates monitoring, analytics, and planning into one performance management application.
TechNet Webcast: Performance Management 101 with PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Level 200)
2/2/2007 | Duration: 60 Minutes
Explore the pains that customers commonly experience with performance management. And find out how Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 integrates monitoring, analytics, and planning capabilities in an easy-to-use application that is less costly for you to deploy than traditional solutions.

Business Value White Papers

Gain valuable knowledge about both the business value and the technical features of Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.

How Intelligence Enterprises Deliver Performance Management
Capgemini: In spite of the billions of dollars invested in information technology, many organizations still struggle to provide a seamless flow of trusted information to their employees.

PerformancePoint Server 2007 and BI Case Studies

Oticon's finance department wanted to improve its key functions and processes, namely financial consolidation, budgeting, planning, forecasting, and reporting with an integrated solution. Oticon made a strategic decision to unify all its Performance Management solutions under Microsoft, its vendor of choice. Oticon’s first priority was to rebuild its system for financial consolidation for monthly, quarterly and year-end reporting. Oticon chose a solution that would satisfy its financial consolidation requirements but also have the ability to integrate all the key finance functions it had previously identified such as budgeting and forecasting. Using Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Oticon developed a solution that would automatically consolidate financial results from companies while allowing users at both local and enterprise levels to work in Excel, the undisputed tool of choice in finance.

Energizer taps Into the Power of Microsoft Business Intelligence with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. With numerous sales regions in approximately 20 countries throughout Europe, Energizer needed a comprehensive business intelligence solution that could provide more effective business planning and forecasting abilities. Disparate systems and applications made revenue and profit data prone to error and inconsistencies, while limitations on how information was organized and analyzed made it difficult for Energizer to create accurate business plans and forecasts based on big-picture market trends. A performance management solution based on Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007, a unified application that enables businesses to improve performance by giving relevant users the ability to monitor, analyze and report their activities as well as plan, budget, and forecast for the future. Using PerformancePoint Server 2007, Energizer built a solution that streamlined the business planning process, improved the quality and consistency of source data, and enabled in-depth and flexible analyses based on various information hierarchies that were not possible in the previous system.

Business Intelligence Demos

Learn more about how Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 can help people at all levels of your organization improve their ability to monitor company information, analyze data, and build plans to drive your business forward.

Introduction to Microsoft Business Intelligence

Get an idea of the broad capabilities of Microsoft Business Intelligence and how it can help you run your business more effectively.

Why Is Business Intelligence Important?

Watch this informative discussion with Bill Baker, PerformancePoint Server 2007 general manager, on the value of the complete Microsoft Business Intelligence and performance management offering.

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, Training, Business Intelligence, Readiness

Partner Bot

btamblyn — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 21:16:33 GMT

This actually began as an idea from a couple of guys in my team Steve Marsh and Alex Smith have been pulling this together for a couple of months now.

So what is it?

Partner Bot is your Instant Messenger 'data digger', which quickly retrieves partner-related information and shows you where you can find the answers you need. Simply type in your question and Bot will bring back an instant response. Add Bot as a buddy in your Windows Live Messenger contacts and it will always be available whenever you're logged in. Whether you're looking for support options, searching for competitive information or want to learn more about competencies, ask Partner Bot and it will point you in the right direction.

(Please be aware that Bot may guide you to areas of the Partner Portal which can only be accessed by Registered, Certified or Gold Partners, so you may need to sign-in to view this information.)

How Do I Add Partner Bot to My Contacts?

Log-in to Windows Live Messenger
Click on 'Add a Contact' icon
Add partnerbot@hotmail.com into Instant Messaging Address

As a test, try asking the Bot "What is PerformancePoint?" Alternatively ask "Who is Steve Clayton?

This is a great piece of innovation that's come out of the UK partner team and should hopefully assist in navigating the wealth of content on the Microsoft partner web site.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Partner, PerformancePoint Server

PerformancePoint CTP 3

btamblyn — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:27:13 GMT

OK - so it's not available yet although it should be available for download from the connect site next week.

That said here's something to whet your appetite - this is a great post from Patrick Baumgartner on analytic charts in CTP3.

Technorati Tags: Monitoring, Analytics, PerformancePoint Server

Methodologies, Tools and Process, Process, Process

btamblyn — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:16:00 GMT

Last week I was invited to Nimbus Partners Inspiring Performance conference at my beloved Emirates Stadium. As an Arsenal fan this made the whole conference even more impressive.

