The most interesting part of the announcement is
Specifically, Hyperion customers will be able to use SQL Server Reporting Services to access Hyperion System 9 BI+ Essbase Analytics, and also will be able to display Microsoft reports in the Hyperion System 9 Workspace environment. In addition, Microsoft customers will be able to access SQL Server Analysis Services data using Hyperion System 9 BI+. Also, Hyperion System 9 will leverage SQL Server Integration Services for data access.
So, I guess, soon I will add Hyperion System 9 BI+ to the list of clients for Analysis Services at
http://www.mosha.com/msolap/util.htm. Microsoft and Hyperion while are competitors in the OLAP Servers market, have experience of working together. In 2001 Hyperion joined Microsoft in support for XMLA standard. As a Microsoft representative in XMLA council, I worked closely with Hyperion team, and it was very healthy and productive cooperation - together we finished XMLA 1.0 and built XMLA 1.1 standards. And I beleive it is that work that we invested into writing the standard, developing its implementations and doing vendor interop etc, that ultimately enabled this announcement. I am really happy about this development, as I beleive that such cooperation, especially on the standards, benefit everybody. And the customers, both ours and Hyperion's, will have more choice and more interop.
P.S. It is symbolic in a sense. I still have my "Wired for OLAP" t-shirt from 1997 which I got when AppSource announced support for OLAP Services 7.0. Of course, it was later bought by Arbor, which merged with Hyperion, and support for OLAP Services/Analysis Services was discontinued then. Glad too see it coming back after 9 years :)