Some years ago I ran my own small development house that specialized in writing applications for small and medium businesses in my local area. Much like Vlad is often saying we had to do a sanity check on where the business was heading. At the time there were 3 key features that were on our horizon:

1. Big boys coming down the food chain. It was clear that the likes of Microsoft and alike were targeting smaller and smaller companies with their Line of Business applications. This would mean that our customers would be able to get 80% functionality for way less than we could build 100% of the  functionality.
2. Rent – a Coder expectations. Even then we were competing against the outsource world. In particular the expectation levels that they set. More and more customers were expecting to be paying outsourced prices BUT getting traditional quality, control and budgetary reliability. Shame it never works but that’s the mind set.
3. Technology Route March.  We realized that we were having to learn and assimilate at least one new technology every 2 projects just to keep up. Whilst we all liked new technology and enjoyed it it was EXPENSIVE to have to learn all the time just to keep up. We had to keep up because if we fell behind we would loose productivity which would put us even further behind the Rent – a – coders.

The end result was to realize that there were only 2 routes forward; massive scale up or pack up and join someone who has done a massive scale up. We chose the latter.

The point of all of this is that the technology route march is about to step up the pace by an order of magnitude.

Not since the release of the .NET framework have I seen as much fundamental change being released as is being let loose at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC)

Just looking through the recent channel 9 videos about what is coming at the PDC shows how massively the ASP model  cloud computing world will again be changing the way applications will work. Just watching this video shows the huge step change that is coming. An online scalable system with all the capabilities of a full scale business system, web services, databases and workflow.

All in all I feel justified in making the choices I did as only the big players can afford to maintain momentum whilst absorbing the sea changes that are coming.

PS. I am also in awe of the founding architects of the .NET vision that has taken the core concept through so many unforeseen changes whilst still being flexible enough to cope.  

I had hoped that this site on enterprise CALS which was pointed out to me might just hold some answers to the licenses and functionality for Sharepoint 2007.

Wrong, WRONG, WRONG!

It is saying that there will be a standard and enterprise version of the product and some bits on what is in each but not in nearly enough detail.

One interesting point is that is says you need an enterprise licence to use Forms Server. I have received information that contradicts this so I will have to follow it up more. This is a critical factor as I am pitching Forms Server in a Sharepoint 2003 environment and they don’t want to upgrade yet.

The worst part is STILL NO PRICES! We are weeks away from launch. I am pitching it as part of solutions as Microsoft want but I cant give any prices!

Way back at the Microsoft Partner Conference I saw a short demo of RSInteract. This is a totally web based report building tool that sits over SQL Server Reporting Services (2000/5)  and I was impressed.

Today I had a web demo of it again including the new OLAP report building in the new release. As always in a demo there is a lot to take in but some of the things I really liked were:

• It is very light weight being a pure web app.
• The ability to edit an existing report is very easy.
• The user can preview the changes without having to commit them.
• Multiple combinations of tables and graphs can be built into one report. This is a really nice feature.
• The functionality and UI has been broken up in a nice easy to understand manner.
• None of the underlying Reporting Services power and functionality has been lost. It is just made easier.

The down sides to this silver bullet of report writing are:

• It does not use the report models for relational data sources. You have to create and expose views for the end user.
• there is an additional cost over and above SQL Server Licences. That said when compared to other ad-hoc report builders in the market it is still cheap with what appears to be much greater functionality.

I have just installed it and will be evaluating it myself over the coming week so more later.

Does anyone have any experiance with this product or something similar for comparison?

I have just checked out the agenda for our annual client conference at the Hotel Russell, London, and I see that I have 3 X 45 min sessions on Microsoft BI products and futures.

Time to get the Lego and toys out. I think I need a new gimmick this time. I wonder how rusty my juggling is?

I think the conference is for Clients but in the  event that anyone really wants to come along I will talk to the organizers and see how space is doing. I know we were approaching the 200 mark not too long ago so I don’t know how spaces is going.

Whilst digging out some paperwork from my boss’ desk I spotted a box marked ProClarity. Inside I found a complete partner evaluation set for ProClarity 6 and a demo setup. Should be fun to play with this and be able to demo it. It will also give insight into what PerformancePoint will be delivering. I have signed up for the Performance Point beta but unfortunately that is under an NDA.

This is a Q & A session transcript with the corporate VP of Microsoft Office Business Applications, Lewis Levin.

I have not finished it all yet but it outlines the Microsoft Strategy for BI and in particular PerformancePoint.

It is a bit wooly in many areas with management speak taking over . I was particularly disappointed by this section.

PressPass: How does PerformancePoint relate to Microsoft Dynamics?

Levin: We’ve worked closely with the Microsoft Business Solutions team during the planning and development of PerformancePoint. The Microsoft Dynamics roadmap includes plans to take advantage of and integrate with PerformancePoint by tailoring it for the specific needs of Microsoft Dynamics customers, including specific efforts to ensure that the functionality and capabilities found in present Microsoft Dynamics BI solutions are integrated with and available as part of PerformancePoint.

It is my contention that the primary way that this will get infront of users is as a value added proposition to Dynamics sales and to existing Dynamics users. This deserves more than a couple of lines of management babble and some concrete road maps.