PerformancePoint Points the Way Toward Mainstream EDM

(By guest Blogger, Gib Bassett)

Today on DMReview.com I read Microsoft announced a new server called “Office PerformancePoint.”  Besides thinking that was a really cool sounding name for a piece of technology, the substance behind the release is what really caught my attention.

Like any wave Microsoft rides, a new offering focused on monitoring, measuring and improving business performance signals that EDM as a discipline with technology implications will become increasingly mainstream over the next few years.  Consider:

“Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 is built to meet the functional and performance requirements of a large enterprise, but its competitive pricing allows companies of all sizes to use the application broadly throughout the organization. The application is very flexible, allowing businesspeople to build and manage plans, workflows and rules, while IT centrally controls security and information.”

The announcement doesn’t mention business process management (BPM), business rules management (BRM), or other Microsoft server products such as BizTalk specifically, but I would expect soon we will be reading how PerformancePoint has added integration with and/or capabilities associated with these process and operational system oriented technologies.  Business Intelligence, BPM and BRM seem to be coming together with the goal of providing real time operational insight to decision makers that can in turn be used to affect changes to operational systems and applications.