Work Faster with New Performance Enhancements
MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 includes significant enhancements that make business intelligence faster for BI users, even at the highest scale of usage. Organizations today are faced with rapidly expanding data volumes and users, partners, and customers that need immediate data access to work more efficiently. MicroStrategy’s latest release can meet these expanding demands with even higher performance than before.

“The demand for BI systems to provide faster data access is scaling at a rapid pace and requires dramatically more efficient technology,” said Mark Smith, CEO and EVP of Research at Ventana Research. “MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 introduces enhanced performance and power to deliver interactive analytics that are easily architected, assembled, and deployed via dashboards and new forms of information applications.”

Faster Analysis
MicroStrategy’s new release includes substantial performance improvements that enable business users to perform speed-of-thought analytical investigations to answer key business questions in significantly less time. Organizations can now provide information to thousands of employees and business partners with reliably high performance.

New data compression algorithms in MicroStrategy’s in-memory BI technology enable MicroStrategy in-memory cubes to store up to three times as much data as before and thus provide users with greater analytical depth and breadth. Additionally, new in-memory query algorithms can deliver answers twice as fast. Testing at MicroStrategy Labs and at customer sites show that MicroStrategy’s latest release of in-memory technology can deliver up to four times as many reports as before using the same customer servers, with an average response time of less than two seconds.

“Organizations continue to be forced to do more with less – less hardware, less people, less time,” said Cindi Howson, Founder of BIScorecard. “MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 brings improvements to its in-memory algorithms that improve both real-time query performance, load times to OLAP caches, and memory required. While MicroStrategy 9 had excellent data scalability, the latest enhancements allow for more user scalability, even with complex analytic queries.”

Faster Web Interactivity
MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 delivers higher performance for data interactions. Testing shows that business users will see up to two times faster performance for their common data manipulations such as sorting, filtering, slicing, and calculations; and faster navigation, browsing, and searching. The code improvements cause less data to be transmitted, streamline processing, and use less Web server memory. As a result, MicroStrategy Web users gain these performance benefits upon upgrading to MicroStrategy 9 Release 2.

Faster Dashboards
MicroStrategy’s highly-visual, data-rich Dynamic Dashboards are significantly faster in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2. Dashboard users will experience faster dashboard load times and faster dashboard interactivity as a result of enhanced data compression algorithms and new rendering algorithms. Also, new on-demand data transfer technology will load data into dashboards incrementally, as users need them rather than all at once, enabling users to view the dashboard up to ten times faster.

Faster Data Loading
Creating in-memory cubes has been enhanced in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 to allow organizations to incorporate more data into memory within regular data loading windows. New data loading algorithms in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 allow in-memory data to be loaded 30% faster than before, allowing companies to load more data into memory during their batch window.

“The enhanced performance in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 will allow us to distribute more information to our BI user population in much less time,” said Joyce Vonada, Senior Vice President IT Business Solutions, Lowe’s Companies. “In our recent tests, we saw a 30% performance improvement for both in-memory BI and our most frequently used dashboard.”

Deliver More BI with Less Effort
As BI becomes more prevalent across enterprises, the workload for IT personnel expands dramatically. MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 offers numerous enhancements that enable IT staff to deliver more information with less effort, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership.

Easier to Get Started
Companies can rapidly create new BI applications using MicroStrategy’s Jump-Start Project. New in MicroStrategy 9 Release 2, the Jump-Start Project includes more than 30 pre-designed reports and dashboards that can be directly connected to existing databases, providing people with immediate use of their new BI application. Suitable for any vertical or horizontal application, these dashboards and reports can satisfy initial reporting requirements and can be expanded as more reports and dashboards are needed.

Easier to Architect
The ability to quickly deploy new applications is critical, and MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 offers improved capabilities that enable organizations to get BI applications up and running in less time. The new Graphical Architect features auto-modeling heuristics that make project setup as much as eight times faster for new BI applications, reducing the time to create BI applications from days or weeks to hours.

“In today’s increasingly competitive business environment the ability to quickly deploy new applications is critical,” said Wayne Eckerson, Director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute. “I am impressed with MicroStrategy’s auto-modeling heuristics, which make project setup far easier. As an enterprise BI vendor, MicroStrategy is up to the challenge of being as easy to use and deploy as newer departmental BI vendors, without losing its advantage of enterprise scalability and architectural soundness.”

