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Featuring Transaction Services, Cloud Intelligence, New Mobile Intelligence Visualizations, and Self-Service Data Exploration
MicroStrategy today announced an array of planned new products and technology enhancements at its 14th annual user conference, MicroStrategy World 2011, in Las Vegas.
Turn Insight into Action – MicroStrategy Transaction Services
An upcoming new product, MicroStrategy Transaction Services will enable companies to improve the speed and productivity of their businesses by connecting mobile devices to back-end transactional systems and databases. This capability is expected to create a new genre of mobile applications that go beyond information display and allow people to efficiently initiate actions and transactions from their mobile devices. With MicroStrategy Transaction Services, companies will be able to capitalize on the emerging role of mobile devices as a universal interface and action point that connects their people to systems.
As an integral new component of the MicroStrategy BI platform, Transaction Services will allow mobile Apps and web-based dashboards to be imbued with action-taking features. In addition, companies will be able to build mobile front-ends to existing transactional applications that have little or no BI content using MicroStrategy’s simple, click-to-configure application assembly interfaces. Several examples of mobile transactions include:
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A store inventory manager using her iPhone to scan the bar code of an item, identifying the product as a top-seller, seeing the sales forecast for the item, and immediately initiating a re-order.
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An insurance claims adjuster using his iPhone to input a vehicle identification number, adding comments to describe the vehicle’s condition, conducting an analysis to understand the typical repair costs, using location information to find nearby approved body shops, initiating a transaction to authorize the work, and sending an e-mail confirmation to the vehicle owner.
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A division manager reviewing her entire group’s expense reimbursement requests on her iPad, making comments to various items, adjusting values as necessary, and approving/rejecting items for payment.
Cloud-based BI Solution – MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence
MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence is an upcoming offering that will make the MicroStrategy BI software platform available as a service in the cloud. With MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence, MicroStrategy will host and maintain the entire BI environment, including servers, operating system, MicroStrategy 9 software and network. MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence is expected to offer elastic capacity to meet the availability and performance requirements necessary for critical BI reporting and analysis, supporting both small usage patterns for departmental BI applications, as well as the high-scale usage patterns for extranet applications. With MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence, subscribers will have full access to MicroStrategy Technical Support for assistance. MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence is currently in beta testing.
Mobile BI Enhancements – MicroStrategy Mobile
MicroStrategy continues to expand its extensive support for the iPhone and iPad with features that help organizations create and deploy more powerful mobile BI apps. MicroStrategy is augmenting its library of data visualizations for MicroStrategy Mobile with several new ways to view data, including:
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Map Network Visualization – See how nodes of geographical data connect and relate to each other to monitor complex travel routes.
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Calendar Visualization – View color-coded key dates on a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar and select calendar events to reveal more information.
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Heat Map Visualization – Identify performance issues in large, complex data sets using a highly interactive analysis map that allows the user to color-code data by metric values, filter data, and add/remove business attributes and metrics for more detailed analysis.
MicroStrategy will also offer new high performance features in its platform that allow greater use of high-speed in-memory technology, which is critical for mobile applications. These new features will include the ability to incrementally populate in-memory data stores with new data, without recreating the entire in-memory data store. This feature is expected to be able to save as much as 90% of the time it takes to maintain in-memory data stores, and to allow companies to put much more data into high-speed in-memory storage. Additionally, MicroStrategy will expand its in-memory technology to support data directly from multi-dimensional databases, such as Microsoft Analysis Services, SAP BW, and Oracle Essbase. This enhancement will be designed to extend the range of data that can be used in high-speed and high-scale mobile BI apps and dashboards.
Self-Service Data Exploration – New Visual Exploration Features Planned for the MicroStrategy Platform
MicroStrategy is developing a major new capability for data exploration that will allow business people to explore large sets of data quickly and efficiently. With visual exploration, business users will be able to easily navigate to find the information they need, whether it’s more details, different comparisons, or different combinations of measures and dimensions. The entire exploration experience will use simple drag-n-drop actions and instant user feedback, which allows business people to obtain the information they need with little or no direct support from IT personnel. MicroStrategy’s visual exploration features will offer a wide array of data visualization options, ranging from interactive grids and graphs, to advanced visualizations such as heat maps and graph matrices.
The data exploration capability, which is planned to be included in the MicroStrategy Report Services product, will enable companies to set up large subject-area datamarts extracted from their data warehouses or operational systems, and allow users to find information and answers on their own. Business people also will be able to import their own data from their personal computers in the form of spreadsheets or small databases and use the data exploration capability to quickly analyze and share interesting views of that data with colleagues, without IT support. Individuals, workgroups, and departments will be empowered to create and disseminate information using MicroStrategy’s visual data exploration capability, and MicroStrategy’s security architecture will allow each person to see only the data that he or she is allowed to see, regardless of who created the analysis and who accesses it.
“We are delighted to present a broad array of planned products, technology enhancements, and compelling demos to the MicroStrategy World 2011 audience,” said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy Chief Operating Officer. “MicroStrategy continues to break new ground in the BI market with these latest innovations that enable our customers to work more efficiently.”
About MicroStrategy
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a global leader in business intelligence (BI) technology. MicroStrategy provides integrated reporting, analysis, and monitoring software that helps leading organizations worldwide make better business decisions every day. Companies choose MicroStrategy for its ease-of-use, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability. MicroStrategy offers free reporting software that can be downloaded from its Website, http://www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware. More information about MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is available at www.microstrategy.com. This press release may include statements that may constitute “forward-looking statements,” including estimates of future business prospects or financial results and statements containing the words “believe,” “estimate,” “project,” “expect” or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results of MicroStrategy Incorporated and its subsidiaries (collectively, the “Company”) to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that could contribute to such differences include: the ability of the Company to effect a timely general release of each of the MicroStrategy Transaction Services and MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence software and new visualization features for the MicroStrategy platform; the ability of the Company to implement and achieve widespread customer acceptance of each of the MicroStrategy Transaction Services and MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence software and new visualization features for the MicroStrategy platform if and when released for general availability on a timely basis; continued acceptance of the Company’s products in the marketplace; the timing of significant orders; delays in the Company’s ability to develop or ship new products; market acceptance of new products; competitive factors; general economic conditions, including significant downturns in industries, including the financial services and retail industries, in which we have a significant number of customers; currency fluctuations; and other risks detailed in the Company’s registration statements and periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward-looking statements, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release.
MicroStrategy Report Services, MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy Mobile, MicroStrategy 9, MicroStrategy Transaction Services, MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence are either trademarks or registered trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated in the United States and certain other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
