Brings Advanced Business Intelligence to Microsoft Office Users
McLEAN, Va., (April 05, 2004) –
MicroStrategy® Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR) today unveiled a new product, MicroStrategy Office(TM), that brings high-value business intelligence technology to users of Microsoft® Office applications, including Word, PowerPoint®, Excel, and Outlook. MicroStrategy Office can significantly expand the ranks of an enterprise’s knowledge workers who can access enterprise data and enhance their work in all facets of business operations.
“By combining Microsoft Office productivity applications with MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength business intelligence platform, companies can now deploy a new spectrum of business intelligence applications,” said MicroStrategy’s COO Sanju Bansal. “For the first time, average business users will be empowered to serve themselves business information as needed, simply by using the Microsoft Office productivity tools with which they are already so familiar.”
“MicroStrategy Office’s potential user base is substantial. It enables new kinds of business intelligence applications by opening a wide new window for non-IT workers to enterprise information through the vehicle of the popular Microsoft Office applications,” said IDC’s Research Manager Dan Vesset. “MicroStrategy Office is likely to provide a significant contribution to the way business people use business intelligence, empowering any Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word user to natively access enterprise-wide data with the necessary consistency, security and scalability.”
“MicroStrategy Office represents a leap forward in making secure, enterprise data available to users in the context of how they really work. MicroStrategy is ahead of most of the competition here,” said Wayne Eckerson, Director of Research at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI).
MicroStrategy Office’s Benefits for Enterprises:
1. Simple, Transparent Window for All Enterprise Data
Business users require an easy and scalable way to incorporate business information in the day-to-day work embodied in their office productivity applications. An average business user, who spends much of his or her day using such office productivity applications as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, generally does not include enterprise data in his or her documents and work. In the rare instances where IT departments or financial reporting departments link Excel to backend databases, a very high programming and maintenance burden is required to make applications work and keep them working.
MicroStrategy Office significantly changes this equation by providing a simple, transparent window into enterprise data.
2. Easy Empowerment for Business Users – No Technical Training Needed
Even the most casual, non-IT users will be able to access the full depth of enterprise data through their familiar office productivity applications — as they need just apply the Microsoft Office skills they already possess.
* Transparent access to the full depth and breadth of enterprise data — fully secure data just one click away and without arcane technical terminology.
* Easy ad hoc query — simple query wizard provides users with ad hoc data.
* Simple offline analysis for mobile personnel — users can take data-rich Microsoft Office documents anywhere and refresh the data whenever connected.
* Personal scorecards and dashboards — users can create their own scorecards and dashboards using familiar Microsoft Office formatting skills.
* Microsoft Office style of collaboration — users can send data-rich “live documents” to colleagues and can refresh with the latest data pertinent to them.
3. Engendering a New Range of Business Intelligence Applications
By merging MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength business intelligence capabilities with Microsoft Office workflows, companies will be able to deploy a new range of business intelligence applications.
* Report design by novice users and extranet users — with MicroStrategy Office, organizations can empower extranet users to design their own reports without learning business intelligence skills.
* Performance reporting and scorecards — enable users to refresh business performance report books and scorecards at any time.
* Data-rich what-if models in Excel — easily vary the data that feeds Excel what-if models.
* Data-rich PowerPoint presentations — create PowerPoint presentations that automatically change their content based on the intended audience.
* Data-rich Word memos and documents — create Microsoft Word documents, full of data and all the annotation surrounding the data.
4. Leveraging MicroStrategy’s Industrial-Strength Business Intelligence Platform
MicroStrategy Office fully leverages MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength business intelligence platform and adheres to Microsoft Office’s latest Smart Client architecture — offering scale, manageability, security, enterprise-wide consistency for any database. MicroStrategy Office is a standard Microsoft Office add-in, unobtrusive to users and consistent with the Microsoft Office look and feel.
MicroStrategy Office is also a series of .net Web Services completely consistent with Microsoft’s services-based architecture standards.
“MicroStrategy Office takes another big step forward in bringing advanced business intelligence technology to the masses,” said MicroStrategy’s COO Sanju Bansal. “By continuing to set high standards for our technology, MicroStrategy again aims to establish a new marketplace standard for leading-edge business intelligence.”
About MicroStrategy Incorporated
Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a worldwide leader in the increasingly critical business intelligence software market. Leading Fortune 2000 companies are integrating MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength software into virtually all facets of their businesses. The MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM) distills vast amounts of data into vital, probing insight to help drive cost-efficiency, productivity, customer relations and revenue-generation. MicroStrategy offers exceptional capabilities — excellent scalability, powerful analytics, user-friendly query and reporting features and an outstanding, easy-to-use Web interface. Top companies are using MicroStrategy to cost-effectively harness large, multi-terabyte databases; empower thousands of employees at all operational levels; and extend the benefits of business intelligence enterprise-wide and beyond to customers, partners and suppliers.
MicroStrategy has over 2,500 enterprise-class customers, including General Motors, Best Buy, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, Yahoo!, Visa International, Wells Fargo, Telecom Italia, AT&T Wireless Group and Aventis. MicroStrategy also has relationships with over 500 systems integrators and application development and platform partners, including IBM, PeopleSoft, Sun, HP, and Teradata, a division of NCR. MicroStrategy is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol MSTR. For more information or to purchase or demo MicroStrategy’s software, visit MicroStrategy’s Web site at http://www.microstrategy.com?CID=2142pr.
This press release may include statements that may constitute “forward-looking statements,” including its 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 implement and achieve widespread customer acceptance of its MicroStrategy 7i, MicroStrategy Report Services and MicroStrategy Office software on a timely basis; the Company’s ability to recognize deferred revenue through delivery of products or satisfactory performance of services; 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; 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, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy Report Services, MicroStrategy 7, MicroStrategy 7i, MicroStrategy Office 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.
Marc Brailov
MicroStrategy Incorporated
(703) 770-1670
mbrailov@microstrategy.com
Source: MicroStrategy