Easier to Operate
MicroStrategy Health Center, a new product available at no cost to MicroStrategy customers, automatically scans all MicroStrategy servers to anticipate and correct system problems, and provides coordination with MicroStrategy Technical Support Centers. With MicroStrategy Health Center, system performance is enhanced through problem prevention and system uptime is improved with faster issue resolution.

“Con-way is looking forward to MicroStrategy’s new Health Center product that can provide our administrators peace of mind knowing that system problems can be automatically identified and resolution information would be readily available,” said Sean Devine, Vice President Pricing and Engineering, Con-way Freight. “The new automated administrative features in MicroStrategy’s latest release will enable our IT personnel to work more efficiently, saving valuable time and resources.”

Easier Dashboard Applications
MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 introduces major enhancements to its Dynamic Dashboards technology to deliver easy-to-use dashboards to thousands of business users every day. This next generation dashboard application, called “DashboardApps,” can contain an entire day’s worth of information for BI users within a single dashboard. Simple-to-use, DashboardApps do not require any training or special software to install. DashboardApps are self-contained dashboards that can be personalized for the recipients and delivered via e-mail before each work day begins.

“MicroStrategy is committed to delivering the best business intelligence platform and products, and providing exceptional service to our customers,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy COO. “MicroStrategy 9 Release 2 delivers exciting new enhancements that can improve worker productivity, helping BI users to quickly get answers to their business questions. In addition, the powerful new tools in our latest release enable IT personnel to deliver more BI with less effort.”

Conducted by independent analyst Nigel Pendse and BARC, The Business Application Research Center, The BI Survey 7 compiled the BI experiences of nearly 2,000 respondents. The Survey found that MicroStrategy had the highest Web Deployment Rate of 79.2%, meaning 79.2% of MicroStrategy’s customers reported that they have deployed BI via the Web to at least 50% of their
users.

                       BI Product        Web Deployment Rates (%)

                       MicroStrategy               79.2

                       Cognos Reporting            66.3

                       Cognos Analysis             56.0

                       BusinessObjects             52.9

                       SAP BW                      35.4

                       Hyperion Essbase            32.8

                       Crystal Reports             30.9

According to The BI Survey 7, BI applications deployed via the Web deliver greater business value and benefits than those deployed via client/server technology. Information reach is improved, and setup and maintenance costs are significantly reduced.

“Since the inception of this Survey, MicroStrategy sites have had the highest rates for Web deployment,” said Nigel Pendse, author of The BI Survey 7. “The MicroStrategy product line was designed from the ground up for large scale Web deployments, rather than being converted from older desktop or client/server architectures as other vendors have chosen to do. This provides an advantage for MicroStrategy’s customers, who report on far more data, to more users, and who are much more likely to be Web connected than those using other products.”

“We are pleased that The BI Survey, once again, found that MicroStrategy customers have greater success in deploying BI via the Web than customers of other BI providers,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy’s COO. “The Web continues to be a highly effective delivery mechanism for deploying BI to large user populations. MicroStrategy’s full-featured Web interface provides an intuitive array of one-click actions to make business users highly productive in their viewing and exploration of data.”

The BI Survey is an annual report based on the world’s largest independent survey of Business Intelligence (BI) and Performance Management (PM) users in the world. The BI Survey 7 is published by BARC (The Business Application Research Center), and the author, Nigel Pendse, is a highly respected industry expert and lead analyst for The OLAP Report. With over 1,900 users and consultants plus 365 vendor staff participating in The BI Survey 7, the analysis covers a broad range of business intelligence tools.

As a result of the recently announced acquisitions of Cognos by IBM and Business Objects by SAP, customers of these two BI vendors may have concerns about ongoing product support, product direction, and migration efforts. The MicroStrategy License Replacement program enables customers of Cognos and Business Objects to trade in their existing BI licenses for MicroStrategy licenses at little or no replacement cost.

“The big three former independent BI players have fallen like dominos this year, aligning themselves with application/database vendors and trading market heft for independence,” said Wayne Eckerson, Director, TDWI Research. “This obviously presents a great opportunity for remaining independent players to capture the sizable segment of customers who prefer best-of-breed tools versus an all-in-one stack pushed by aggressive account teams selling everything from servers and databases to applications and services.”

Customers of other BI vendors often switch to MicroStrategy to benefit from the increased performance, scalability, and data visualization that MicroStrategy offers. Several examples of MicroStrategy customers that have switched from other BI vendors are Corporate Express, La Poste, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Corporate Express selected MicroStrategy as its enterprise BI standard and replaced its existing installation. By migrating from its previous solution to MicroStrategy, Corporate Express was able to achieve greater efficiencies and faster access to the information they needed. Corporate Express recently expanded its use of MicroStrategy to provide more than 10,000 customers with an online reporting application, enabling them to run reports and analyze data related to their office supply purchases.

