Microsoft Making PerformancePoint Planning Source Code Available

I have just heard that Microsoft will be making PerformancePoint Planning software available to partners (http://www.microsoft.com/bi/partners/default.aspx) who were actively involved in evaluating/using the product, at no cost.

This is great news. PerformancePoint Planning was a great V1 product and I think it would have had a great future had Microsoft continued to invest in it. It's a loss to Microsoft, MS partners and customers that the product was discontinued. Let's face it every organisation does planning, and if the organisation is large, you do need software to manage the process. I did blog at the time of the discontinuance announcement http://richardlees.blogspot.com/2009/02/microsoft-is-discontinuing.html

I don't know if there are any restrictions on what the partners can do with the code, but I imagine/hope some company will turn it into a V2 commercial product.

I really think the corporate planning market has room for maturation with none of the incumbent vendors (Hyperion, Peoplesoft, Cognos etc.) providing a ubiquitous product.