I just got back from Germany after attending the PASS Europe conference. It was good fun as always and the standard of presentations was extremely high. Thanks are due to André Kamman and everyone else who organised it for making it such a success. Hopefully we’ll have another one next year? Bill Graziano has a picture (the one on the right) of me, Marco Russo, Allan Mitchell and various others here:
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/billg/archive/2008/04/16/Pictures-from-PASS-Europe.aspx
Both Marco Russo and I were impressed by Webdashboard, who were exhibiting:
http://www.webdashboard.com/
You’ll probably follow the link and think it’s nothing special. In technical terms it isn’t, it’s a web-based dashboard that displays data from Analysis Services; it’s simple to use, quick to set up and runs pretty quickly. How do they expect to compete with PerformancePoint then, you ask? Well, have you seen just how much PerformancePoint costs? It may be cheap compared to other non-MS BI solutions, but in the MS BI world it’s very expensive. Webdashboard is just €95 per end user and for companies on a tight budget who don’t need a complex dashboard tool I think it makes for a compelling alternative.
Hello Chris!
I have seen the demo but it seems that visually they have a long way to go before they get near the Dashboard Designer in Performance Point.
The point I was trying to make, and probably didn\’t make clearly enough, is that while in terms of functionality and look-and-feel they are nowhere near PPS they\’re not trying to compete on these terms. They\’re competing on price, for people who don\’t mind reduced functionality (which in any case can be looked at in a positive light as \’ease-of-use\’) and can\’t afford PPS.