La Poste, which operates the postal service of France, replaced its BI provider and chose MicroStrategy to support its sophisticated Human Resource (HR) application. With MicroStrategy, La Poste monitors data for 280,000 employees. Managers and operational staff use the HR application to report on and analyze data to efficiently manage personnel objectives across key indicators.

Dick’s Sporting Goods replaced its existing BI installation with the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM). Dick’s Sporting Goods’ employees, including store managers, merchandising analysts, and senior management, use MicroStrategy software to analyze a 2 terabyte Oracle(R) data warehouse. End users are able to perform sales, category, and inventory analyses to more effectively track product sales, product mix, and inventory levels.

“Historically, companies have switched from Business Objects and Cognos to MicroStrategy when they ran into scalability roadblocks,” said MicroStrategy COO Sanju Bansal. “MicroStrategy 8 delivers high scalability with high performance. We have talked with companies who have been dissatisfied with their Business Objects or Cognos systems and want to avoid the turmoil of the transition and migration that will result from the acquisitions of these vendors. This replacement program is intended to ease the adoption of MicroStrategy by lowering or eliminating the acquisition cost of MicroStrategy licenses.”

MicroStrategy Mobile offers powerful features that enable business users to receive the same reports on their BlackBerry smartphone that they receive on their desktop, without the need for reformatting or retrofitting existing reports. Each user can design and save his own personal report preferences to ensure optimal viewing of even the largest reports on his BlackBerry smartphone. Reports can also be accessed while offline or when the BlackBerry smartphone is not within connectivity range.

“After evaluating building our own mobile solutions as well as other commercially available products, we found MicroStrategy Mobile to be intuitive and feature rich, and we plan to use it for a large deployment all the way up to our CEO,” said Len Nicolas, COO and CTO at Nygard International. “The fact that Nygard’s existing reports can be viewed on a mobile device without modification is a major advantage for both our Business Intelligence team and, more importantly, for the users. We are working on several different mobile applications for BlackBerry smartphones, and we anticipate that this will save us time and money. MicroStrategy has really set the standard on this one.”

“Today’s workers are on the go but they don’t want to leave their data behind,” said Wayne Eckerson, Director of Research at The Data Warehousing Institute. “Mobile BI technology is the next wave in advancing the delivery of analytical information to business users via wireless devices. Delivering interactive reports to BlackBerry smartphones and other mobile devices is the next step in making BI truly pervasive. MicroStrategy is on the forefront of this new wave with its latest release.”

MicroStrategy Mobile leverages the same security features of the MicroStrategy platform, as well as the security and connectivity infrastructure provided by the BlackBerry® Enterprise Server. MicroStrategy Mobile dynamically optimizes the use of network bandwidth, based on the quality of the signal and usage by other mobile applications.

“In the development of MicroStrategy Mobile, we focused on making the user interface highly intuitive so that no training would be required,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy COO. “We also paid close attention to underlying issues of efficient memory management, data compression, security, and network bandwidth optimization to ensure that MicroStrategy Mobile would work well for mission-critical applications at high scale.”

MicroStrategy Mobile provides mobile workers with access to BI reports on their BlackBerry smartphones. With MicroStrategy Mobile, business users will receive the same reports on their BlackBerry smartphone as they receive on their desktop, without the need for reformatting or retrofitting existing reports. The report manipulation features available in MicroStrategy Mobile allow users to view even the largest reports within the compact screen size of the BlackBerry smartphone.

MicroStrategy Mobile is designed to work cooperatively with other BlackBerry applications, including phone, e-mail, and text messages. The product dynamically optimizes the use of network bandwidth, based on the quality of the signal and usage by other mobile applications. BlackBerry memory and network bandwidth are minimized through the use of a compression algorithm that can achieve compression ratios of 10 to 1.

Designed for all levels of users, MicroStrategy Mobile reports are displayed in an easy-to-view and easy-to-navigate format, enabling users to review, analyze, and interact with important data at their convenience. Users can also access reports while they are offline, or when their BlackBerry smartphone is not within connectivity range. MicroStrategy Mobile leverages the same robust security features of the MicroStrategy platform, as well as the security infrastructure provided by the BlackBerry(R) Enterprise Server.

