3000 Consultants Trained on PerformancePoint?

So says Eddie Short, a VP at CapGemini, attending the MSFT PerformancePoint Server launch in London a few weeks ago, when asked about his firm's commitment to the Microsoft product. In fact, that's not 3000 consultants in the next 5 years, that's 3000 consultants by the end of THIS year. Gerry Brown, senior analyst at the Bloor Report, picks up the story in this IT Director blog posting.

As we probably all know, consultancies are generally not in the business of taking their talent off the streets for training unless there's a business model that shows that they'll get their investment back in spades. And Cap isn't the only one--the other big SI's are also investing heavily in the new Microsoft offering, albeit a bit more discretely than Mr. Short's organization.

Another data point from which to triangulate here--the price point of PerformancePoint Server. As has been known for over a year, the $200/user, $20k/server price is far, far below what the other vendors typically charge for similar, or even the same technology. And in the last year, many of the competitors to PerformancePoint have been associating price point with sophistication, scalability, and feature function set--the old "you get what you pay for" mantra. The thinking goes that if it only costs that much, there must not be a whole lot in it, or it's just for small and medium sized businesses.

But if it is, when why are there 3000 Cap Gemini consultants soon to be able to implement the product? Cap doesn't "do" 6 day engagements, they do 6 MONTH engagements. So Mr. Jones must see a business opportunity here somewhere...