PerformancePoint Launch Update

One more quick one before the end of the week... Alight, it’s time for this Performance guy to do a little bit of tooting his own horn. It’s no secret that PerformancePoint Server has hit the world with a bang, officially releasing in late Sept. I wanted to share some of the special sauce and give a glimpse into how enormous this launch really is. Let’s start with the technology preview program, since Feb 2007 it has had over 10,000 downloads, pretty amazing. Next, let’s talk about press as there has been a tremendous amount of news that has hit the wires in the past few weeks around the launch of PerformancePoint, here’s a small taste:

Richard Pends, OLAP Report, June 27, 2007 “There is now no doubt that Microsoft is deadly serious about taking a very big bite out of the performance management market. PerformancePoint has a scalable architecture, designed with considerable attention to performance, and early customer reports are positive. Indeed, PerformancePoint is reported already to outperform some of the established market-leading products.”

John Hagerty, Market Outlook: Microsoft’s Looming Impact on the Business Intelligence and Performance Management Market) June 27, 2007
“It’s the total Microsoft solution, not just the BI/PM products... While some competitors will dismiss Microsoft products as not scalable or lacking functionality, that assessment is short-sighted.”

And finally lets talk about execution, if you’ve been wondering why this performance guy has been so quiet lately it’s not because Van Halen is back together, although that would have been a good guess. The tour at large is over 50 cities and globally, here’s a flavor for what’s happening in the US alone:

20-Sep New York
9-Oct Chicago
17-Oct Milwaukee
25-Oct Reston
1-Nov Honolulu
6-Nov Pittsburgh
6-Nov Houston
7-Nov Kansas City
7-Nov San Francisco
7-Nov San Diego
7-Nov Seattle
8-Nov Houston
8-Nov Bloomington
9-Nov San Antonio
9-Nov Dallas
13-Nov Omaha
14-Nov Seattle
14-Nov Nashville
14-Nov St Louis
15-Nov Boston
15-Nov Overland Park
27-Nov Downers Grove
28-Nov Madison
28-Nov Des Moines
28-Nov Reston
29-Nov Omaha
4-Dec Columbus

4-Dec Atlanta
6-Dec Cleveland
6-Dec Los Angeles

PerformancePoint--Oh it's on...It's ON!!!

Gin up the ole PR machine, get your analyst briefing scorecards out, and start standing in line now for one of 1,000,000,000 field events (90% of them planned by Performance Guy Nic) around the world supporting the PerformancePoint Server launch later this fall. You thought the Paris Hilton coverage was a bit much--trust us, she's got nothing on our friends up in Redmond.

Our good friend Russell Damske from the B EYE (get it) network gives us an early preview, and trust me, this is only the beginning. (OK we've really never met Russell but we're sure he'd be a good friend if we knew him).

We're seriously thinking of live blogging the whole launch event here at Performance Guys, we're that excited. Not like Steve Ballmer excited, but very excited--more like Japanese funny dance excited.

PS--Nic is the one in the middle--