Big Changes in Performance Point Server and MOSS! I cant wait!

This is great for the SharePoint world! Last week Microsoft announced that anyone who purchased MOSS Enterprise with Software Assurance would now be able to access Performance Point Server with no additional CALs. I had heard about this sometime ago. But wait there is more

Performance Point Server is actually “two” products :
Planning Server – Supports the planning of an organization.
Monitoring and Analytics Server – Dashboards, charts, graphs and KPIs.

Microsoft announced Friday that Performance Point Server – as we know it today – will be “discontinued”. More specifically the Planning Server portion will not have another major product release. The key components of Monitoring and Analytics will be rolled into MOSS Enterprise and will no longer be a separate standalone product.

I have no inside information other that what Microsoft has posted. It seems that SP3 for PPS will ship mid 2009 but no more major releases for PPS in the current form. I have seem some references to Performance Point Services for SharePoint. This is a huge announcement in the Microsoft SharePoint community. MOSS Enterprise, with Excel Services, Integrated Reporting Services and Excel Client will be the DEFACTO business intelligence platform for Microsoft.