Sounding Off On BPMSounding Off On BPM

Business performance management customers are less than thrilled with their BPM tools, according to a study from consultancy BPM Partners that I recently discussed in this column. I decided to poll Business Intelligence Pipeline readers to gauge your satisfaction with performance management tools, and you returned some interesting answers.

Readers expressed a broad plurality of opinion on whether their performance management tools were up to snuff. Fourteen percent rated their overall satisfaction as "excellent," with another 18 percent calling it "good." A fifth of respondents rated their tools as "poor." More than a third of respondents -- 36 percent -- said they don't use business performance management tools at their organizations. The remaining 12 percent said they've experienced "fair" levels of satisfaction.

Granted, our online polls aren't scientific. But I've found more than once that they reliably indicate which way the BI winds are blowing. A fifth of businesses regarding their BPM deployments as failures is no catastrophe for vendors, but it's not good news either. When a follow-up satisfaction study comes out--and I'm sure it will--we'll keep you in the loop.

Quick change of topic: Every now and again we like to call your attention to a story from one of our sister sites that you might find interesting, even if it's not necessarily about business intelligence. Microsoft has been in the BI news a lot lately for its planned real-time reporting server, code-named "Maestro." Another highly anticipated debut from Microsoft is its Longhorn operating system, and our colleagues at Desktop Pipeline have posted pictures of Longhorn's actual appearance. If you're curious, get a first look at the system's new user interface and graphics changes.