MICROSTRATEGY RELEASES MICROSTRATEGY 7

MicroStrategy Incorporated, a leading worldwide provider of Intelligent EBusiness software, announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 7, a completely re-architected version of the company's core intelligence platform. MicroStrategy 7, with over four million lines of code, represents a powerful advance for the entire business intelligence industry, allowing businesses to answer incredibly sophisticated questions of their data warehouses with ease.

MicroStrategy 7 was developed to meet key needs of e-business organizations, offering the ability to analyze the world's largest data warehouses, provide an easy to use analysis workflow, leverage an open XML based Web-centric architecture, and scale to millions of users. MicroStrategy 7 is ideal for building numerous applications, including business intelligence, eCRM, narrowcast networks, ERP analytics, mobile commerce and click-stream analysis.

"MicroStrategy 7 represents the most significant product development effort in our history, and we are excited about the wide-range of business opportunities for this intelligence platform in the Web, wireless, and voice markets," said Michael J. Saylor, president and CEO of MicroStrategy Incorporated. "We believe it is the most comprehensive and powerful product available in the business intelligence industry. The sophistication of MicroStrategy 7 will power applications that enhance the intelligence needs of companies across many industries. For traditional businesses as well as new economy Internet companies, MicroStrategy 7 should have a significant impact."

"MicroStrategy 7's superior scalability and extensible architecture make it a platform of choice on which to build next generation business intelligence applications and narrowcast networks," said Bruce Tomlin, Program Director at SPEX, a META Group Affiliate.

MicroStrategy 7 Platform Embraced By Customers Around the World

MicroStrategy 7 has been in beta testing since November at more than 35 customer sites and has been embraced by MicroStrategy customers across several industries. Visa International, Western Digital, Glaxo Wellcome, Ingenix, Premier, First Union, Marks and Spencer, La Caixa, Telefónica Móviles España, Energieversorgung Niederösterreich AG (EVN) and Carrefour are among the many companies turning to MicroStrategy 7 to gain strategic insight into their businesses.

New Functionality Satisfies the Intelligence Needs of Large Corporations and Dot-Coms

With the proliferation of the Internet and the strategic use of data as a business differentiator, MicroStrategy 7 is designed to analyze enormous data warehouses in the multi-terabyte range. While MicroStrategy has traditionally been able to scale to address the data analysis needs of the largest organizations in the world, new functionality makes it an excellent choice for Internet businesses looking to gain a strategic advantage through the use of customer-centric and click stream analysis.

MicroStrategy 7 has been architected from the ground up with the Internet in mind. It is designed with an open XML based architecture and provides an ideal mechanism to embed intelligence into every Web site. The platform provides significant new functionality to benefit organizations, including the introduction of Collaborative Analytics, the inclusion of software that aids workflow for any user community, and a high level of personalization and security.

Collaborative Analytics ­ Sophisticated Analysis

MicroStrategy 7 offers Collaborative Analytics, or iterative bi-directional communication and analytical cooperation between the data warehouse and the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server. MicroStrategy 7 utilizes the inherent power of the data warehouse to perform calculations and analysis best handled by the data warehouse, then the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server to conduct further analysis including mathematical, statistical and financial calculations that the data warehouse cannot perform. With MicroStrategy 7, result sets can be pulled from the data warehouse and questions can be asked and answered of that information while still remaining within the MicroStrategy framework. Through MicroStrategy 7's ability to efficiently pass data sets back and forth between the mid-tier and the data warehouse, organizations using MicroStrategy 7 are empowered with a comprehensive methodology for answering their most difficult business questions.

"Collaborative Analytics combines all key features of analytical processing," said Sanju K. Bansal, chief operating officer at MicroStrategy Incorporated. "Sophisticated queries that require a combination of optimized SQL processing and mid-tier statistical processing can now be answered on the fly, enabling organizations to perform calculations such as advanced statistical and financial formulas quickly. This is an important advancement for our customers, as an increase in the sophistication of questions furthers new types of applications that can be developed on this platform."

In addition to Collaborative Analytics, MicroStrategy 7 provides data set analysis functionality as an integral component of the intelligence platform. Set analysis enables users to create, compare and operate on discrete sets of elements derived from transaction-level data to obtain insights about customer behavior, sales analysis and internal operations. The set analysis functionality can be applied to the entire data in the data warehouse and used for any analysis by any end user, a new capability enabled by the MicroStrategy 7 architecture. For example, MicroStrategy 7 could help an electronics merchandiser, either online or bricks and mortar, determine what type of customer is buying a certain type of television, and which other related items are being bought by that customer. A marketer can then establish which customers have bought the related items, but not the television itself, making them a prime target for a direct marketing campaign. This customer target list can then be compared against information about the success of previous marketing campaigns to give a merchandising manager a realistic idea of how much merchandise to stock. This entire stream of analysis can be carried out in one single report.