I've been working with Nimbus for just over 12 months now - and their CEO Ian Gotts has become both a close friend and mentor since we've been working together.

I've blogged about this before BUT I can't emphasise enough the importance of aligning a strong methodology that links strategy with business processes. The last decision to make should be which technology solution supports our organisational strategy.

What I REALLY like about Nimbus solution is that their product Control ES now integrates really tightly with MOSS and allows users to create an operational process dashboard that allows for a seamless interaction between the tightly controlled and defined processes and the tools information workers use on a day to day basis.

People that think really hard about the processual layer are significantly more likely to drive the successful deployment of performance management and analysts back this up.

These three components need to work in harmony - Ian and his team have proven this over a number of years and were actually presented with a "cool vendor" award from Gartner. I'm pretty sure this is a first for a Microsoft partner and without question a first for a business process vendor. Only joking.

Nimbus have developed a fantastic FTSE100 client base over the last five years including SAP, Toyota, Unilever and Chevron and I would encourage anyone looking to implement CPM to also look closely at the importance of this as part of your preparation for investing in CPM.

Oh and if your a Microsoft CPM partner - I would really encourage you to look closely at how you could work with these guys. Some partners in the UK have made the strategic decision to do so and it is really bearing fruit.

Technorati Tags: Business Process Management, Ian Gotts, Nimbus Partners, Performance Management, PerformancePoint Server, Gartner

WebSeminar: Introducing PerformancePoint Server

btamblyn — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:37:17 GMT

This is being run in conjunction with DM Review and well worth checking out as an introduction to MS PerformancePoint Server 2007.

Obviously you also get a much more concise picture of our strategy than you'll get from my random ramblings.

You can register for the event here, but here's a snippet of what you'll hear.

Performance Management from Microsoft:
Introducing PerformancePoint Server 2007

Date:
June 27, 2007

Time:
2:00 pm ET/11:00 am PT/19:00 pm GMT

Later this year, Microsoft will deliver to market Microsoft Office PerformancePoint^TM Server 2007, an integrated performance management application designed to help improve operational and financial performance across all departments and all levels of your organization.

During this Web seminar Microsoft will demonstrate how PerformancePoint Server 2007 can monitor progress, analyze what is driving variances, and plan your business from budgeting to creating management reports. Deliver the key performance indicators (KPIs), and essential reports to every desktop through intuitive scorecards, dashboards, and the easy-to-use 2007 Microsoft Office system environment. Learn how PerformancePoint Server 2007 is a key component of the Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) offering.

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft, Performance Management, Business Intelligence

System Requirements for PerformancePoint Server - A clarification

btamblyn — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:56:23 GMT

I published a post last week on the System Requirements for PerformancePoint Server. I need to make one clarification as Derek - very kindly pinged me an email to check. Thanks Derek

This is a subject which has already confused some customers and partners who have downloaded the PerformancePoint data sheet from here and noticed that it suggests SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition is requirement and pre-requisite.

So here's the definitive answer.

For Planning specifically there is a requirement to run SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition as Planning requires cube writeback dimensions, which is a feature of SQL Server Enterprise Edition. For Monitoring and Analytics it will run fine on SQL Server Standard Edition.

Technorati Tags: Performance Management, PerformancePoint Server, SQL Server 2005, Planning, Microsoft BI

So in summary...

btamblyn — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 13:28:57 GMT

I have to give Jason Morales in the PerformancePoint team in the US all the credit for this idea. He has began to pull together some great content and links from across the OBA business and distribute it to some of his key customer and partner contacts. Some of it has a distinctly North American flavour but with his permission I am going to lift this idea, anglicise it and publish it as a regular monthly update of all things MS BI.

So it's only the 17th of June but what the heck I'll publish it anyway. This is the inaugural monthly update for June 2007.

Key to making this as valuable as possible is letting me know what you would like to see in this...It's very much a free forum for posting information that's important to you.

Enjoy

Hot Topics

Business Intelligence Virtual Labs

Try out a business intelligence virtual lab to test out the technology stack, including:

- Analysis Services

- Excel 2007

- Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (BSM)

- ProClarity

- Report Builder

- Integration Services

- Data Mining

Click here to access the Virtual Labs.

