FRx Subsidiary to Be Absorbed

FRx Software, the Microsoft subsidiary responsible for the FRx financial reporting and Forecaster budgeting applications, will merge with the group responsible for the forthcoming PerformancePoint Server 2007, a new performance and financial management application. FRx Software’s products will eventually become part of one or more PerformancePoint products. However, these products will not provide the same support for third-party general ledgers as FRx Software’s products, which work with a variety of accounting packages, implying new integration work for vendors of those products. Furthermore, Microsoft’s expansion of the nascent PerformancePoint brand could confuse customers and partners.

What Is FRx Software?

FRx Software is a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. The company was acquired in early 2000 by Great Plains to provide financial reporting and budgeting tools for the Great Plains and Solomon enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Great Plains was acquired by Microsoft in 2001; the Great Plains and Solomon applications, now called Dynamics GP and Dynamics SL, are two of Microsoft’s four ERP products, which also include Dynamics AX and Dynamics NAV.