In his keynote speech, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, declared a new day for BI, as he rattled off a string of announcements relating to new products, a small technology acquisition, and deepening alliances with implementation partners.
On the product front, Raikes started by detailing the next version of its SQL Server database, codenamed Katmai. While not quite the BI-savvy release that its predecessor SQL Server 2005 was, Katmai adds greater data scalability, developer functionality and new policy-based management tools to enable more broad-scale deployment of BI across the enterprise – referred to as pervasive BI.
Significantly for BI, Katmai tightens up integration between SQL Server’s back-end and Microsoft’s Office 2007 front-end tools like Excel, 2007 and Excel Services and SharePoint Server and PerformancePoint Server 2007 platforms. The goal here is enable SQL Server BI data to be pushed out to information workers via familiar and easy to use tools and applications on the desktop. For example, BI data can be accessed directly via Excel for a rich experience, or rendered thinly via Excel Services
For developers Katmai also offers an integrated Visual Studio and .NET Framework development environment that Microsoft said will provide higher level of abstraction to speed up applications builds. Tools are also provided to synch data from remotely connected devices to the central SQL Server data store.
Raikes also said that Microsoft’s new Office-based PerformancePoint Server 2007 software is on track for a general launch in the second half of 2007. PerformancePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft’s first serious offering in the corporate performance management space, offering integrated planning, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and scorecarding capabilities.
Rather than charge for PerformancePoint Server 2007 on a per-user, as other CPM vendors do, Raikes said the product will be sold according to the same traditional single server and single client access license (CAL) model that it uses for Office – at $195 a pop.
Raikes said the product is now in its second community technology preview. Around 6,000 companies including Energizer, Expedia, and Skanska are participating in the review.
Raikes also announced the acquisition of SoftArtisans, a small, privately-held developer of managed report authoring tool for Office environments based in Watertown, Massachusetts. SoftArtisans’ OfficeWriter tool will now be combined into SQL Server’s Reporting Services software to help non-technical users author and consume reports in Office environments using simple drag-and-drop. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Raikes also paid homage to Microsoft’s expanding network of BI partnerships with systems integrators, announcing deepened alliances with Accenture, Capgemini and TCS. All three have pledged to commit greater resources to developing on the Microsoft BI platform.
Microsoft and Accenture have already set up a joint IT consulting venture called Avanade that has 400 dedicated Microsoft BI professionals provided from both companies. The consultancy is currently developing on a new sales planning application for the Microsoft Dynamics CRM suite. It is also working to align its existing budgeting, forecasting, planning and scorecard applications more closely with PerformancePoint Server 2007.
Capgemini and Microsoft have jointly launched a global Intelligence Enterprise initiative to train 2,000 on Microsoft’s BI technologies. Around 500 of these will be trained in PerformancePoint Server 2007. Capgemini has also pledged to create five new development centers, with a strong focus on developing Microsoft-based BI applications for verticals like financial services, retail, telecoms and utilities.
As part of its global initiative Tata Consulting Services is expanding its BI and performance management offerings for verticals like retail, financial services and manufacturing. TCS expects to double its BI practice over the next two years and hopes to do $100m of BI business around Microsoft’s stack this year alone – roughly 10% of its overall BI practice revenue.
Microsoft’s first ever BI conference drew an impressive crowd of 2,400 at Seattle’s Washington State convention and Trade Center, making it one of the largest BI gatherings in the world.