ProClarity Evaluation

Available through MSVL and through the following MSDN Premium subscriptions:

Visual Studio Professional w/MSDN Premium Subscription

Visual Studio Team Architect Edition w/MSDN Premium Subscription

Visual Studio Team Developer Edition w/MSDN Premium Subscription

Visual Studio Team Database Professional Edition w/MSDN Premium Subscription

Visual Studio Team Test Edition w/MSDN Premium Subscription

Visual Studio Team Suite Edition w/MSDN Premium Subscription

Academic Alliance members will also have access to these bits.

Feel free to email me for further assistance.

ERP-Link: Microsoft BI for SAP

The iNet Platform provides a SAP Certified connector to bring data from SAP R/3 & BW to SQL Server Analysis Services.

Jason Morales recently hosted a webinar with ERP-Link to present SAP BW data through ProClarity Dashboards. The session offered great insights into how iNet extends the ETL functionality of SSIS to more thoroughly integrate with SAP data sources.

Please click here to request access to the webinar recording.

Upcoming Events

PerformancePoint/ProClarity Briefing - Customer & Partner

London June 26th (AM): Click here to register

Manchester June 28th (AM): Click here to register

An introduction to Monitoring & Analytics

London June 26th (PM): Click here to register

Manchester June 28th (PM): Click here to register

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server Code Name “Katmai” Overview

When: Tue (June 26) @ 4pm-5pm (BST)

Click here to register

TechNet Webcast: Real-Time BI with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

When: Wed (June 20) @ 5:30pm (BST)

Click here to register

MSDN Webcast: SharePoint Server 2007 and Business Intelligence

When: Fri (June 22) @ 8pm (BST)

Click here to register

Training

SQL Server Training Courses

Online & Instructor led

PerformancePoint Server Training Site

Includes BSM & ProClarity self-paced online training

Resources

Microsoft BI

Whitepapers

Archived Webcasts

BI Presentations

Performance Management 101 with PPS 2007

SQL Server

Best Practices

Microsoft SQL Server 2005: Scales to your growing business needs

Evaluation Guide

Data Mining

SQLServerDataMining.com

The data miner

Microsoft BI Blogs

Microsoft BI Blog – by Patrick Husting

Nick Barclay’s BI Blog

Chris Webb’s BI Blog

Vidas Matelis BI Blog

Microsoft OLAP by Mosha Pasumansky

Prologika (Teo Lachev’s Weblog)

Charlie Maitland’s Blog

Ian Tien’s Unofficial PerformancePoint Server and Business Scorecard Manager Blog

Bruno Aziza

Russell Christopher's Semi-Useful BI Musings

Direct Reports (Brian Welcker’s Weblog)

Ben Jones SQL Blog

Randon Thoughts on MS BI products - Patrice Truong

Microsoft BI Partners

http://www.microsoft.com/bi/partners/partners.aspx

OLAP Report - summaries

Market share analysis

SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 (Microsoft)

Dimensional Relational vs. OLAP: The Final Deployment Conundrum

BI News Links & Press Releases

Ballmer on BI: Microsoft’s CEO Looks Ahead

Microsoft BI Conference

Microsoft Touts PerformancePoint, Next-Gen SQL Server at Inaugural BI Fete

Microsoft Plans BI, Security, BizTalk Managed Services

SAP and Microsoft Extend Alliance for Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Business intelligence now a given for SMBs

Next-Gen Business Intelligence: The Future Is Now

Opinion: Enterprise Search Is This Year’s Hot Topic For Business Intelligence

And for existing customers and partners...

btamblyn — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:21:00 GMT

Two great events running in London on the 26th and Manchester on the 28th of June.

PerformancePoint/ProClarity Briefing - Customer & Partner

Date: Tuesday 26^th and Thursday 28th June 2007 - AM

Location: Radisson Portman, London or Renaissance Hotel, Manchester

This event provides the opportunity to be updated on the latest PerformancePoint application suite and, the integration of the rich Microsoft Business intelligence product stack, in one consistent Performance Management solution offering.
This session will particularly focus on providing existing ProClarity (PC)/Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) customers and partners, with latest information on the PerformancePoint portfolio.

