PerformancePoint CTP Available

PerformancePoint Server 2007, a new performance management, financial reporting, and budgeting application, was released as a community technical preview (CTP) in Dec. 2006. The CTP provides an opportunity for customers to understand PerformancePoint Server’s infrastructure requirements and to evaluate the product’s capabilities well before its planned release in mid-2007.

PerformancePoint 2007 focuses on three main areas:

Performance management tools for gathering and summarizing business data from a variety of sources (including SQL Server databases), defining and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) based on those data, and displaying scorecards (which contain KPIs) on SharePoint sites.

Advanced data analysis and visualization features based on tools and technologies that Microsoft acquired when it purchased ProClarity in the first half of 2006.

Financial analysis and reporting, budgeting, and forecasting utilities, including a tool named Business Modeler that lets business users create financial reporting or budgeting models from underlying data sources (such as a company’s general ledger), define business rules (how revenue is attributed, for instance), and specify process workflow (such as the review and approval steps for a budgeting process).