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John Edwards is the author of The Geeks of War.

The 800-Pound Gorilla Stirs

The rising corporate interest in business-intelligence (BI) software hasn't escaped the notice of the world's largest maker of corporate software. In May, Microsoft unveiled its long-awaited Office Business Scorecard Manager. Originally code-named Maestro, the software allows users to define key performance indicators and then view reports and charts that track those KPIs over time. The reports can be generated from a variety of databases or other enterprise-data sources.

In a way, Business Scorecard Manager is something of a throwback to the old days of formal BI reports. The software does enable users to forecast trends in real time, however. Thus, reports and charts can be called up whenever an employee needs to see a current view of key metrics. "Business Scorecard Manager is specifically designed for tracking a consistent set of metrics over time," notes Rob Helm, research director of Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Washington-based firm that tracks new products coming from Microsoft. "You might create on-the-fly views of those metrics — slice them up in different ways."

Of even greater interest, Microsoft is also said to be working on bringing improved search/analytical capabilities to what is probably the most widely used BI tool: Microsoft Excel. Says one IT-industry analyst: "Everybody has spreadsheets that they've developed over time to track different types of business data." Jury-rigging is hardly ideal, which is one reason Microsoft is expected to improve the search capabilities of Excel. Predicts Helm: "It's highly likely that the next version of Microsoft's spreadsheet program will have special features for defining and viewing information." — J.E.

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