"MicroStrategy 7 reflects the company's drive toward enabling organizations to embed intelligence into any application," said Bob Moran, Research VP and Managing Director, Decision Support Research, Aberdeen Group. "Using an API that fully exposes all MicroStrategy 7 functionality, the company has created an open platform that can either enable or extend applications that range from click-stream analysis to vertical solutions in such industries as retail, pharmaceutical, and financial services."

Investigative Workflow ­ Guides Users through the Business Intelligence Process

MicroStrategy 7 enables organizations to set up an analysis workflow that guides end users through a path of knowledge discovery. Based upon the context of the analysis a user conducts, MicroStrategy 7 can automatically provide the appropriate next steps to continue the business investigation. Investigative Workflow ensures that users never get lost in a set of data and enables even novice users to benefit from the sophisticated analytics to make better business decisions.

For an easy and intuitive user experience, MicroStrategy 7 includes Intelligent Report Wizards to guide workers through the question asking process. Complex analysis queries are presented to the end user as a set of simple business questions. These questions and the corresponding recommended answer choices are context and security profile sensitive so that each end user receives a personalized work environment that is tailored to their needs. For example, a marketer trying to determine a set of target customers for a product could be prompted to analyze purchasing patterns of each customer. The marketer could be then prompted to determine from previous marketing campaigns the most favorable method of contact for each customer. Intelligent Report Wizards could then guide the marketer to automatically create a mailing list of prime customers who are ideal for a direct marketing campaign and their preferred method of communication.

Intuitive Web Interface - Embed Intelligence into any Web Site

The MicroStrategy SDK enables developers to integrate, extend, and harness the power of the MicroStrategy 7 platform through a set of rich APIs that fully expose all platform functionality. Businesses can inject sophisticated analysis, scalability, and performance into their Web sites using the most accessible set of APIs in the industry. Customers and OEM partners can leverage this powerful development environment to rapidly deploy custom applications, derive structured content for their Web sites and embed analytical application functionality in their offerings.

MicroStrategy Web, a highly intuitive Web interface, includes many new features that enhance the user experience. Advanced keyword searching and easy menu navigation, combined with report formatting flexibility make it valuable for all levels of users. With MicroStrategy Web, navigating through sophisticated business analysis is as easy as surfing the Web. The all HTML interface with XML as the underlying framework allows the MicroStrategy 7 platform to work across any firewall and function within any application framework, making the platform deployable anywhere in the world and suitable for embedding into applications requiring intelligence. The XML can also be converted to Wireless Markup Language to support mobile commerce and wireless information delivery. The MicroStrategy SDK, the familiarity of the Web browser and the user-friendly MicroStrategy Web interface work together to increase the adoption rate of the business intelligence tool for thousands of enterprise workers, partners, and potentially millions of customers.

Personalization and Security ­ Ensures that Information is Both Relevant and Secure

As the volume of information proliferates, businesses are tasked with accessing and using their information to make decisions and provide suppliers and customers with relevant information. This must be done while protecting the integrity of the data and ensuring the privacy of suppliers and customers.

MicroStrategy 7 offers a comprehensive security model to ensure that all data and processes can be protected. MicroStrategy 7's rigorous object and data security ensures that an administrator can protect information throughout the organization and ensure that information will not fall into the wrong hands, while making sure that only information relevant to certain users is available to them. The applications and analyses they run only provide relevant information. Users thus gain a personalized work environment that provides them exactly the application functionality and the data that they need to perform their tasks efficiently.

Pricing and Availability

The MicroStrategy 7 platform, which includes MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, MicroStrategy Agent, MicroStrategy Web, MicroStrategy Architect, and the MicroStrategy SDK, is available immediately. Pricing for MicroStrategy 7 is on a per-user and begins at $995 per user. MicroStrategy 7 may be purchased directly from MicroStrategy or from authorized resellers around the world.

Power Made Simple - MicroStrategy 7 is packaged to meet the needs of any size user community

MicroStrategy 7 Personal Edition. For those who want to evaluate the Power of Intelligent E-Business in a cost-effective manner, MicroStrategy offers the Personal Edition, which exposes the functionality of the platform in a single user environment.

MicroStrategy 7 Workgroup Edition. For groups of users or departments that wish to take advantage of the Power of Intelligent E-Business, the MicroStrategy 7 Workgroup Edition provides the analytical power of the platform combined with the pricing to meet the needs of workgroup deployments.

MicroStrategy 7 Enterprise Edition. For organizations wishing to harness the power of Intelligent E-Business through deployment to Employees, Customers, and Suppliers, the MicroStrategy 7 Enterprise Edition provides the scalability critical for large scale environments.