Planning Update from the Dynamics Group

So this afternoon we had a phone call with folk representing the Dynamics group.  We were asked to treat the call as if we were under a formal NDA and I will honor that, so I am self censoring what specific details I am going to discuss.   However, I am going to list information that I feel would not violate the spirit of the agreement.  None of this is really new but I do hope to add a little more detail.   Please keep in mind that Microsoft can always change their mind on this type of stuff.

The good thing about the call was that it was attended by some long time Dynamics team members including some I have known for well over a decade.   While I have not always agreed with all of their decisions in the past, I do trust that the people making them take a “business applications” view of things.  And when making decisions they try, although not always successfully, to balance the needs of Microsoft with those of both the client and the partner channel.

PPS Planning Being Discontinued

So needless to say I was a little shocked when the rumors I began to hear Wednesday turned out to be real with the formal announcement that was made on Friday.   My shock has since turned to anger and frustration.    

I decided to hold off posting anything until I had time to cool off and until we had our one-on-one call with some of the Microsoft executives in Redmond who run the BI arena.  My hope was to have some greater insights before I posted anything. 

Unfortunately the amount of actual valuable information we got today was ZERO.  Right now, they either don’t have any answers for us or don’t have any answers that they are able/willing to share.  This includes answers to really simple question that anyone who was in anyway involved in this decision should have been able to answer.  I wish I had more to share other than this whole thing has been and continues to be handled horribly.   My gut tells me that they didn’t think this thing through because a timely and rationally made decision would have involved being ready to answer basic questions and concerns.  I see none of that on Microsoft’s part. 

Our next call is with leaders in the Dynamics group on Wednesday to see if we can figure out what they are thinking.  I don’t hold out hope for that call.  Not because I don’t think they will hide anything, but apparently this whole thing was just dumped into their lap on Friday as well and how much of a plan can they have come up with in three days.  Our goal is to find out in concrete terms what it means to have a reinvestment in Forecaster or Enterprise Reporting. 

So for anyone who might care here are the rest of my thoughts on this whole mess:

Microsoft Layoffs

Layoffs always suck and I count myself lucky to have never been caught up in one.  My condolences to all those that lost their jobs today.  That includes some people who have been of beneficial to me personally in the past.  

So if you are looking for either a software product marketing manager, software product development manager or a technical pre-sales specialist who have experience in the BI space, drop me a line and I will forward on some contact information and/or a resume.

Time Intelligence Quirk in PPS Monitoring

Recently, a coworker of mine (we will call him Richard) nearly frustrated himself to death due to an “undocumented feature” within PPS Monitoring.  Here are the details:

We had been working on a fairly straight forward PPS Monitoring project for a client.  The main emphasis was the creation of a balanced scorecard tied to a corporate strategy map.  This client, as most clients, does not have perfect data.  Some of the data for their KPIs (i.e., customer satisfaction, corporate awareness, etc.) was not stored in any system, and other more formal data (i.e., revenue growth, etc.) was found only in the SQL Server tables of their ERP (Dynamics NAV) system.  To handle the first issue we decided to utilize SharePoint lists to track this data and for the second we decided to just pull straight from the SQL tables.  These choices made sense as they would work just fine, carried no additional cost to the client, could be implemented quickly and were easy to maintain.  So far, so good.