Assessing Sales, Finance, Human Resources & Competitiveness

McLean, VA (March 22, 2004) –

MicroStrategy® Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence software, today announced that Darden Restaurants, Inc., has expanded its deployment of the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM). MicroStrategy’s platform currently anchors 12 business intelligence applications across 17 business areas – assessing sales, finance, human resources and competitiveness.

A MicroStrategy customer since 1997, Darden Restaurants, Inc. is the largest casual dining restaurant company in the world, operating more than 1,300 Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, Smokey Bones BBQ, and Seasons 52 restaurants in North America.

Over 250 of Darden Restaurant’s financial and marketing analysts, operations and human resource personnel and executive management use MicroStrategy to track, analyze and report on profitability and marketing promotions, guest satisfaction scores, employee retention, as well as perform market basket analyses, inventory and scenario planning. Employees are able to determine, for example, the impact on a restaurant’s profitability if 50 percent of its patrons purchased an additional appetizer. Darden’s most recent expansion of MicroStrategy for its human resources department involves use of MicroStrategy to analyze and report on diversity data. In the future, additional human resources data from PeopleSoft will be fed to MicroStrategy applications to provide analysis of employee turnover and to allow users to combine HR data with financial and other existing data to look for patterns and opportunities.

“Being able to make these kinds of informed business decisions helps us add to our bottom line,” said Heidi Metcalf, Senior Project Leader for Business Intelligence Systems, Darden Restaurants, Inc. “We decided to expand our MicroStrategy deployment to include human resources because we wanted a single source of corporate data and reporting.”

“We’re very proud that Darden Restaurants continues to achieve success with our platform,” said MicroStrategy’s COO Sanju K. Bansal. “Many leading retailers like Darden Restaurants use MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength platform to glean valuable insight into their operations and make proactive business decisions.”

About Darden Restaurants, Inc.

Darden Restaurants, Inc., headquartered in Orlando, FL, owns and operates over 1,300 Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, Smokey Bones and Seasons 52 restaurants with annual sales of over $4.7 billion.

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.

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 and MicroStrategy Report Services 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 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