Best Buy, J.D. Power and Associates, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse and Sprint North Supply Recognized at MicroStrategy World 2002 User Conference

WASHINGTON, DC, (January 24, 2002) –

MicroStrategy® Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence software, today honored four companies for achieving “breakthrough enterprise-class business performance” with their MicroStrategy-based business intelligence applications. The “Best Practices in Business Intelligence” winners are Best Buy Co., Inc., J.D. Power and Associates, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse and Sprint North Supply. The awards were announced at the company’s international user conference, MicroStrategy World 2002, in Washington, DC. The award categories and their winners are:

* Best in User Scalability: Best Buy Co., Inc.
* Best in Data Scalability: Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse
* Best Extranet Business Intelligence Deployment: J.D. Power and Associates
* Best Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence Deployment: Sprint North Supply

Best Buy, J.D. Power and Associates, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse and Sprint North Supply have deployed world-class business intelligence applications, and are successfully leveraging them across the enterprise to boost revenue, enhance efficiency and productivity, improve customer relations and increase their competitive advantage. These companies are gaining a better understanding of their businesses and customers, and setting new industry standards through highly scalable, enterprise-wide business intelligence deployments and extranets that reach thousands of users and scale to terabyte-size data warehouses.

“We are pleased to honor these companies, all industry leaders, for their exceptional business intelligence applications,” said Sanju K. Bansal, chief operating officer at MicroStrategy Incorporated. “Our customers consistently set new standards in each of their industries with MicroStrategy’s technology. We’re helping our customers stay at the leading-edge.”

Today, MicroStrategy congratulated its four winners for their technology achievements, and for making MicroStrategy software a critical component of their overall business strategy to become better, smarter businesses. Following is a brief description of this year’s winners:

* Best Buy, with more than 400 retail stores in the U.S., is the largest volume specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances. The winner in the User Scalability category, Best Buy is the first retailer to run over 100,000 reports per day employing MicroStrategy’s Business Intelligence Platform. Best Buy employees use MicroStrategy software to run anywhere from several thousand to over 100,000 mission-critical reports each day, against a 1.8-terabyte Oracle® data warehouse. MicroStrategy allows approximately 2,000 Best Buy employees to simultaneously and on demand view business performance data and perform analysis of sales, inventory, advertising, pricing and financial metrics. This analysis is leading to more effective sales strategies and greater business efficiency.

* J.D. Power and Associates, recognized by many industries as “the voice of the customer,” is a global marketing information services firm operating in key business sectors, including market research, forecasting, consulting, training and customer satisfaction. The winner in the Extranet Business Intelligence Deployment category, J.D. Power and Associates has become intimately familiar with the kinds of cars that consumers purchase. J.D. Power and Associates’ clients utilize MicroStrategy Web(TM) capabilities to perform real-time analysis and reporting. Power Information Network (PIN), a division of J.D. Power and Associates, is using the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform to analyze retail point-of-sale data for new and used vehicles, buyer profiles and other transaction detail. With the derived insight, J.D. Power and Associates is able to provide a clear picture of the automotive marketplace, helping guide car buyers with the most up-to-date automotive retail trends.

* Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse is the world’s second largest home improvement retailer and the 14th largest retailer in the U.S. The winner in the Data Scalability category, Lowe’s is using the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform to anchor its business intelligence applications. Approximately 1,400 Lowe’s employees use MicroStrategy Web to perform ad-hoc queries or run reports against an 8-terabyte data warehouse. As a result of using the MicroStrategy platform, Lowe’s is realizing significant benefits — including high returns on investment (ROI) — through improved merchandising decisions, more timely responses to information requests, cost reductions efforts and enhanced employee productivity.

* Sprint, with $23 billion in annual revenues, is a global communications company serving 23 million business and residential customers in more than 70 countries. The winner in the Enterprise-Wide Business Intelligence Deployment category, Sprint has deployed MicroStrategy across most of its business units, and most recently at Sprint North Supply. To provide the highest quality and reliability of service, approximately 3,000 Sprint employees access MicroStrategy Web to track financial, sales and customer activity in order to make decisions that improve business performance and strengthen customer relationships. More than 20 applications across Sprint — ranging from Human Resources to CRM to cross-sell — run on the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, generating as many as 4,000 reports each day.

About MicroStrategy Incorporated

Leadership in a Critical Market: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a worldwide leader in the critical business intelligence software market. Large and small companies alike are harnessing MicroStrategy’s business intelligence software to gain vital insights from their data to help them proactively enhance cost-efficiency, productivity and customer relations and optimize revenue-generating strategies. MicroStrategy’s business intelligence platform offers exceptional capabilities that provide organizations — in virtually all facets of their operations — with user-friendly solutions to their data query, reporting, and advanced analytical needs, and distributes valuable insight on this data to users via Web, wireless, and voice. PC Magazine recently selected MicroStrategy 7(TM) as the 2001 “Editors’ Choice” for business intelligence software.

Built for the Internet: MicroStrategy 7 is the Scalable Business Intelligence Platform Built for the Internet(TM). Its pure-Web architecture provides Web reporting, security, performance and standards that are critical for Web deployment. Within intranets, MicroStrategy’s products provide employees with information to enable them to make better, more cost-effective business decisions. In extranets, enterprises can use MicroStrategy 7 to build stronger relationships by linking customers and suppliers via the Internet.

Diverse Customer Base: MicroStrategy’s customer base cuts across industry and sector lines, with approximately 1,500 enterprise-class customers, including Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, AT&T Wireless Group, Wachovia and GlaxoSmithKline. MicroStrategy also has relationships with over 400 systems integrators and application development and platform partners, including IBM, PeopleSoft, Compaq, Informatica and JD Edwards.

MicroStrategy is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol MSTR. For more information on the company, or to purchase or demo MicroStrategy’s software, please visit MicroStrategy’s Web site at http://www.microstrategy.com.

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 possibility that the conditions to the securities class action and shareholder derivative settlement agreements will not be satisfied; the Company’s ability to secure financing for its current operations and long-term plans on acceptable terms; the ability of the Company to implement and achieve widespread customer acceptance of its MicroStrategy 7 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 7, Scalable Business Intelligence Platform Built for the Internet, MicroStrategy Web 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.

Claudia Cahill
MicroStrategy Incorporated
(703) 848-8600
pr_info@microstrategy.com

Source: MicroStrategy