As we all know, our friends in Redmond have publicly declared their intention to "own" the BI market.
Their latest offering to obtain that ambitious goal is a product called Performance Point Server. 
Admittedly the name of the product doesn't readily reveal its function or purpose, which leads us to
the question: What is Performance Point Server?

Performance Point Server in short is a set of client tools (and a server component) that empowers
end-users to create rich business intelligence structures and reports without the requirement of
possessing data warehousing experience (sort of). The reason I say "sort of" in regards to DW
experience, is that even though Microsoft has done a great job in abstracting complex data ware-
housing concepts in the tool (by design), having some knowledge of data warehousing will most
certainly be helpful, but again not necessary.

While past or current experience in data warehousing is not a requirement to successfully use
the product, a solid background in accounting is. Performance Point's main bent is toward financial
reporting and thus, accounting functions of an organization. It's safe to say that Performance Point
is a tool to aid financial and accounting departments to get the most out of their data from both a
planning and a forecasting perspective plain and simple.

In the next series of articles, I will explain all the pieces and elements of Performance Point, their
purpose, and how they all work together to form a complete solution.