This week, in the news, Microsoft made some pretty big announcements. Besides all the planned layoffs (~5000 jobs will be cut from R&D, IT, Marketing, Sales, Finance, and more), the big one came in the BI arena with regards to PerformancePoint Server and their BI strategy for the future.
After nearly 2 very slow years of adoption, Microsoft has decided to stop development and discontinue the Planning package, originally a part of PerformancePoint Server. Microsoft also plans on rolling the Monitoring and Analytics piece of PPS into SharePoint Server, their enterprise content management and portal software. This move will also rebrand the PPS offering to PerformancePoint Services. Previous ProClarity and Business Scorecard Manager products, which have been integrated into PPS, will no longer be available for purchase as Microsoft puts all of their eggs in the one Microsoft Office basket.
By mid 2009, we should see the final cumulative updates to the current PPS offering, and from then on we'll just need to re-shift our focus. After April 2009, customers and partners will no longer be able to purchase PPS, and will need to get a ECAL of SharePoint Server with Software Assurance, in order to obtain any additional licenses for PPS (even for current deployments).
Part of this decision stems from the fact that Microsoft is putting a lot of effort and investments in the next version of SQL Server in 2010 (aka. "Gemini").
You can read more about this topic, including their press release at the following links:
Office MS BI Blog: Microsoft BI Strategy Update
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