Business Objects and Microsoft To Make War in the Midmarket

Seeing a huge market opportunity to sell business intelligence software to companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, Business Objects today announced a major new-product family and larger initiative aimed at catering to midsized companies. The midmarket now buys $2.1 billion worth of BI software each year, according to IDC, and Business Objects says that figure is growing 12.5 percent per year — 50 percent faster than BI sales growth among large enterprises.

To cater to the tighter budgets and leaner IT staffs of midsized companies, Business Objects is introducing Crystal Decisions, a “holistic” product that will be offered in Standard, Professional and Premium editions. The Standard edition, which includes reporting, query and analysis, is being released today starting at $20,000. The Pro and Premium editions, which will add data integration and performance management capabilities, will debut in the second and fourth quarter, respectively. All three editions will be able to deliver data, reports and analyses within Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Read the full story (Intelligent Enterprise)

Microsoft Shines a BPM Light on The Small Ones

Emboldened by mass adoption for its BizTalk Server 2006 middleware by Fortune 500 businesses, Microsoft said it has formed the Business Process Alliance (BPA) to make it easier for smaller businesses to employ business process management (BPM) software.

BPA is a group of 10 companies whose goal is to build BPM packages for smaller companies that haven’t yet jumped onto the bandwagon.

Read the full story (internet.com)

Microsoft’s PerformancePoint Coming into Focus

Microsoft Corp.’s PerformancePoint Server 2007 offering might still be incubating, but it’s not as if the software giant ever shied away from trumpeting soon-and-inevitably-to-be-hatched-products in the past.

And with last week’s release of a new PerformancePoint Community Technology Preview (CTP), Microsoft has at least a plausible reason to crow.

PerformancePoint, Redmond’s long-awaited performance management (PM) entry, could do for PM what SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) did for OLAP and reporting, respectively: take it mainstream. Last week, Microsoft officials outlined PerformancePoint licensing and pricing information, discussed the fate of the former ProClarity Corp.’s assets (a number of which have been incorporated into PerformancePoint), talked up the mainstreaming of PM in general, and seemed confident that Microsoft will deliver its inaugural PM suite on time—in the second half of 2007.

Read the full story (TDWI)

Microsoft releases pint sized SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition is the next version of SQL Server Mobile adding the desktop platform.

SQL Server Compact extends the SQL Server Mobile technology by offering a low maintenance, compact embedded database for single-user client applications for all Windows platforms including tablet PCs, pocket PCs, smart phones and desktops. Just as with SQL Server Mobile, SQL Server Compact is a free, easy-to-use, lightweight, and embeddable version of SQL Server 2005 for developing desktop and mobile applications.

Read the full story (Microsoft)

Microsoft and Teradata Team Up

As part of this effort, Microsoft and Teradata are collaborating to enhance interoperability between the Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse and Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services, targeting availability of the technologies for the end of the first quarter of 2007. In addition, interoperability collaboration efforts with Teradata will include SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services; SQL Server 2005 Integration Services; and the 2007 Microsoft Office system including Microsoft Office Excel 2007, Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007. The worldwide relationship includes plans for joint sales and marketing activities across multiple industries, beginning with the retail sector.

Read the full story (Decideo.com)

SQL and Excel torpedo aimed at BI Vendors

Business intelligence is by far one of the more interesting–and important–software categories in the enterprise space. After all, CIOs can spend millions on revamping business processes and investing in enterprise applications, but if a wide range of folks can’t analyze critical data the effort is wasted. Simply put, you can spend a lot on IT and get a ROI goose egg without business intelligence software.

That fact is part of the reason companies like Cognos and Business Objects are successful. But the party may be about to end. In about a year there may be no better time to squeeze your favorite business intelligence software supplier.

Why? Excel 2007 will add a lot of business intelligence (BI) tools. Coupled with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services and the software giant could be dangerous to business intelligence players.

Read the full story (Larry Dignan – ZDNet)

Microsoft Report Builder Road Test

Microsoft first released Reporting Services in January 2004. It was slated to debut as part of SQL Server 2005, but given the repeated delays of that product and the solid capabilities in Reporting Services, Microsoft accelerated the offering as a free download to SQL Server 2000 customers. Reporting Services was positioned as a tool for IT developers, not business users. Authoring is done on the desktop using Business Intelligence Development Studio, a shell within Visual Studio 2005. Developers create queries using a graphical query builder that lets them join tables (similar to Microsoft Access) or, for more advanced queries, write custom SQL statements.

To address the needs of business authors, Microsoft released Report Builder in November 2005 as part of SQL Server 2005. It relies on the same Reporting Services infrastructure as reports authored in Visual Studio. Report Builder has let Microsoft compete more directly with BI pure-play vendors, but this first attempt at addressing business-user reporting needs doesn’t measure up to the competition in terms of flexibility, data access or, surprisingly, Office integration.

Read the full story (Intelligent Enterprise)

Microsoft BI Emerges

Microsoft has made available a preview version of its forthcoming PerformancePoint Server 2007. Due to ship next summer, the tool is designed to open up access to business intelligence (BI) functions for a wider cross-section of the enterprise workforce.

The first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of PerformancePoint Server 2007 combines planning, budgeting, fore- casting and financial consolidation capabilities. A second preview version, due early in 2007, will incorporate analytics and visualisation functions from ProClarity, a BI developer Microsoft acquired earlier this year.

Read the full story (ITWeek UK)

Microsoft and HP Invest in Collaborative BI

Microsoft and HP cemented plans this week for a new $300 million partnership that will extend their current relationship and expand their portfolio of solutions for enterprise customers around the world.

The three-year deal, announced at a news conference by Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner and HP Executive Vice President of Technology Ann Livermore, will focus on developing, servicing, and marketing enterprise technology.

Microsoft and HP plan to invest at least $300 million over the three years to extend their partnership into new business areas, with the goal of helping their customers incorporate new technology, including business intelligence and collaboration software.

Read the full story (NewsFactor)

Why Microsoft PerformancePoint matters

On December 5, Microsoft announced the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of PerformancePoint Server 2007. If you’re not a KPI (key-performance-indicator) jockey, you probably haven’t paid much attention to Microsoft’s PerformancePoint. But here’s why it matters, in the grander Microsoft scheme of things. Almost all of Microsoft’s recent talk about Office has centered around the desktop application suite as … well, a desktop application suite.

Read the full story (Mary Jo Foley)