Business intelligence at a whole new level promised by Microsoft and i2

The pair are to develop i2’s supply chain management suites on the Microsoft.Net Framework, integrating with Microsoft Office and the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Server 2003, SQL Server and Office SharePoint Server. Dubbed i2 Intelligence, the analytics software is to harness Microsoft Office as its main user interface. In fact, it will also work with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007, Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) technology and i2’s new-generation supply chain management solutions. Says Charles Johnson, managing director of Microsoft’s world-wide Manufacturing Industry Solutions Group: “This collaboration with i2 is part of our larger strategy to develop industry solutions that amplify the impact of people within manufacturing organisations to drive business success. People can use their familiar environments to interact with business applications and access information specific to their roles, helping their companies save time and money while improving supply-chain decision-making.” Microsoft and i2 say their development project will go beyond capabilities found in traditional BI suites – covering multi-enterprise information, and interpreting data down to underlying problems and opportunities. The goal, they say, is to deal with the fact of the need for immediacy so that users can quickly identify the causes of supply chain disruptions and see appropriate courses of action.