Microsoft to expand BI plan

02.06.2006
Microsoft Corp. next week plans to unveil an updated business intelligence strategy that includes its first business process management (BPM) offerings.

The BPM family will feature new dashboard tools and analytic applications for budgeting, planning and other financial tasks, analysts said.

Microsoft will also announce plans for shipping the visualization tools gained with its acquisition of ProClarity Corp. in April, analysts said.

Some of the products will be available later this year while others will ship next year, an analyst said.

Even before Microsoft's updated business intelligence plans were unveiled, some users had already replaced traditional BI tools with SQL Server 2005-based BI tools, citing simplicity and low cost as drivers.

Goulds Pumps Inc., a subsidiary of ITT Industries Inc., this week began to move all of its 2,000 internal users to Reporting Services 2005, the reporting tool in SQL Server 2005, said systems analyst and database administrator Christopher Bellizzi.