SOURCE Microsoft Corp.Microsoft Office System to Add New Business Performance Management Scorecard Application
New 'Maestro' Server Application Represents Further Microsoft Investment in
Business Intelligence and Helps Organizations Align Action With Strategy to
Improve Performance
REDMOND, Wash., May 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp.
(Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced availability of a private beta release of a new
server-based business performance management scorecard application. Code-named
"Maestro," the new application takes advantage of the power of the
Microsoft(R) Office System to help organizations perform deep analysis by
allowing them to build, manage and use scorecards and key performance
indicators -- all within an intuitive and collaborative environment. "Maestro"
provides companies with a broad view of business opportunities, through which
employees can better understand business challenges, effectively shape
solutions and quickly execute on their objectives. Decision-making happens
across all levels of an organization, and empowering employees with powerful
business intelligence (BI) solutions can help them have greater impact.
"'Maestro' provides Skanska USA Building with the visibility and tools
needed to improve business performance that are critical in today's
marketplace," said Allen Emerick, IT director for Skanska USA Building Inc.,
which is participating in the private beta program for "Maestro." "The
up-to-date views of our business enable us to home in on progress against key
performance indicators, allowing us to quickly identify focus areas and take
action."
BI continues to be a natural and important area of investment for
Microsoft's Information Worker Business, which is focused on helping
individuals, teams and organizations be more productive with the range of
programs, servers and services that make up the Microsoft Office System.
"'Maestro' helps businesses turn information into action by surfacing key
business data in the Office System," said Lewis Levin, corporate vice
president of Office Business Applications at Microsoft. "'Maestro' is a key
deliverable in our strategy for BI, bridging the gap between enterprise data
sources and the information workers who need to view and analyze business
information as well as plan, make decisions and collaborate with others."
"Maestro" Benefits
Dramatically enhancing the BI technologies originally released by
Microsoft in the Business Scorecard Accelerator last summer, "Maestro" is
well-suited to business scorecard projects for which ease of use, deployment
and integration with Microsoft Office System solutions are important.
"Maestro" allows a company to do the following:
-- Align actions with strategy. Many companies struggle to articulate
business strategies and align employees' daily activities with those goals.
Scorecards built with "Maestro" provide a reliable and pragmatic approach to
how businesses define strategy, provide information and access to employees,
and show how projects align with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and
objectives. "Maestro" allows scorecards, initiatives and action plans to be
monitored, managed and measured throughout the organization.
-- Gain complete insight into context. "Maestro" helps companies make
sense of their business data by putting it in the context of KPIs. Employees
can gain deeper insight by combining "Maestro"'s rich scorecarding
functionality with reports, charting, graphs and analysis tools as well as
unstructured data such as documents, spreadsheets and Web sites.
-- Collaborate on business management and action. "Maestro" provides a
robust framework for interpreting and working with business information,
allowing people to not only understand data in its appropriate context, but
also more effectively collaborate on group analysis and take action to improve
business performance.
-- Empower employees to monitor and deliver against key metrics.
Integrating with easy-to-use tools such as the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions
and Microsoft Office SharePoint(R) Portal Server 2003, "Maestro" empowers end
users to build, manage and use scorecards. At the same time, "Maestro"
leverages companies' existing skills, technology and investments to help them
get more value with less cost and time.
-- Achieve extensible functionality. "Maestro" offers a scalable platform
that enables the customization that independent software vendors (ISVs) and
systems integrators (SIs) need to extend its functionality or integrate
scorecards into line-of-business applications or other custom applications.
Robust Platform for Partner Solutions
"Maestro" provides new business opportunities for SI, value-added reseller
and ISV partners. Using the Microsoft Office System platform, the Microsoft
SQL Server(TM) platform and the Visual Studio(R) tool set, these partners can
extend the out-of-the-box functionality of "Maestro" with additional analysis
tools, and integrate "Maestro" as a scorecarding solution into
line-of-business applications. With "Maestro," partners also can take
advantage of the opportunity to enter a growing BPM industry.
According to a March 4, 2005, Gartner Analyst Report, corporate
performance management was a $520 million market in 2003 in terms of new
license revenue, and is projected to reach more than $900 million by 2009 with
a compound annual growth rate of 9.9 percent.(1)
"'Maestro' provides Panorama Software with a powerful platform on which we
can build enterprise-ready solutions to address the key performance management
needs of our customers," said Eynav Azarya, CEO of Panorama Software Ltd. "It
delivers a robust and scalable BPM scorecarding framework that will help us
innovate in the business intelligence market and create greater success
opportunities for our customers."
"Maestro" was released today to testing partners as part of a private beta
release. A public beta version is scheduled to be available this summer.
Estimated retail prices and final availability are yet to be determined.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services
and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
(1) Gartner Research, "Market Focus: Corporate Performance Management,
Worldwide, 2003-2009," by C. Eschinger, et al. March 4, 2005.
NOTE: Microsoft, SharePoint and Visual Studio are either registered
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