PPS Planning is being discontinued
- From PerformancePointInsider.com's blog:
"Just read the press release on the changes coming to the PPS group. Monitoring and Analytics to be moved into the SharePoint group and be called PerformancePoint Services. That is good news. Planning is being discontinued. That is bad news. I guess they are putting their gets on SQL Gemini in 2010..."
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- I am still hoping that the rumor isn't true and there is more to the story than just that one blurb and the follow-up in the blog.
That being said, it makes pretty good business sense on the M&A side considering that almost all of it is deployed via SharePoint anyway.
However, with no Planning, that means that Microsoft has given up on having a performance management solution. You can't have a complete solution unless you cover all the bases like Hyperion, Business Objects or Cognos do. I can't imagine that is the route they want to go. It doesn't seem very Microsoft-like to just give into Oracle, SAP or IBM without more of a fight.
Plus my understanding was that Gemini was really just a data mining/analytics front-end and didn't have the type of functionality that Planning gave you.
So I am hoping that Microsoft has something as a backup here. Maybe a reinvestment in Forecaster or maybe an acquisition in the works. I guess time will tell.
Alan
My Ramblings @ http://alanwhitehouse.wordpress.com - i feel same.. if this is the final word this means from champions League back to amateurs....
My guess (and it's nothing more than that, just a guess), is that Planning was sacrificed in favor of the SAP alliance, since SAP now owns Business Objects.
This would only make sense if forecaster is going to be baked into PPS - similar to FRx is now Management Reporter and part of the suite.
Microsoft would have thrown good money away by acquiring ProClarity and tossing out a major piece of functionality. While the Analytics and Monitoring could stand alone with the use of MOSS and I could see being able to sell just this piece - without a budget solution you'd have to bring in a 3rd component and integrate for any of the Analytics or Monitoring capabilities to mean anything in the real world.MSFT I hope is not stupid enough to think it can be a major contender in the BI & CPM space without this very basic foundation of any BI or CPM solution.
Interesting.
The post has been deleted.
If I had to bet money, I would say that someone got an email or phone call from Microsoft's legal team.
My Ramblings @ http://alanwhitehouse.wordpress.com- I also saw the site and it did say that Microsoft is discontinuing the planning portion of PPS. This was also confirmed by a second source. Don't you find it interesting that no one from Microsoft is denying this so called rumor. This definitely requires a reassessment of Microsoft's commitment to financial applications.
The post doesnt exists anymore.
Only the Header still exists in
http://performancepointinsider.com/tags/PerformancePoint+Server/default.aspx
Just call me Office 14 SharePoint PerformancePoint Services
Just read the press release on the changes coming to the PPS group. Monitoring and Analytics to be moved into the SharePoint group and be called PerformancePoint Services. That is good news. Planning is being discontinued. That is bad news. I guess they are putting their gets on SQL Gemini in 2010... I'll have a ...And i couldnt find any other articles about the subject.
Where is the second source VladRad?
cemuneyIf this is true, the decision makers at MS are incompetent, and they also believe the message the competition are trying to tell the market. I have worked in total 15 years in CPM for both Hyperion and Cognos, and PPS Planning is the best solution I have seen. PPS Planning is the most modern solution on the market today.
IBM, SAS and Oracle are Greatfull!!
Most people here in Europe working with selling PPS Planning would agree that the pipe-line looks great for the next 6 months. Everyone in this business also knows that the normal CPM deal with a large Enterprise takes about 6 months to a year to finalize, the product have anly been available for about a year!!
- I have to say this is very disappointing news. It's a real shame that Microsoft look like they have given up with this crucial piece of the Business Intelligence picture.
Many partners in my country have during the last quarter started and are also still employing persons for starting centers of excellence for meeting PPS needs. Partners have also lately made investments in marketing of PPS. I believe MS are really putting BI partners in a bad position here. MS have also just lately launched programs to activate partners concerning CPM and invest time and money. Partners where counting on and believed Microsofts message to the market, if rumors are true, counting on Microsoft was a costly mistake.
Definitely agree with everybody here, this is not a smart move. MS didn't only shoot themselves in the foot but also our foot as a partner, like mentioned in another european post, we also had a good pipeline of upcoming PPS projects and a bunch of running projects. Well we can forget about those now... Anybody have any suggestions for Oracle vs BO vs Hyperion...?
