PerformancePoint Pricing Announced

PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft’s forthcoming business performance management, financial reporting, and budgeting application, will cost more than the Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) 2005 application it replaces but less than many of its competitors, which could make it popular. The product will not be available as early as originally planned though. Microsoft says that PerformancePoint Server 2007 will ship in the second half of 2007 rather than midyear 2007 as previously announced.

What Is PerformancePoint Server?

PerformancePoint Server 2007 will include server components, client applications, and modeling utilities to help companies track business performance and streamline financial reporting and budgeting. The product targets large and midsize companies and builds on familiar Microsoft technologies, such as Windows SharePoint Server (WSS), SQL Server, and Office (particularly Excel).

The product focuses on three main areas:

Performance management tools gather and summarize business data from a variety of sources (including SQL Server databases), define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) based on those data, and display those KPIs in scorecards on SharePoint sites. (PerformancePoint will work with WSS 3.0, SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and SharePoint Server 2007.) These features extend those delivered in BSM 2005, which was released in Nov. 2005.