Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 Extends Microsoft’s Business Intelligence Solution
Microsoft is poised to reach more decision-makers than ever before
Mississaga, Ontario - September 19, 2007 - As part of its commitment to providing industry-leading business intelligence solutions, Microsoft Corp. has launched Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007, an application that enables companies to drive performance through monitoring, analyzing and planning their business using one integrated solution. Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) allows more people at all levels of an organization to make better decisions, and has the vision of reaching every decision-maker and adding value to every decision. With Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft is building on its existing BI solution to enable companies to drive strategy development, alignment and accountability across the entire organization.
“For Canadian customers to successfully embrace performance management, they need an enterprise grade BI platform and easy to use end-user tools. Today Microsoft is helping customers embrace performance management by providing an integrated performance management application, built on Microsoft’s widely adopted BI platform,” said Ryan Dochuk, product manager of Business Intelligence at Microsoft Canada.
Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 takes the same approach as the rest of the Microsoft Business Intelligence product line - Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is simple to use because of the familiar look and feel of the Microsoft Office interface, and it puts intelligence right where people work and collaborate. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is built to meet the functional and performance requirements of a large enterprise, but its competitive pricing allows companies of all sizes to use the application broadly throughout the organization. The application is very flexible, allowing businesspeople to build and manage plans, workflows and rules, while IT centrally controls security and information.
Strong Customer and Market Momentum
“Due to Microsoft’s ubiquitous presence within enterprises of all sizes, IDC Canada’s1 research has found that Microsoft’s BI offering is a preferred choice among large and medium Canadian organizations,” said Joel Martin, VP, Software Research, IDC Canada. “Canadian organizations are looking for business intelligence and performance management solutions that require little training and minimize deployment costs. With the launch of Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft provides users with a well-known BI interface that leverages many aspects of the current version of Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint.”
Customers have expressed their interest in implementing a performance-management application from Microsoft, as witnessed by the overwhelming size of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) program. In fact, at more than 10,000 organizations, the CTP program was larger than most performance-management application vendors’ installed base. Many of the customers involved in the CTP program were large, multinational organizations with very complex requirements.
“As a designer, manufacturer, and distributor of high-quality working and off the road tires throughout North America, Latin America and Europe, GPX prides itself on continued investment in technical know-how and technology. The need to have timely and easy access to business data from multiple systems in support of effective decision-making led us to assess and adopt Office PerformancePoint Server,” said Jean-Louis Marin, chief information officer at GPX Tire International. “The technology is not only intuitive, it has demonstrated the ability to bring significant strategic value to our organization by answering the key business questions that will help us meet our overarching business goals.”
Greater Business Opportunities for Partners
Microsoft’s complete and integrated Business Intelligence product line consists of SQL Server™ and the Microsoft Office system, and it gives solution providers and systems integrators a greater opportunity to develop comprehensive BI solutions that are customized to meet needs specific to a particular customer or industry. Microsoft has already extensively trained almost 1,000 partners worldwide on the application.
“Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 has helped expand our portfolio of custom solutions, which enables us to more easily meet the needs for new and existing customers,” said Dennis Brink, vice president at T4G. “We’ve seen increased interest in customers wanting reporting, planning and analytical solutions to truly help hasten and improve information delivery. Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 and its open platform allows us to create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and dashboards that are tailored to our customers’ needs, and expand our revenue stream around BI.”
About Microsoft Canada
Established in 1985, Microsoft Canada Co. is the Canadian subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq "MSFT") the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft Canada provides nationwide sales, marketing, consulting and local support services in both French and English. Headquartered in Mississauga, Microsoft Canada has 10 regional offices across the country dedicated to empowering people through great software - any time, any place and on any device. For more information on Microsoft Canada, please visit www.microsoft.ca
1 Source: IDC Canada’s Quarterly IT Advisory Panel, Q2 CY07 (Results for Large and Medium sized organizations)
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