In a recent poll, 78 percent of SQL Server Magazine readers said they wanted
to learn more about Microsoft’s new business-performance management application,
PerformancePoint Server (PPS) 2007, and another 4 percent said they were already
testing it. Those numbers indicate that a lot of database implementers are interested
in a product Microsoft is pitching to business decision makers (BDMs) rather
than technical decision makers (TDMs). According to Bill Baker, general manager
of Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) applications division, just
about the only involvement that SQL Server professionals should have with PPS
is making sure their data is “right, clean, consistent, integrated….
That’s the domain of SQL Server.” Baker and Microsoft are emphatic
that PPS is “just an application” like any other business application
and that its intended importance is in giving end users access to BI capability
without the need for IT intervention.
It’s Not About Database Performance
Perhaps one reason readers have expressed so much interest in learning about
PPS is that the product’s name creates confusion by incorporating the
word “performance.” Just to be clear, the “performance management”
this product addresses has nothing to do with how fast your queries run or whether
your resource utilization is optimal. PPS is about business effectiveness. In
the business context, “performance management includes activities to ensure
that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner.
Performance management can focus on performance of the organization, a department,
processes to build a product or service, employees, etc.” (http://www.managementhelp.org/perf_mng/perf_mng.htm).
As Baker puts it, “Performance management sits on top of good clean data
and gives employees the ability to get good insights. Think about it as being
that kind of corporate decision-making function.”
Now that we’re clear on the type of “performance” this product
addresses, what is PPS 2007? Baker explains that “technically, [PPS 2007
is] the next generation of the Business Scorecard Manager 2007, the next generation
of ProClarity, and the first generation of what used to be called BizSharp.”
Functionally, PPS is a BI application that supports “a sort of natural
progression of thinking from looking backwards at what happened, to examining
what is happening now and wondering why, to trying to forecast what will happen,
and trying to plan what I want to have happen. We call that ‘monitor,
analyze, plan.’ We wanted to build elements that speak to each of those
in the corporate context. PerformancePoint has a monitoring component, which
is score-carding. It has an analytics component, which is an add-in to the Excel
experience and to the browser experience. And then it has full-fledged planning
functionality.”
Just an Application
If PPS is just another BI application that uses SQL Server data, do DBAs need
to know anything about it? According to Baker, what SQL Server professionals
need to know about PPS is that “[it runs] on a database. It has to be
provisioned. The server has to be up, permissions have to be granted, backups
have to be scheduled, and the whole thing. It’s just like any other app.
[It’s] totally on top of SQL Server. [It uses] the relational engine.
[It uses] the Analysis Services engine. [It uses] the Reporting Services engine.
[It doesn’t] directly drive Integration Services, but that’s part
of that first step of the IT department using Integration Services to get that
clean data. So [PPS] consume\[s] all of SQL Server.”
But, Baker emphasizes, “The loop we’re trying to break up somewhat
is that the business users know what the business rules are. IT knows how to
implement them. Even in great companies, that [combination] doesn’t run
at the speed of business, so we wanted to allow the business users to have a
much tighter feedback loop. We want to cut that cycle down by having a tool
that they can sit down and use together. One of our ambitions (we haven’t
accomplished this in v1) was that the business users could push a button and
deploy the solution. The truth is IT is chasing this in a funny way. The business
users are bringing the demand so much faster, and the IT departments are just
trying to keep up. It’s a tough job being in IT because people like me
are telling business people your company can improve using BI and performance
management. And the business users are demanding more and more while cutting
IT budgets at the same time. Just to get it down to basics, technically [PPS
is] an application.”
Target Audience
PPS is targeted at large enterprises, and it gives Microsoft access to BDMs
who until now haven’t seen a need to engage with the company. Baker says,
“We’re trying to add the business person to the equation. I think
you’re going to see a lot of top-down drive [to purchase PPS]—more
than we’ve ever seen before. I think it’s going to create a new
conversation for us that we never used to have with the business person.”
To help reach this new market, Microsoft has tried to price PPS attractively.
When the product becomes commercially available, the pricing will be a server
CAL, at $20,000 per server (not per processor), and $195 per user. Because PPS
has a large footprint, the product requires SQL Server Enterprise Edition. For
more information about PPS, go to the Microsoft PPS 2007 Web site (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/fx101680481033.aspx).
To sign up for the PerformancePoint Server 2007 Community Technology Preview
program, go to http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/fx101680481033.aspx.