14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft revealed that it currently plans to make Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 available as early as next month, while SQL Server 2008 will be delivered sometime in the second quarter of 2008. The two products are an integer part of the Redmond company's lineup of offerings for the Business Intelligence market. Microsoft is committed to demonstrate its focus on BI, as well as the increasing momentum of its presence on the market.
"We are focused on helping our customers achieve higher levels of business performance by allowing them to take advantage of the rich BI capabilities offered through Microsoft business intelligence," said Chris Caren, general manager of Office Business Applications at Microsoft. "We are excited to help companies integrate efficiently with one another to ensure all employees are held accountable for their actions across the entire business."
Microsoft's performance on the BI market can be easily correlated with the success of SQL Server 2005. In fact, the company now looks to build on the foundation created with SQL Server 2005, and it is a healthy starting point, as Microsoft was recognized as the Business Intelligence vendor with the highest growth rate, no less than 28%, back in 2006, according to a study performed by IDC. Additionally, the OLAP Report indicated that SQL Server 2005 is the top online analytical processing (OLAP) server available.
IDC's conclusion was that Microsoft is one of the strongest presences on the BI market. "Performance management can take on the form of various decision-support and reporting functions to improve revenue, profit and operational efficiency; decrease costs; uncover new opportunities; or mitigate risk," said Dan Vesset, an analyst with IDC. "Microsoft had another strong year in this market."
While announcing the release dates for Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server 2008, Microsoft also revealed that community technology previews for both products are available for download. In this context, the Redmond company is delivering the fourth and final CTP of PerformancePoint Server 2007 and the SQL Server 2008 July CTP.
"PerformancePoint Server is tightly integrated with the familiar and easy-to-use Microsoft Office system, allowing organizations to better align employees across divisions and make them accountable for their actions. In addition, PerformancePoint Server 2007 takes advantage of the enterprise-grade reliability, high performance, security technology and scalability of SQL Server 2005, enabling more people at all levels of the organization to transform disparate enterprise data into shared information they can use to make decisions and take actions that improve business outcomes," Microsoft added.