To REGISTER

London - June 26th: https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=1032343731

Manchester June 28th: https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=1032343733

Agenda

09.00 - 09.30: Registration & Coffee

09.30 - 10.00 Introduction: Acquisition and Product Roadmap Update

10.00 - 10.45 What is new in ProClarity 6.3

10.45 - 11.00 Coffee

11.00 - 11.30 ProClarity Dashboard Server 6.3

11.30- 12.15 PerformancePoint Server Update

12.15- 12.30 Summary and Conclusions, Q & A

12.30- 13.30 Lunch

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, PerformancePoint Server, ProClarity

Why I love the blogosphere

btamblyn — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:59:48 GMT

This morning I got a really lovely email from Raja who it seems enjoys my blog - thanks Raja.

It's actually making these kinds of connections through blogging that allows for great conversations and ultimately important connections which just aren't possible 1:1. It seems my evil plan around "cash for honours" is starting to pay off. Only joking.

Off to NYC tomorrow and flying into Redmond on Sunday evening for BI Conference. There are some amazing sessions running next week. Here's a snapshot of some of the sessions I'll be attending.

The Microsoft BI Opportunity for Partners
PerformancePoint Server2007: Bringing Value to the Performance Management Process
Business Scorecards: Communicating Business Objectives Throughout the Organization
Business Intelligence at Microsoft – a Center of Excellence View

There's also three great keynotes from Jeff Raikes, Robert Kaplan, and Steve Ballmer and some brilliant case-references from some of our customers who have been involved in our early adoption programmes.

I'll provide an update from each day of the conference, oh and for those in the UK who won't be attending I'm looking at re-purposing a lot of this content and running a UK BI conference before the end of the year as part of our launch plans so you're not missing out.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, BI Conference, Blogging, PerformancePoint Server

Using MeetingPoint to connect @ BI Conference (May 9th-11th, 2007)

btamblyn — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:28:35 GMT

As per my post over the weekend I've now added my profile to MeetingPoint. If you're around at BI Conference next week and keen to meet up feel free to schedule some time. It would be great to catch up. Alternatively, feel free to call me on +447854750068 or email me @ btamblyn@microsoft.com

Enjoy the conference - there are some really great sessions lined up for the three days. I'll be publishing regular updates on my blog throughout the conference for those of you who can't attend.

Technorati Tags: BI Conference, PerformancePoint Server

What are you reading...

btamblyn — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:59:41 GMT

It's a question I get asked this time every year by family and friends looking to buy me book tokens for my impending birthday. So this weekend I get a phone-call from my mother in Australia and the topic of my birthday comes up.

Mum: So Ben - What are you reading at the moment?
Ben: Nothing in particular - at the moment I spend much of my free-time (which incidentally is not much) wilfing.
Mum: Does Ali (that's my wife) know you do this.

It was then that I had to spend some time explaining in depth what I was talking about, and that "wilfing" was an expression referring to browsing the internet with no real purpose (WILF = what was I looking for) rather than a euphemism for spending time alone, which was what my mother thought. I think you get my drift so I'll move on quickly.

What I am reading at the moment in fact is Nick Barclay's new book. Very kindly Nick arranged for his publisher to send me through a copy. A great resource for anyone designing dynamic and interactive scorecards using BSM 2005.

I'd encourage you to pick yourself up a copy from Amazon if you're working with BSM.

Thanks Nick!

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, Business Scorecard Manager 2005, Nick Barclay, Wilfing

De-constructing the "Angry Cinnamon"

btamblyn — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:43:00 GMT

So why the angry cinnamon - A good question: READ I have absolutely NO idea. A term used internally and although I don't know it's exact origin - I'm crediting Chuck Mitten who works in the Microsoft OBA Partner team in Boise.

So let's break this down.

BI has historically been a ‘read-only’ business. The IT department delivers a great, clean, trusted data layer. The users grab that data in rich tools like Excel and they develop insights. But what happens after that? Unless you translate your insights into a plan, and record that plan somewhere, we’ll never know if your insights, and your actions, made a real difference to the business.

So let’s say I am retail analyst and I'm doing some store analysis. I need to interact with and use complete data, sales and expenses which is delivered from the operational data store, I use corporate data, fully burdened by allocated costs, and I decide that we need to move two inside sales reps out to the sales floor.

In PerformancePoint, we record that decision. You’ve effectively changed your resource allocation. You are now accountable for that decision. Next month, or maybe next quarter, we can compare your forecast with the new resource allocation to actual data and we’ll all know if that was a good decision or not. And one of the great things about accountability is, the flip-side of that coin is auditability. In PerformancePoint, we know who saw what data, because we log that, who made what decision, because we made BI read-write and of course, we know the result.

