Microsoft news: PerformancePoint Server, SharePoint Server, and a new roadmap for Business Intelligence

Microsoft Corporation has announced that it is going to discontinue PerformancePoint Server as an independent product and roll some of its capabilities into SharePoint Server Enterprise.

A note from its headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, says that PerformancePoint Server 2007 service pack 3 will be issued this summer, but after that “customers should not expect further investment in standalone versions of PerformancePoint Server.”

If organisations want the product, they will need to buy a SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise client access licence with software assurance. Existing customers will be given five to ten years’ support.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has drawn up a Business Intelligence roadmap that aims to “deliver BI to everyone” through SQL Server, SharePoint Server and Excel. To support this, the scorecard, dashboard and analytical functions of PerformancePoint Server will be moved into SharePoint Server Enterprise.

PerformancePoint was launched 18 months ago. It brought together a number of Microsoft’s BI products, including Business Scorecard Manager, and the analytics, planning and forecasting capabilities it acquired with ProClarity.

PerformancePoint was intended to support “corporate performance management” or the sophisticated financial planning and forecasting undertaken by finance directors and other executives.

However, Kurt DelBane, senior vice president of the Office Business Platform Group, said the decision to discontinue the product and focus on the new roadmap was “based on wanting customers to truly experience pervasive BI in their organisations at a low cost through the tools they use every day.”

SharePoint is already used widely for search, content management, workflow and collaboration. Now organisations will be able to use it for BI, too.