MicroStrategy Mobile is well-suited to meet the BI needs of a broad range of mobile workers:

    -- An executive from a large financial services company can monitor the
       organization's top financial metrics and make time-sensitive decisions
       that impact the company's bottom line while out of the country.
    -- A retail buyer can access merchandise sales data to determine what is
       selling and not selling in specific stores to support purchasing and
       inventory reallocation discussions with store managers.
    -- A pharmaceutical salesperson can review the latest market share
       reports, prescription sales, and inventory data to prepare for sales
       calls.
    -- A manufacturer's field technician can provide enhanced customer service
       on-site by checking the customer's historical service record and
       product availability before scheduling a follow-up service call.
    -- A marketing executive from a Fortune 500 company can evaluate the
       latest marketing campaign analytics while meeting with the advertising
       agency to make key decisions on future expenditures.

“We are excited about MicroStrategy Mobile and the many ways it will help us work more efficiently at Guitar Center,” said John Zavada, CIO of Guitar Center. “The reports are remarkably easy to read and navigate, even on the compact screen of the BlackBerry.”

“A large amount of business operates in a mobile world where the importance of taking actions and making decisions more rapidly is greater than ever before,” said Mark Smith CEO & EVP Research of Ventana Research. “MicroStrategy has introduced a significant step forward with MicroStrategy Mobile, where BI is now available in full interactive form on the BlackBerry, utilizing reports, dashboards, search, and other capabilities to simplify BI for large numbers of business professionals.”

“MicroStrategy Mobile enables executives and mobile workers to boost productivity and make timely, informed decisions while away from their computers,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy COO. “Users can intuitively access, navigate, and analyze reports without special training, allowing organizations to quickly put BI into the hands of their mobile personnel.”

MicroStrategy Mobile is currently in beta-testing and expected to be generally available in the second half of 2007, as part of the MicroStrategy 8.1.1 release.

With MicroStrategy, Corporate Express customers will be able to run reports and analyze data related to their office supply purchases. More than 10,000 customers are expected to use this online service, which will be available through Corporate Express’ award-winning EWAY Internet ordering site. Corporate Express customers, from executives to business analysts, will be able to view procurement data using at-a-glance dashboards and standard reports and by drilling down to transaction-level data for more detailed investigation. Corporate Express currently uses MicroStrategy to monitor business performance at the corporate and
divisional levels and to perform interactive enterprise reporting and analysis.

“After evaluating numerous business intelligence products, we chose MicroStrategy for this essential customer-focused initiative,” said Wayne Aiello, VP of eBusiness at Corporate Express US. “MicroStrategy’s data and user scalability, powerful reporting capabilities, and ease-of-use made it a logical choice for us. We look forward to giving our customers easy access to their procurement data, which will provide enhanced insights into their purchasing profiles with Corporate Express.”

“Many of the world’s leading companies rely on MicroStrategy to increase customer service, improve operational efficiencies, and enhance business performance,” said MicroStrategy’s COO Sanju Bansal. “We are delighted that Corporate Express has been successful using MicroStrategy and has selected MicroStrategy for their new online customer reporting application.”

WhereScape will deliver a version of WhereScape RED that integrates with MicroStrategy and enables users to easily create new data warehouses and data marts at least 30 percent faster, or in a matter of hours or a day, compared to traditional methods which take weeks and months. Not only does this make developers more productive but it slashes data warehouse development costs by as much as half. With WhereScape RED, MicroStrategy users also will be able to quickly and easily create meta data for new MicroStrategy “projects” that will help minimize the complexity and time to create business intelligence reports. A “project” is a mapping that communicates with MicroStrategy business intelligence tools on what data will be available to the users and how to access it.

WhereScape RED addresses the growing need for an Integrated Development Environment that supports the entire data warehouse lifecycle and provides enterprises with far more productivity, flexibility and speed in building, prototyping and enhancing data warehouses. WhereScape RED provides a complete and integrated data warehouse lifecycle management environment for data warehouses developed on Oracle, SQL Server or Teradata.

“The data warehouse industry needs products like WhereScape RED, which are designed to reduce data warehouse development time and maintenance costs,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy COO. “We are pleased that WhereScape Red has developed a version of their product that makes it easier for our customers to build new MicroStrategy business intelligence applications.”

“We are excited to have one of the world’s leading providers of business intelligence solutions as our technology partner,” said Michael Whitehead, president and CEO of WhereScape. “The upcoming integrated solution between WhereScape RED and MicroStrategy will provide a powerful data warehouse and business intelligence solution for users.”