The other nice feature of PerformancePoint Server is that because we’re at this higher level of the stack, we can give each user the right amount of data to make a decision; not too little AND more importantly not too much. Generally we use Excel. So, when the sales forecast is due, we send the sales rep a link to a spreadsheet. In fact, it’s a link to the PerformancePoint server. When the user hits that link, we generate a spreadsheet that has the right amount of data for that user, the correct, current data. They add their inputs to the forecast, submit it and we move it along to the next person in the business flow, usually the manager. The user never had to hunt for data, never saw too much data or the wrong data. We record what they did, when they did it. And the whole time, the user was just ‘using Excel’ something they already know how to do. This is good for users of course, but it’s good for IT departments too. Because, deep down, we’ve taken this formerly document oriented, hard to control, hard to manage process and made it a centrally managed, controlled, database process. But the users just keep using Excel…

OK, so when we talk about Microsoft business intelligence and performance management we look at it from three perspectives:

SQL Server as the technical BI platform
Office as the user platform and;
PerformancePoint as the business platform

And we use these platforms to help us answer the questions below:

Starting from the top right hand corner the first two are really about monitoring your business . The third is analysis, plain and simple. The last two are really about planning. And it’s a cycle. You see something happening, you delve into it and you make a plan to address it. Or you have a plan, you watch for actual results. If they are anomalous, you do some analysis. In Performance Management we support the whole Monitor, Analyze, Plan cycle. Today we have two products in the market at this tier of the stack. Business Scorecard Manager 2005 is our tool for monitoring your business. It, working with SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server Reporting Services, answers those first two questions; What happened? And what is happening? ProClarity 6.2 is a tool that adds value to Analysis Services and address the third question; Why?

In the summer of 2007 we’ll merge these two tools, actually the next versions of these tools with a new planning component to form PerformancePoint Server 2007. We’ve been working on the planning component for a while. It’s important because not only does it address the last two questions, but it also adds the corporate aspect of trusting your decisions, and the accountability.

By corporate, we mean two things. First, decisions should be made using data that reflects corporate reality. Going back to my sales analysis from earlier, using data at the store level might lead to one set of decisions. But when I factor in corporate effects, like regional and national costs, I might make a very different set of decisions. So PerformancePoint includes an engine that does consolidation, allocation and inter-company eliminations. The second part of this is making decisions in the context of the corporate process. So if I want to budget more advertising dollars in my region, that plan needs to be approved by my boss. Or my sales forecast has to go to my district manager before it gets locked down. PerformancePoint includes the functionality for implementing your company’s business process in the decision making flow.

Anyway, that’s the stack.

So when I begin to deconstruct the stack and look at partner services the opportunities are plentiful. What's really interesting is the services at the top of the stack in the Performance Management layer. For example services such as metrics development involve highly strategic engagements requiring close interaction at board level to ensure firstly that you're helping your customer to measure the right things and also help them to drive business alignment down and across the organisation. Gaining pervasive adoption therefore emphasise's the need to drive a structured business change programme. Because of the highly strategic nature of these activities - they represent a premium level service, and you're therefore able to charge accordingly. We can assist by reducing the cost of software acquisition and utilising existing technology assets.

If we look at the concept of business process consulting we can begin to draw some similar conclusions. Business methodologies such as balanced scorecarding, activity based costing and six sigma are extremely useful in providing a framework for Performance Management however in isolation they are just that - FRAMEWORKS. A methodology without a performance management process will undoubtedly end in failure. Equally a performance management process that needs to integrate disparate planning & budgeting, forecasting, and management reporting applications will ultimately lead to extra time and cost that needs to be absorbed by either the partner or passed on to the customer potentially putting the performance management programme and your services revenue at risk.

So that's it. As always I'm looking for feedback - so feel free to leave a comment at the end of this blog post and I'll be sure to respond.

