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Mcirosoft PerformancePoint is out

Official release

Launch site.

Lets fasten our belts, BI market will never be the same )

Signed &downloaded PerformancePoint CTP

Going to install/toy with it in free time.
And just before I'll be more informed, the current view is:
I think the strong points of Ms BI(CPM\EPM, call it whether you like) are:
1 None (or little) integration problems. All niche-BI vendors spend a lot of effort integrating acquired  products (for ex, Cognos with Adaytum&Frango, BO with SRC). And it's still a long way to go. And see Ms AX and Nav as an example of hard integration road.
2 Enterprise scale db & olap engine.
3 Special workflow engine
4 User-friendly interface (excel)
5 Strong brand\cheap prices
6 The possibility to develop add-ons and increase functionality by programming.
And the weak points:
1 The "integration" of SQL server, AS, BizTalk, Proclarity. It's easier, due to all .Net stuff, but on initial phase it just won't work (remember EPB).
2 No experience in CPM area, nor in development, nor in selling such solutions. 
3 The lack of concentration. Ms is so huge and wide-aimed, it just lost it's focus. See Joel's excellent post on this theme. And the update.
4 The possibility to develop add-ons and increase functionality by programming.

It's interesting to see how these statements will change after some product experience.

Firefox

I like FireFox a lot, and was allways disappointed when changing to IE to view Contributor applications.

Recent versions of IETab addon allow to open tabs, using IE as renderer, and, moreover, start contrib apps in FireFox tabs.

So I don't have to switch browser anymore. Hoooray?

Windows Utils

While ASP permission-fighting, discovered a couple of usefull utils from SysInternals.

Filemon --shows File System activity

RegMon -- shows registry activity

This is win vs lin to me. In linux it's all built-in, already there, you can ask kernel, monitor everything, w/o installing anything.

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