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MicroStrategy Unveils MicroStrategy Office
Brings Advanced Business Intelligence to Microsoft Office Users
McLEAN, Va., April 5, 2004 – MicroStrategy® Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR) today
unveiled a new product, MicroStrategy Office™, 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™
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, 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 7, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform,
MicroStrategy 7i, MicroStrategy Report Services, 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.
Contact:
Marc Brailov
MicroStrategy Incorporated
(703) 770-1670
mbrailov@microstrategy.com