In order to address the analytics shortfall in PerformancePoint Server, Microsoft
is keeping the ProClarity product line alive for the time being. Customers who
purchase a license of PerformancePoint server will also get a license for ProClarity.
Customers interested in using PerformancePoint Server for analytics will almost
certainly install and use the ProClarity Analytics Server, and Microsoft has added
a report type in PerformancePoint Server that ties to a report, called a view in
ProClarity Analytics Server.
26 B u s i n e s s I n t e l l i g e n c e w i t h M i c r o s o f t O f f i c e P e r f o r m a n c e P o i n t S e r v e r 2 0 0 7
The ProClarity tools represent true analytics applications, offering basically
unlimited abilities to work with the data in Analysis Services cubes. The rich
graphical capabilities of the ProClarity tools are unmatched by any other tool. The
capabilities of Excel 2007 are arguably better at dealing with grid data, but the charts
in ProClarity are extremely powerful and flexible.
A complete discussion of the ProClarity applications could be a book unto itself,
but I discuss the basics of performing analysis with ProClarity in Chapter 6. Figure 2-3
shows an example of some of the graphical capabilities of ProClarity.
Planning with PerformancePoint Server
The planning functionality of PerformancePoint Server is completely new
functionality from Microsoft. This module was developed from the ground up to
meet the needs of business in performing their planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
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