This was an interesting post from Craig Schiff last week on b-eye. Craig is the former OutlookSoft CEO, and a BPM pioneer who now works for BPM Partners an independent professional services firm. Craig presented the results of the recent BPM Pulse Survey (here's a link to the webcast recording).
There's some really interesting content in here but unsurprisingly the thing that really caught my eye was this. Craig's summarised it really nicely in three points.
- More than two thirds of the respondents are pursuing business performance management as part of their corporate system consolidation/standardization initiatives.
- A similar number were not aware of Microsoft's momentous announcement last June about their planned entry into the space.
- Of those who were aware of the announcement, the majority said it had little to no impact on their BPM plans.
Now before you think this is just another post from a Microsoft guy defending his turf you're wrong. I'm surprised on one hand that there's a lack of awareness out there about us entering this space but as we approach launch as with all new MS product launches this will no doubt intensify. On the other hand whilst full-scale marketing/PR saturation is great for Vista and even Office when you're trying to emphasise that you're a serious player in this market establishing credibility is not always achieved through fanfare and banner waving and this brings me nicely on to my next point.
The majority of respondents suggest that the announcement will have little or no impact upon their BPM plans - and why should it, WE HAVE TO EARN THE RIGHT TO BE CONSIDERED cause we're the new kids on the block.
That said I think we've got a more than credible offering that will allow us to:
- deliver an economic advantage to our customers across Microsoft's entire business intelligence and performance management stack
- tell a really compelling integration story from the desktop to the database
- provide a platform (as opposed to a suite) that is designed to work together and leveraging (good-or-bad) the most pervasive tool for data analysis available today - Excel
There's a wealth of useful information @ http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/performancepoint/FX101680481033.aspx and it's my job to assist in helping us earn the right to be considered and for the NKOTB I still think we have a pretty good story to tell.
