I think Carolyn has a point. It is something that long term developers and DBAs know only too well. MS Access anyone?

There is a place for user tools (I am no advocate of the locked down business environment). There also needs to be an understanding that somewhere down the line instances of ad hoc analysis and reporting will become well known, required to be shared and reportable in a common and repeatable manner.

Just like with MS Access apps, I can see that some PivotPoint work will remain ad hoc (and so it should) whilst other work will go through a natural progression to being an IT department maintained BI utility for the whole business (or part thereof).

As an industry we should be embracing the self-service attitude of businesses and be ready and willing to rationalise, commoditise and standardise those parts that graduate to that level of requirement. That also means we need to understand that we need to keep our hands off the rest.