Scorecards, sometimes referred to as dashboards, are being touted as the business intelligence interface of the future, providing up-to-date views of business performance that is measured and monitored against key performance indicators. The visual scorecard interfaces are designed to help managers to focus quickly on key business objectives and identify areas where action is needed.

Microsoft said the goal of Maestro is to drive business intelligence to the corporate desktop using visual metrics-driven scorecards, rather than traditional reports, to present timely updates of corporate information culled from back-office systems.

Maestro is built on Microsoft’s technology stack, including SQL Server Reporting Services and Notification Services, effectively extending the existing scorecard capabilities provided by the Business Scorecard Accelerator software that was shipped last summer.

What is different is that the web-based scorecards are now linked to Office to enable the use of familiar desktop tools and applications to track performance. By linking Maestro directly to Microsoft Office 2003 Edition desktops, and surfacing key metrics in documents, charts, graphs, and spreadsheets, Microsoft said companies can lower the cost of building, managing, and rolling out scorecards across the organization. Maestro also links to Microsoft’s SharePoint and Portal server to add collaborative capabilities around scorecard analysis.

At the back end, Maestro, like all Microsoft’s BI tools, sits on top of the SQL Server database platform, exposing metrics held in the database system. Tools are provided for users to build their own performance indicators which SQL Server automatically tracks.

We’re focused on augmenting the BI capabilities already delivered by SQL Server as well as driving more end-user functionality in the Office system, said Chris Caren, the new general manager of Microsoft’s Office Business Applications Group. This is the first in a series of steps you’ll see us make with the Office System to enable a much broader set of BI capabilities.

Maestro is positioned as part of Microsoft’s Information Worker Business, a group initiative that encourages personal and team-based productivity applications built around the Office suite. The group is also working to further integrate real-time buddy-list and presence functionality in the next version of Office, as well to expand presence integration, adding calendar integration, and saving instant messages automatically in Outlook folders.

But Microsoft’s bold scorecard play should not be overstated. The capabilities promised in the dot.one Maestro release fall short of the enterprise-grade, integrated scorecarding systems deployed by many Fortune 100 companies. Maestro is still a lightweight scorecarding tool with the emphasis on easy deployment and use. However, any scorecard or dashboard first requires companies to first put a lot of thought into devising a meaningful set of business performance metrics. This cannot be delivered out of the box.

However it is understandable that Microsoft wants to address business performance scorecards as the performance management software market is a clear growth area. Maestro will also open up new opportunities for the ISVs that make their living riding on the coat tails of SQL Server. One of Microsoft’s closest BI partners, Panorama Software, has already announced plans to build advanced analytic scorecards using Maestro’s capabilities.