Database Reference
In-Depth Information
demographic; it required that you have Visual Studio and a fair degree of
technical expertise. Reporting Services served as replacement for the vener-
able Crystal Reports.
Both Excel and Reporting Services have kept their names but, as discussed
in the following paragraphs, the dashboard toolkit has had a much more
checkered history. One caveat: Reporting Services now includes Power View,
a break from the earlier naming.
Business Scorecard Manager (BSM) was the first iteration of this tool. It provided
the ability to connect to multiple types of data sources, and incorporated Key
Performance Indicator tools (read Chapter 10 for more details), as well as some
graphing capabilities. Much like PerformancePoint today, much of the power of
BSM 2005 was only provided when connecting to Analysis Services as a backend.
PerformancePoint 2007 was Microsoft's foray in the world of Enterprise plan-
ning. With three different products (each with its own installation) sold as a
single product at a fairly hefty price point (by Microsoft standards—it was
well priced compared to the competition), Microsoft struggled to sell mas-
sive volumes of this product. The three products were PerformancePoint
Monitoring (the predecessor to PerformancePoint services that is discussed
heavily throughout this topic), PerformancePoint Planning, and Proclarity.
ProClArITy
Proclarity, a major third-party solution provider, was bought by Microsoft
in April 2006 and sold as part of PerformancePoint 2007. The product line
was discontinued along with PerformancePoint planning.
The planning product was deemed too complex for most organizations because
it required multiple skills across various Microsoft technologies, and the prod-
uct was deemed too expensive to obtain solely to have PerformancePoint.
Consequently, Microsoft started bundling PerformancePoint with the SharePoint
2007 Enterprise license from April 2009. This move, although derided by those
who had implemented the planning product, was a good one for the moni-
toring toolset.
The SharePoint 2010 release incorporated PerformancePoint Services as a
baked-in service application, making administration and installation much
easier.