Priceline.com selected MicroStrategy to enhance its analytic and reporting capabilities and provide greater insight into key operational data for search engine marketing. With the ability to obtain and analyze granular data, Priceline.com marketing analysts will have actionable data that they can use to improve the return-on-ad-spend of its search engine marketing campaigns.

MicroStrategy was selected by Priceline.com for its Web-based platform, data and user scalability, advanced reporting and analytical capabilities, and integrated metadata for automated maintainability. Priceline.com marketing analysts will run reports and perform analyses against an Oracle(R) data warehouse.

“We were looking for a business intelligence product that provides excellent query performance against our rapidly growing multi-terabyte data warehouse,” said Ron Rose, CIO for Priceline.com. “With MicroStrategy, our marketing team will have the information they need to make strategic, data-driven decisions to help drive business growth.”

“MicroStrategy technology is well-suited to meet the advanced reporting and analysis requirements of Priceline.com,” said MicroStrategy COO, Sanju Bansal. “Our platform delivers content-rich reports and analyses that are highly useful tools for on-line retailers, like Priceline.com, who are interested in identifying key trends and opportunities to improve business performance and customer service.”

DHL Express is using MicroStrategy throughout the organization for reporting and analysis of key business areas, including sales, marketing, finance, and operations. With a diverse, vast network and delivery schedules as tight as those operated by DHL Express, having a clear, up-to-date, and actionable view of the business is of immense importance. With MicroStrategy, DHL users will gain enhanced insights into their business, providing valuable sales and customer information by product and geography to better understand both key customers and service level performance, leading to new business opportunities and improved service.

A MicroStrategy customer since 2003, DHL Express has now expanded its enterprise-wide deployment across multiple departments, with additional applications planned for the future. Dashboard applications delivering information based on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for the many diverse areas of the business will also be deployed. These new implementations are part of an information strategy to improve data management, analysis, and reporting to enhance the decision making processes of senior and operational management.

“MicroStrategy is very proud to be helping DHL Express increase its business agility by empowering a wider range of business users with operational and financial insight,” commented Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy’s Chief Operating Officer.

DHL is the global market leader of the international express and logistics industry, specialising in providing innovative and customised solutions from a single source.

DHL offers expertise in express, air and ocean freight, overland transport, contract logistic solutions as well as international mail services, combined with worldwide coverage and an in-depth understanding of local markets. DHL’s international network links more than 220 countries and territories worldwide. 285,000 employees are dedicated to providing fast and reliable services that exceed customers’ expectations.

DHL is a Deutsche Post World Net brand. The group generated revenues of 45bn euros in 2005. Deutsche Post World Net is the world’s leading logistics group.

Initially, KB Toys plans to use MicroStrategy for reporting on key merchandising and supply chain metrics to improve the management of inventory from its vendors to its stores. MicroStrategy will be used to manage product life cycles, track customer demand, and monitor inventory levels through dashboards and exception reporting, enabling KB Toys to enhance customer service levels while improving return on inventory.

“We are evolving our approach to buying, planning, product allocation, and store operations,” said Frank Andryauskas, Chief Information Officer at KB Toys. “MicroStrategy will enable us to better understand inventory
trends, track product demand, and analyze the efficiency of store operations.”

“We selected MicroStrategy because of its scalability, user-friendly Web interface, and robust reporting features that help us to make fact-based decisions which impact our bottom line,” said Tim Armstrong, Director of Analytical Business Solutions at KB Toys. “MicroStrategy provides the ability for hundreds of concurrent users to quickly retrieve and analyze large volumes of detailed data and efficiently monitor performance of key business metrics.”

MicroStrategy teamed with Netezza and QuantiSense to provide KB Toys with a complete end-to-end solution for their data warehousing and specialty retail business intelligence requirements.

“KB Toys is a valued new customer and we are delighted that they selected MicroStrategy to support their growing business intelligence applications,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy’s Chief Operating Officer. “The MicroStrategy platform has the scalability and flexibility to analyze large volumes of transactional data and provide KB Toys with valuable information that can enhance store operations and give them a competitive edge.”

KB Toys, Inc. is the nation’s largest mall-based specialty toy retailer, operating nearly 600 stores in the United States, Guam and Puerto Rico. Headquartered in Pittsfield, MA, the privately-held company has been delighting children and parents alike with the fun of toys for generations.