Background - Sometimes the company everyone loves to hate, Microsoft might have had its Google "comeuppance" in the last few years. At the same time, it has been investing steadily, supporting a myriad of Finance--focused software companies while continuing to make inroads with its own product set.
The Microsoft you might not Know - A steady acquirer, Microsoft has built or bought an impressive set of products in this area:
1989 - MSFT SQL Server 1.0 for OS/2 debuts
1998 - OLAP Services debuts, forerunner of today's Analysis Services
2000 - Great Plains/Solomon - now Dynamics GP/SL
2000 - Major release of Analysis Services (hits its stride)
2002 - Navision/Axapta - now Dyanamics NAV/AX
2004 - MSFT Reporting Services released
2006 - ProClarity acquired
2007 - Performance Point released
2009 - Performance Point experiment ended
2010 - SAP partnership for budgeting/forecasting tools
Early plans to transition the ERP packages to a common code base (Project Green) were shelved a few years back. What has emerged is a strong set of building blocks toward a business solution.
Enterprise Wins & Losses - In general Microsoft has succeed in becoming the tool of choice for many IT projects. At the same time, it is unique among leading "system" players in that it has no major services organization to Enterprise customers. Thus, some of its initiatives (Analysis Services, Performance Point) take many more years to come to fruition -- longer than many businesses can wait.
Related Practice Area
Reporting and Analytics