You, Me and Dynamics GP
Microsoft is tapping SAP's BusinessObjects to help fill the gap after the PerformancePoint debacle. I had heard that this was coming several weeks ago so it's not a big surprise and the eweek article covering it is essentially a press release. More than that however, we had a client get a demo of BusinessObjects' Planning and Consolidation product and they saw functionality similar to the millions of rows in memory functionality in found in PowerPivot now in beta for Excel 2010.
The bottom line is that Microsoft had to do something. The roadmap for FRx/Forecaster/Enterprise Reporting just left too long of a gap between where they are and where they want to be. The risk to SAP is that this becomes another Crystal Reports, pushed by MS for a while and then dumped when the FRx set of products get farther down the road. I also don't think that they do a great job of selling the Excel/Excel Services/PerformancePoint Services/Sharpoint stack against dedicated BI solutions. It's too much like selling parts not solutions.
The bottom line is that I don't think that Microsoft is ready to abandon the BI space to anyone long term. I just don't have any insight into what the long term solution will really be for MS yet.
The bottom line is that Microsoft had to do something. The roadmap for FRx/Forecaster/Enterprise Reporting just left too long of a gap between where they are and where they want to be. The risk to SAP is that this becomes another Crystal Reports, pushed by MS for a while and then dumped when the FRx set of products get farther down the road. I also don't think that they do a great job of selling the Excel/Excel Services/PerformancePoint Services/Sharpoint stack against dedicated BI solutions. It's too much like selling parts not solutions.
The bottom line is that I don't think that Microsoft is ready to abandon the BI space to anyone long term. I just don't have any insight into what the long term solution will really be for MS yet.