Sigh....can't wait for the backlash, this will be fun!
- The second source isn't from a web page but from direct conversations with people involved in the product. I was informed that there was supposed to be a public announcement at 1:00 pm PT yesterday. We have been working with the product for over a year and just now beginning to use it for planning in production mode. Our experience has been that the product is performing is extremely well and has been very adaptable. Our users are very pleased with the results so far. Obviously, the news is very disappointing. One thing Microsoft doesn't understand is that this type of product reaches the CFO and I expect their reaction will not be pleasant and will have a negative affect on future CFO decisions regarding Microsoft.
- Has anyone found anything official from MS on this issue as of yet? As a partner I kind of wonder just what happened here, and if this is indeed true(?), need to adjust our current strategy ASAP...
Apparently the official announcement will be released later today.
There is a much more detailed post about what is happening to PerformancePoint on Peter Koller's blog:
- If this is true - then why the push from channel for everyone to pass 70-556? Eliminating planning from PPS would be similar to eliminating g/l from dynamics.
As partners that have invested in PPS practice groups - this is a serious setback - another product that we deal with - Epicor - has built its next generation on PPS integration and is in fact a selling point.
What do we tell prospects - we can give you monitoring and analytics - you'll have to figure out how to capture budget / actuals?
- I seriously dont get it. I just heard from my boss here, it is indeed official word from MS by now. I know it wasn't the easiest thing to get moving last year, but considering the attention the clients have been giving to it since end of last year, and the sheer amount of projects we already had in progress, on the way, closed deals etc, it just doesnt make any sense to me at all??This month you couldnt come to a client almost without being asked when we would have time to discuss a PPS implementation with them...and now this.. considering the presales efforts pulled last year, I feel like i want to scream... talk about wasted time...Granted, the app was definitly V1, and needed some major work, but the beauty of the platform itself, not to mention that the flaws in most cases were but opportunities for us partners to come up with more atttractive tools...
- Does anyone have the official link or copy of the communication?
- The website is updated - planning and reporting are removed from content. Talk about a black hole in the approach.
Discontinuing PPS Planning will send seriously negative signals to the CPM-market. This would be the last of MS on the CPM market, they will never be able to recover in CPM after this.
- E.SWARD said:
Discontinuing PPS Planning will send seriously negative signals to the CPM-market. This would be the last of MS on the CPM market, they will never be able to recover in CPM after this.
We could look at this another way - planning in PPS was a pain with the rules, etc. Most ledger packages will do the interco and consolidation according to GAAP and any budgeting is generally stored in most ledger packages as well. So from a different stand point - let the ledgers do what they do best - capture results - let PPS do what it does best - report on the results via SharePoint. If you build a cube at analysis services - you can build your dashboard based on the cube.You could approach a potential customer as - you have a ledger package and a budget package -we're presenting you a way of real time - single point reporting and analytics.
I'm sure Cognos, Prophix, etc will be all over this as a limitation of PPS - and sadly, they will be very correct. I guess we can do away with the modeler application - MSFT should have just ramped up Scorecard Manager and been done with this.
- There is a video on the microsoft.com/bi on the 'RoadMap Update'
- Paradigm Analytic said:E.SWARD said:
Discontinuing PPS Planning will send seriously negative signals to the CPM-market. This would be the last of MS on the CPM market, they will never be able to recover in CPM after this.
We could look at this another way - planning in PPS was a pain with the rules, etc. Most ledger packages will do the interco and consolidation according to GAAP and any budgeting is generally stored in most ledger packages as well. So from a different stand point - let the ledgers do what they do best - capture results - let PPS do what it does best - report on the results via SharePoint. If you build a cube at analysis services - you can build your dashboard based on the cube.You could approach a potential customer as - you have a ledger package and a budget package -we're presenting you a way of real time - single point reporting and analytics.
I'm sure Cognos, Prophix, etc will be all over this as a limitation of PPS - and sadly, they will be very correct. I guess we can do away with the modeler application - MSFT should have just ramped up Scorecard Manager and been done with this.
