ProClarity Analytics

The Apr. 2006 acquisition of ProClarity addressed a longstanding gap in Microsoft’s BI strategy, giving the company a sophisticated set of client tools for visualizing and analyzing data stored in SQL Server Analysis Services cubes. ProClarity includes a thick client called ProClarity Desktop Professional and a Web client called ProClarity Web Professional that let users browse, navigate, and create analytic views (such as charts, graphs, or reports) of cube data, and publish those views to a Web server application called the ProClarity Analytics Server (also referred to as PerformancePoint Server Analytics). Once published, other workers can access these views using a Web browser. These capabilities are not tied to the other two PerformancePoint applications—ProClarity can visualize Analysis Services cubes created by other applications.

Microsoft initially planned to incorporate ProClarity’s advanced data visualization capabilities into PerformancePoint Server. Although some of ProClarity’s features have been integrated in PerformancePoint—the Analytic Grid and Analytic Chart Web Parts are based on ProClarity features, for instance—integration of other important features has been delayed. Most notably, ProClarity’s decomposition trees and heat maps are not integrated. Decomposition trees provide a graphical representation of a cube’s complex multilevel, multidimensional structure. Heat maps group data of like value in a color-coded, two-dimensional graphic and could help a user view a large set of KPIs and quickly identify those at risk of not meeting their defined goals, for instance.