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, Performance Management, ProClarity, Business Scorecard Manager, Partner, Microsoft, Business Intelligence

Blogging really is like going to the gym...

btamblyn — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 15:01:00 GMT

So you miss a couple of sessions at the gym, and put on a few pounds. Blogging is no different, every now and then you get busy, and blogging soon becomes a distant memory. I know it's been a while since my last post - but I've been crazy busy , and with the PerformancePoint launch imminent - there's lot's going on and plenty to tell you about. Next weekend I'll be flying out to Seattle for BI Conference. I've spoken to a few people such as Tom Huddock who are heading out there but if you are going, ping me a mail, or call me. I'd love to catch-up with as many people as I can whilst I'm out there. We've also set up through the conference site a facility called MeetingPoint which will allow you to connect with conference attendees. My profile should be up there early next week. The PerformancePoint solution stack, as I know you're all aware touches a number of different areas so I'd try and utilise this conference to connect with complimentary partners. In my experience there are very few partners (if any) who can deliver everything in the stack. I'll be de-constructing the "angry cinnamon stack" in a post later next week to emphasise the importance of making good quality partner connections.

Hopefully you've all downloaded the PerformancePoint CTP 2. Those that have will tell you stories of 24+ hour downloads but I can assure you it really is well worth the wait. Over the next couple of weeks I'll begin to provide some further background around the launch.

Technorati Tags: PerformancePoint Server, BI Conference, Microsoft, Business Intelligence

Marriage

btamblyn — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 20:03:53 GMT

Oracle announce the acquisition of Hyperion

According to an article in the New York Times it would seem the BI world's worst kept secret is in fact true.

There's a couple of interesting conundrums here.

As Chris Webb suggests "surely existing Essbase users will now be questioning its future and be looking for migration options".

Hyperion also has an existing investment in tools to support planning and modeling which will add greater value to Oracle's existing PeopleSoft and Siebel practices - something we're also doing at MS to align our Dynamics offerings to PerformancePoint.

It would perhaps be arrogant to suggest that this acquisition is a direct response to our own plans around PerformancePoint but Gartner in particular has been suggesting that the market would eventually be dominated by "mega-vendors".

This is perhaps further proof of this.

Here's a link to the Oracle announcement

Technorati tags: Oracle, Hyperion, PerformancePoint, Microsoft, Gartner

Microsoft Partner Love-in: Valentines Day

btamblyn — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 12:36:00 GMT

OK - so if you haven't booked in for the Microsoft Business Intelligence Partner Day/Love-in you're probably too late. But for those who can't make it due to the fact that you're not in the UK I'll provide a synopsis of the Gartner overview in a blog post later next week.

For those of you who are attending here's what you'll hear:

Overview from Gartner on the opportunity for Partners making investments in Business Intelligence skills.
Explanations and demonstrations of the complete Microsoft solution offering, from SQL Server 2005 to front-end analytic tools such as ProClarity and Microsoft Office Excel 2007.
Hear details on Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007.
Understand the benefits of the Microsoft Partner Programme.

I'll be around all day with Chuck Mitten who's over from the OBA team in Redmond - so feel free to drop in and say Hi if your in London on Wednesday.

Location

Browns
Albemarle Street
Mayfair

London W1S 4BP

Don't forget to enrol all your loved ones on the PerformancePoint CTP and failing that get down to your local PC-World and buy them Vista and Office 2007.

Much better than flowers or chocolates.

Technorati tags: Performance Management, SQL Server 2005, ProClarity, CTP, Training, Gartner, Business Intelligence

Intelligent Insight on PerformancePoint : PerformancePoint

Partner Training/Readiness Resources

Partner Bot

PerformancePoint CTP 3

Methodologies, Tools and Process, Process, Process

WebSeminar: Introducing PerformancePoint Server

System Requirements for PerformancePoint Server - A clarification

So in summary...

Hot Topics

Performance Point CTP3 – will be available this month!

SQL Server 2008: “Katmai”

Microsoft Acquire Stratature

Business Intelligence Virtual Labs

ProClarity Evaluation

ERP-Link: Microsoft BI for SAP

Upcoming Events

PerformancePoint/ProClarity Briefing - Customer & Partner

An introduction to Monitoring & Analytics

TechNet Webcast: SQL Server Code Name “Katmai” Overview

TechNet Webcast: Real-Time BI with SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services

MSDN Webcast: SharePoint Server 2007 and Business Intelligence

Training

Resources

Microsoft BI

SQL Server

Data Mining

Microsoft BI Blogs

Microsoft BI Partners

OLAP Report - summaries

BI News Links & Press Releases

And for existing customers and partners...

Why I love the blogosphere

Using MeetingPoint to connect @ BI Conference (May 9th-11th, 2007)

What are you reading...

De-constructing the "Angry Cinnamon"

Blogging really is like going to the gym...

Marriage

Microsoft Partner Love-in: Valentines Day