What you say is maybe true for financial consolidation in the US, but to support IFRS just the ledger functionality you are talking about will not work. And when you talk of support of budgeting-forecasting at a multinational enterprise just G/L solutions will not meet the requirements.
However, I can compare the rules the functionality and the logic with the architecture from both Cognos and Hyperion, and Microsoft was really on to something here. PPS Planning was extremely flexible, and it also gave you control like no other solution today. And the technical architecture was great compared to the competition, the competition is really lipstick on a pig, mostly old stuff.
The problem was the roll-out, selling CPM solutions is different from selling share point or office, the organization just started to get going, and great things were on the way.
I know a company called SAP. They tried for long to enter the CPM market, they even created their own financial consolidation module, but SAP customers still bought the products from Hyperion. But then SAP bought Outlook soft, well, I wonder why?
- I totally agree with E.SWARD, PPS Planning is extremely flexible, and a solid first effort as a planning tool
I know of many clients who have gone down the path of Hyperion Essbase/Planning and ripped it out because of inflexibilty..I think Microsoft should have persevered...
Clients are now starting to implement PPS. Oh well I guess Im going have to learn Hyperion or cognos...and their old technology stacks....
- that is indeed the point i was trying to make earlier. It was finally starting to get traction in the market, and then this? As for consolidation, now what? Back to ER? oh well, I guess Oracle/Hyperion could use some more partners...
- There is now some articles available, for example on Intelligent Enterprise http://www.intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2009/01/microsofts_big_1.html
- Hi all,
I've been reading all your post carefully!
I see myself in all your previous posts. We're a MSFT partner with PPS-P implementations already delivered and few more close to be a deal. Fortunately I was involved in the pre-sales activities since 6 months now.
I've to say that the PPS-P pre-sales business was not a easy stuff in the beginning, BUT since last weeks I was surprised with the amount of oportunities that were open. PPS-P just started to get a GREAT tracktion and now this??I wonder what our present PP-P Clients will say when they realise they just bought a Microsoft Legacy System. I know what they probably will say/ask.
Bruno F I have close contacts with an early PPS Planning customer which kicked out Cognos for the benefit of PPS. What are they going to do now, bail out and go back to Cognos (I am glad I am not in the CTOs shoes, his been putting his bets all his credibility on MS)?
And what about Microsoft themselves, they are using PPS for financial consolidation and budgeting, what will be their next consolidation solution, are they going for Hyperion or Cognos Controller?
- This news is very bad. My company also believe in PPS Planning and we have many customer in the pipeline with this solution and also 2 companys with planning in development stage. What we do with this customers.. only tell that they have to consolidate in SAP or another ERP? Why MS is taking out the planning part? Any MS Comment? The market is going to destroy MS with this move. Also the reputation of MS for a serius software in the CPM ..
Juan Alvarado - MVP SQL SERVER - Does somebody heard anything about a plan to put the fonctionnalities of PPS planning into Excel 2009 ?
Eric - I can't see how. The Excel front-end is only a little part of the whole Planning component. Think about all the security and the workflow. If they were planning on doing that for 2009 they would have had to start already.
My Ramblings @ http://alanwhitehouse.wordpress.com - Yeah...
Agree with you guys..
I'm still working with PPS-P and just don't get why such radical decision...
What I can say is, looking at the Modeler and all Architecture it's a shame that they've killed. All seams to work just fine. It's a solution already stable enough to work with.
It's a shame
Bruno F I think it comes down to a mis-alignment between a platform sales philosophy and a business application sales philosophy. Platform sales (i.e., Windows Server, Vista, SQL) is all about volume and quick sales. The business application marketplace is different. It is fewer deals but larger in size. It is similar to the struggle that the Dynamics group has had internally since GP and Navision were bought. I am convinced Microsoft would rather have 10 sales at $10,000 each for $100,000 total rather than a single sale at $120,000. Quantity over quality.
Think about it this way. Switching systems like these are a big deal and not taken lightly. So if an organization of any real size is going to even begin the process they have to think about it for a while. Then comes a series of RFIs/RFPs and then vendor interviews and demonstrations. And after that maybe a proof of concept or two before you finalize on a solution. Then you have to fit in the deployment between your active planning cycles and then somewhere in that deployment process you purchase software. Given all that, you are talking about sales cycle of a year or more. PPS Planning has only been out for 1.5 years and right now is when Microsoft should begin to see the fruits of their labor to pay off.
