What Were You Doing One Year Ago?

I know this post is a day early, but January 23rd falls on a Saturday this year so I figured I would post it now.  For most people it was an average day, but if you were a Microsoft B.I. partner who was heavily invested in the Planning components of PerformancePoint Server 2007, then January 23rd is a day that is probably etched in your memory.

As it happened, a couple days before I got a call from a contact who wanted to give us a heads-up that there was going to be an announcement about PerformancePoint that would effect  Planning partners.  The problem was that they didn’t know what it was or if it was good news or bad news.   That whole day we tried to brainstorm what the announcement would be and we came up with quite a few theories:

The Reality of Managing Hierarchies

When building a solution, whether it be on the analytical side or on the planning side you are going to have to bring in data from one or more host systems.   In real life, odds are that some of these systems will not have pre-built cubes or the pre-developed cubes will not meet your needs and and you will have to either create from new or modify existing.

Now creating cubes is not big of a deal and if you are not comfortable using BIDS there are various 3rd party products that are designed to help facilitate the creation of cubes.    However, what can cause you headaches is the long-term management of dimension hierarchies.  Specifically the management of hierarchies that tend to change on a regular basis such as natural accounts, products, sales staff, customers, etc. 

B.I. Conference 2010

The good news is that the registration for the 2010 BI Conference is now open!   The bad news is that it is in New Orléans in June — can you say hot and muggy?   Regardless, I am happy that after a year long hiatus the conference is back.  Here is hoping for a rush on the registrations and a huge waiting list.  Maybe if they get a large enough interest in the conference Microsoft can be convinced to hold it every year and not every other year.  

See you in the Big Easy.

Heat/Tree Map Add-On for SharePoint 2010

With PerformancePoint Services 2010, Microsoft has removed some functionality that was available to us via the ProClarity components – Heat/Tree Maps and Scatter Diagrams.  

So my question  to all of you is that if someone developed a Silverlight Heat/Tree Map web part similar to the ProClarity component, that came with an interface to map into a SSAS cube that a consultant could use (i.e., no development work) and that would work with SharePoint 2010 would you buy it?  We know it can be done and if there is a market for it we might be willing to create a for-resale product.  

And, assuming the web part allowed unlimited usage within a single SharePoint deployment, how much would you be willing to pay?   Keep in mind that this would be (in the first release) a stand-alone webpart and not fully integrated with PerformancePoint Services.

So if it is something that might interest you, either post a comment here or drop me a line and if we get enough interest we might take on the project.