Today, in a message to the Business Intelligence Partner Community, Microsoft announced a major change in the alignment of the BI flagship product, Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server. The net-net of the announcement is:

• Supporting the democratization of BI (aka BI for the masses) with the consolidation of PerformancePoint Server Monitoring and Analytics functions into Office SharePoint Server Enterprise. The new capabilities will be called PerformancePoint Services.
• As I read the announcement, PerformancePoint Planning has been put out of our misery. Service Pack 3 will represent the end of the line for investment in a stand-alone PPS Planning product.

The impact of this announcement for the BI market in 2009 is vast. Consider each and every SharePoint Enterprise Edition customer as a first-order PerformancePoint monitoring and analytics customer. This ties right back to the strategy of encouraging customers to use the software they own, with their data to create value.

The details of the announcement can be seen in a video starring Guy Weismantel on microsoft.com/bi.