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What is PerformancePoint?

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server is a Business Productivity Platform that quickly enables companies to make sense of data through KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), Scorecards, Dashboards, Filters, Reports, Historical Trending, and Strategy Maps. It brings the performance management process into an easy-to-manage centralized environment while giving you the flexibility to work with familiar products like Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 [1]

Figure 1 - PerformancePoint Components

Figure 2 - Examples of SharePoint dashboards with corporate scorecards, strategy maps, and charts all displayed using PerformancePoint web parts

What’s changed?

With the recent announcement from Microsoft [2] to roll-up Office PerformancePoint Server into the enterprise CAL license of SharePoint 2007 (with software assurance), businesses now have a more compelling reason to implement the inherent BI mechanisms besides the now lowered total cost of ownership. SharePoint intranet portals can be tailored to display metrics and information to decision makers, allowing them to identify performance trending and forecasting issues on a timely basis, making them actionable, with expedient resolution. Hierarchical dashboard analyses get rolled up delivering personalized information by job function or role. Teams can view new and existing sales activity, performance to goal metrics, and using BI in a push strategy drive business into the organization minimizing prospecting time and effort. Data can be segmented by geographical region, line of business, customer, division, and present product analysis aimed at revenue management. Performance Point enhances the usability of information across the organization, creating a more comprehensive view of the business with drill down and ad hoc reporting capability on demand.

What does this mean for new and existing customers? What does this mean for organizations who already own and use SharePoint?

With this announcement, customers who have standard CALs have compelling justification to upgrade to the enterprise CAL. In case you don’t know, SharePoint is licensed on a per-user model, meaning each user of a SharePoint solution has to be licensed. SharePoint can be licensed with either ‘standard’ client access licenses (CALs) or ‘enterprise’ CALs. Enterprise CALs get you line of business data integration, search, BI and web based spreadsheets above-and-beyond what’s in a Standard CAL [3]. In the past, customers needed to buy separate PerformancePoint Server licenses (approximately $50,000) plus the additional price per CAL (approximately $195 per seat). Now, they just have to buy the upgrade to enterprise CALs (approximately $70 per seat). For new customers, PerformancePoint Server will no longer be sold as a standalone product. Customers should purchase SharePoint Server 2007 enterprise CALs with Software Assurance to be entitled to PerformancePoint Server 2007 CALs which is now at a lower total cost of ownership than it was originally with the added benefit of SharePoint.

What is Microsoft’s ongoing strategy?

The ongoing strategy for PerformancePoint server is that it will be rolled up into the SharePoint platform as a service for future releases of SharePoint and the planning component of Performance Point will be discontinued. Microsoft has clearly decided their strengths are more on the performance management side of Performance Point Server and only includes analytics and monitoring functionality. There will be still be ongoing support for existing PerformancePoint customers who use the planning piece but there will only be one more service pack of enhancements in future. Technical requirements for installation of the software remains SQL Server enterprise edition, SharePoint and Excel.