MicroStrategy Announces General Availability of MicroStrategy 9 Release 3

VIENNA, Va., Nov. 4, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 9 Release 3. The latest release of the MicroStrategy platform was made generally available on October 15, 2010.

MicroStrategy 9 Release 3 features enhancements that deliver business information significantly faster and make BI easier to use.  The latest MicroStrategy release provides:

• Dashboards up to 2 times faster
• Richer dashboard experience
• Significant performance enhancements
• Faster startup for new applications
• New geo-mapping capability
• Support for web services-based data

Dashboards Up to 2 Times Faster

MicroStrategy's highly-visual dashboards display a tremendous amount of information in an easy-to-use and compelling manner. With MicroStrategy 9 Release 3, typical dashboards can contain up to 3 times more data, run up to 2 times faster, and respond to user interactions up to 5 times faster than previously.  Performance tests have shown a 4.2 MB dashboard reduced in size to 0.8 MB, and a dashboard that took 4 seconds to run now runs in 1.3 seconds.

Richer Dashboard Experience

With MicroStrategy 9 Release 3, Flash dashboards gain increased OLAP functionality, including drilling, pivoting, sorting, and filtering to give business users greater insights into the data. Business users can also export interactive Flash dashboards into PDF documents to easily share them with others.

Significant Performance Enhancements

MicroStrategy software is engineered to deliver the fastest performance at the highest scale.  The latest MicroStrategy release accelerates BI performance with new features and functionality.

• New algorithms automatically detect when a report can use in-memory data sources to deliver reports, analyses, and dashboards up to 6 times faster than previously. In performance tests, a typical report request that took 7.3 seconds is now delivered within 1.2 seconds. In-memory BI now covers a broader range of sophisticated analytics, such as non-aggregatable metrics and nested calculations, resulting in dramatic performance acceleration of complex reports.  
• Multiple MicroStrategy applications are loaded in parallel rather than in a series, making BI applications available faster.
• MicroStrategy Health Center, which actively monitors an extended MicroStrategy environment, includes new diagnostic checks to monitor server configuration settings to anticipate and prevent performance degradations. Companies can upload performance-related information to MicroStrategy automatically for analysis.  

Faster Startup for New BI Applications

With MicroStrategy 9 Release 3, companies can get new BI reports up and running in less than 30 minutes.  

• The new Data Import capability allows business users to publish their personal data from Excel spreadsheets or local databases into the BI system. Once the data is published, users can immediately create reports, charts, and dashboards from the personal data and share them with others.
• New applications can be set up quickly using pre-designed dashboards and app templates that include layouts, formatting, and analytic workflows. Within minutes, a fully-functioning dashboard or mobile app can be deployed by rewiring the pre-designed dashboard template to the new data. Reusable dashboards can be used with the Data Import feature for even faster prototyping and development of BI applications.  

New Geo-Mapping Capability

MicroStrategy's latest release includes out-of-the-box integration with Esri, a leader in geographical information systems or GIS.  This integration allows users to see and interact with their data directly on maps using zoom, pan, drilling, selectors, thresholds, and marquee filtering. MicroStrategy offers geographic-based analysis by integrating with leading GIS vendors, including Esri, Visual Crossing, Pitney Bowes Business Insight, and Google Maps.

Support for Web Services-based Data

With MicroStrategy 9 Release 3, data from web services can be accessed and used in reports, analyses, and dashboards.  Web services enables users to access data from multiple disparate enterprise systems, as well as from cloud-based databases available over the Internet.  

"The new enhancements in MicroStrategy 9 Release 3 accelerate BI performance and enable users to get new BI applications up and running very quickly," said Sanju Bansal, Chief Operating Officer of MicroStrategy. "MicroStrategy continues to deliver on its commitment to provide high performance BI software that gives business people easy access to the information they need for informed decision making."

MicroStrategy 9 Release 3 Webcast on November 10

For more details on MicroStrategy 9 Release 3, attend a Webcast on November 10, 2010. The Webcast will provide an overview and demonstration of highlights in MicroStrategy's latest release. Learn more about the Webcast and MicroStrategy's latest release at http://www.microstrategy.com/Software/businessintelligence.

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.

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, and MicroStrategy 9 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.

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SOURCE MicroStrategy Incorporated