In my uninformed opinion this whole thing reeks of internal panic and someone looking at raw numbers without doing any true analysis. If they had done their evaluation in 6 months they would see that sales had taken off. And in competitive sales situations, it is also going to give a lot more ammunition to other vendors out there to get prospects to question Microsoft's true committment to the business applications market.
Alan
My Ramblings @ http://alanwhitehouse.wordpress.com- agree..
Bruno F Why don't MS just sell the projekt, instead of just killing it, or why don't create an open source project out of it, Microsoft use to say they support Open Source, right!?.
- yes right!
"Almost anything" would do! It's a pity to have a tool out there which works, which solve our problems, which we've spent month to learn how to work with, etc etc... and we can't have now!
Bruno F The OLAP Report has published their opinion on what has happened. This is an excellent recap:
- Again E.SWARD I totally agree with you, this was something I was thinking about over the weekend...
Performance Point PPS is by far the MOST modern platform for multidimensional planning, forecasting and reporting...The architecutre was very good, and the Modeler was extremely functional....
I've been in CPM world for some time and PPS was the best product I had used since my days working with Oracle Financial analyzer, a very good budgeting, planning tool that worked with Oracle's earlier multidimensional technology Oracle Express...
Look... if any Microosft guys are reading this...why throw away all that effort...A product thats been out for only 18 months...Think about just releasing the source code, create a open source project...YOU could still sell Analytic Services licences on this....Come on Microsoft I know its tough out there...But PPS was finally getting some traction
- I would like to see MS sell PPS Planning to BPM Partners, those guys used to run Hyperion Solutions in the Good old days, they are extremely competent and works internationally and understand the CPM business.
Here is a recap of my hour long call with Microsoft that included a couple of high-up people from Redmond on the BI side:
- They have no answers at this time other than what has already been publicly communicated
- They can provide no direction at this time as to future directions
I think that about sums it up. I will post some details later on my blog (tonight or tomorrow) as this is not the best forum as it is related to support of the product.
Alan
My Ramblings @ http://alanwhitehouse.wordpress.com- Hi all,
If you carefully see Guy_Weismantel_BI_Announcement video, no where did he say anything about abandoning Planning module. Precisely he said:
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All the analytics will be embedded into SharePoint Server
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Planning module will remain operative as a separate solution outside of SharePoint
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Planning Service Pack 3 is purely to address the enhancements of Planning module
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After service pack 3 there would no investment made by Microsoft into Planning but that does not mean they will discontinue Planning
Guy Weismantel left a clever clue in his announcement by saying “further through our dynamic business unit, we will continue to invest in forecasting, management and financial reporting, and budgeting solutions as part of our packaged application business” ------- what does that mean? In future a more elegant Planning Solution will replace exiting Planning module? I don’t know but it would make sense if Microsoft keeps their future versions of Planning Products as a de-facto within their BI stack.
For a consultant’s point of view, I don’t think we need to panic at tall but all our hard earned knowledge will be equally applicable towards their future products.
Cheers…DP
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OK, which means all the financial modelling, budgeting, forecasting will be available through Dynamics. PerformancePoint planning will sort of hang around for a bit then disappear?
That would be too sad if the companies can not get by not purchasing Dynamics but just using Office solutions.
if this is true and hte pps planning part is going to dynamics like a standalone product, it's a naturaly step. But please that MSFT said the alternatives for the planning customers. I dont care if is a dynamics solutions or anything else, But the statement is discontinue the product.
Please MS said something about it ..
Juan Alvarado - MVP SQL SERVER- Definitely you should not treat my comments as an authoritative source (I'm just a programmer!). At Microsoft we have teams of people who can help decode the nuances of this message. You don't have to guess or try to read between the lines. :) My understanding is planning won't exactly "disappear", it will be fully supported per the normal support policies at Microsoft. But you shouldn't expect any releases after SP3.... :(
Here's the blurb in the q&a repeated about who to contact with questions.
6. If I have additional questions, who do I contact? If you have additional questions, please first work with your Microsoft account team. If you have additional questions following that, you can contact PerformancePoint Server Roadmap Announce team pps_an@microsoft.com.
