By Kevin Jobe on Thursday, June 26, 2008 2:55 PM

A nice listing of the system requirements for all components of PerformancePoint can be found at Microsofts site:

www.microsoft.com/business/performancepoint/productinfo/systemrequirements.aspx

By Kevin Jobe on Thursday, June 26, 2008 2:50 PM

The following are client prerequisites for installing the PerformancePoint Excel addin on the client machines:

Excel 2003 SP2

Excel 2007

Excel .Net Programability Support

SQL ADOMD.NET 9.0

MSXML 6.0 + updates

SQL Server 2005 SP2 Analysis Server OLEDB 9.0 Provider

SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services Service Pack 4 - Build 2174 for Client Systems (to use SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services as a data source)

NET Framework 2.0

 All files except the .net framework are on the Office installation cd, but don't install with the default Office installation.

 

By Kevin Jobe on Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:30 AM

From my experience with PerformancePoint, and how it fits with the rest of the MS Buisiness Intelligence suite, I'll offer the following:

PPS is strong in establishing standards and processes around the annual planning process.  The Planning component definitely can provide benefit to small and medium sized organizations that are currently using a spreadsheet based budgeting system. 

The Monitoring and Analytics component is relatively strong with the scorecard component, while the analytical component provides basic olap reporting functionalitly.  However, utilizing Excel or Excel Services via a MOSS can greatly enhance the analytics surrounding a scorecard implementation.