So Biz# gets a proper name at last…

 

There’s a conf call (which I don’t have an invite to, alas) later to announce all this stuff properly, but here are some links to press coverage:

 

UPDATE: I missed the conf call (even though I found I didn’t need an invite – prior commitments I’m afraid) but there are already some good blog entries out there on what was announced:

and here’s the official site:

 

 

I’m sure you all know by now that I’m prone to the odd bout of wild speculation, and here comes another one… A new flavour of Office has been announced, Office Ultimate. See

for more details. As this article says, it’s pricey and MS will need to offer new functionality to justify that price tag. Now we know that it’s the Office group that have bought Proclarity and what I’m thinking is that the Proclarity fat client tool would fit nicely into Office Ultimate as exactlly that kind of justification: $679 per licence is cheap when you think of what companies have been paying for BI client tools like Proclarity up to now (and you get Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc thrown in!), plus its inclusion will drive sales of SQL Server and the other Office BI apps like BSM and (perhaps) the forthcoming Biz#. Hmm… let’s wait and see…