Please please directly contact your rep or pps_an if you have questions. I love everybody in the forums and want to see the discussion even if you are criticizing the product or upset Microsoft's decisions. But I also don't want anybody to have any misunderstandings...
-Peter Eb. Hi Peter,
Just to share my thoughts, I am sure BDMs and Sales people will find it extremely difficult at this point in time to market PerformancePoint Server 2007 as almost no customers would want to purchase a product which basically has not roadmap after mid 2009. I am just a consultant and developer myself, so bit concerned that I may have to change my focus. I was spending a lot of time, in fact learning this PPS, going through the Contoso demos as I came from SQL Server background. In fact when PPS released, that’s when I thought “that’s it; they did a bloody good job by integrating What-When-How-Why in a box”.
It was a bloody good product; I don’t know what lobbied Microsoft to bang this up all of a sudden. I can’t believe all those gaga went in just before the PPS's release now started to fall on its faces!
There is an interesting article in Intelligent Enterprise (Microsoft Boosts BI, Backs Away From Performance Management) about whats happened, and it includes an interview with the product manager Kristina Kerr.
Hello Everyone,
I have posted a Q & A document regarding the BI Roadmap for your viewing:
Thank you,
Aseem Nayar - MSFT
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rightsWe are a MS partner in Latam and in the last 18 months we dedicate resources, time and money for training the people and do sales in PPS .. we have two installations with PPS planning part, and now the salespipeline is damage because this announcement. I think MS need to handle this kind information with care and take all the opinion form customers and partners before take desicions.. Specially for the Planning part.
The product is very young and i think deserve some time to do money from it.
Juan Alvarado - MVP SQL SERVERAseem
With no offence meant to you personally, all the links you have posted contain corporate nonsense
When we will get some real answers?
- ИзмененоOlap Monkey 27 января 2009 г. 19:17
Hello,
I understand your concern, I am just the moderator of the forum. If you have specific questions feel free to follow this route:
6. If I have additional questions, who do I contact? If you have additional questions, please first work with your Microsoft account team. If you have additional questions following that, you can contact PerformancePoint Server Roadmap Announce team pps_an@microsoft.com.
Aseem Nayar - MSFT
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights- Juan M. Alvarado said:
We are a MS partner in Latam and in the last 18 months we dedicate resources, time and money for training the people and do sales in PPS .. we have two installations with PPS planning part, and now the salespipeline is damage because this announcement. I think MS need to handle this kind information with care and take all the opinion form customers and partners before take desicions.. Specially for the Planning part.
The product is very young and i think deserve some time to do money from it.
Juan Alvarado - MVP SQL SERVER
I fully agree. read this articule .. this is not a good articule that help MS reputation in the BI arena
http://visualstudiomagazine.com/blogs/weblog.aspx?blog=3302
I hope MS reconsider the planning part and give us a good alternative for fix that, besides to use an ERP , that can't do a enterprise planning for sure.
Juan Alvarado - MVP SQL SERVER- Microsoft must face few law suits against their decisions. I wonder if corporate lawyers are not already doing so. Microsoft has well fabricated their reasons behind this decision but clearly they could not win the expensive up-hill battle against Oracle Hyperion and all other mature Corporate Performance Management specialist vendors. Even though, PPS is still considered one of the best CPM products by many veterans. As it is well pointed out by Flybridge, sitting on partner’s shoulder, Microsoft expects to enter the market without paying a penny.
My consultancy in Australia was long talking with one of the large government department about a PPS prospect. We would probably be laughed out in public by other strong competitors such as Oracle.
I good solution for planning is that the Dynamics team take planning part, keep the product in standalone version of planning.
This can have the interfases for the ERP's Dynamics and CRM also. And for the customers that buy and trust in the product PPS if have the Software assurance give the option for can have the Planning product that have in Dynamics world.
I manage also the Hyperion Planning and i love PPS planning it's a very good product , very flexible and very powerful. Oralce Dont have that flexible and power that we managed in the PPS planning. The only limitation of pps planning is that dont have a web interfase for entry the numbers in the models.
Juan Alvarado - MVP SQL SERVER
