Due out in mid-2007, the software is designed to round out the company's business intelligence family of products by providing analytics and financial planning built on top of SQL Server 2005, which houses Microsoft's BI reporting and analysis tools. The CTP includes planning, budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation and scorecarding functions.

The second CTP, scheduled to be released early next year, will add the analytics software acquired from ProClarity Inc., said Michael Smith, Microsoft's director of marketing PerformancePoint.

The new software is designed for the growing number of companies that are seeking BI applications from a single vendor, using the SQL database and Microsoft Office front end they are comfortable using, he said.