VIENNA, Va., April 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 9.2. The latest release of the MicroStrategy platform was made generally available on March 30, 2011.

MicroStrategy 9.2 offers a major new feature, Visual Insight, which helps business people explore data to get the answers they need quickly and without assistance from their information technology (IT) teams. In addition, the latest release includes significant new features that allow organizations to embed even more information in rich interactive dashboards and further extend MicroStrategy's performance at the highest scales of user populations and database sizes.

From Data to Insight in 30 Minutes

A new feature in MicroStrategy's core BI platform, Visual Insight gives business people a better way to analyze data that is simple, powerful, and fast.

Immediate Answers to Business Questions: In less than 30 minutes, business people can uncover insights that lay buried in tabular data by using highly interactive data visualizations, and without any support from IT.  Visual Insight is designed to allow business people to answer business questions on their own, avoiding the lengthy process of report specification and design. Instead, Visual Insight puts the power of BI into the hands of business people, allowing them to control the process and to get answers to questions quickly and easily.  

Access Data from Across the Enterprise: Visual Insight lets business people analyze data from across the enterprise, regardless of where it resides. Users can access data from a full spectrum of data stores, ranging from massive enterprise data warehouses, to distributed departmental databases, to financial databases, and even to data that resides on the individual's desktop computer and in Excel spreadsheets. MicroStrategy's web-based data import feature allows business people to import data directly from their desktop computers for visual analysis and sharing with others.  

Anyone Can Become an Information Publisher: Visual Insight allows users to create simple, multi-tabbed "insight dashboards" that can present many different views of a business issue. These dashboards can be saved and shared so colleagues can access them and benefit from the analysis. MicroStrategy's data security architecture automatically ensures that people only see the data they are allowed to see.  

Insight-as-a-Service: Because Visual Insight requires only a Web browser for its user interface, enterprises can provide Visual Insight to everyone in the organization as an internal software-as-a-service offering.  The combination of MicroStrategy's traditional enterprise scalability along with the Visual Insight feature brings the power of enterprise BI to the personal level, and easily extends that power to everyone in the organization.

To see a demonstration of the new Visual Insight data exploration capabilities, visit http://www.microstrategy.com/bi-visual-insight.

Richer Interactive Dashboards

MicroStrategy customers routinely distribute large dashboards to thousands of business people every day, and each dashboard may contain a wide range of data and interactivity to support the recipient's decision-making needs. The enhancements in MicroStrategy 9.2 provide even more user interactivity, more data visualizations, and more information content within a single dashboard.

• More Interactivity – New dashboard selector controls allow users to navigate through analytical workflows faster and switch more easily between dashboard information panels.
• More Visualizations – Business people can now analyze geographical data in their dashboard using MicroStrategy's Connector for Google Maps™.  Data can be plotted as markers on a map that vary in color and size depending on the business metric values. Tapping on a marker enables the user to drill to more detailed views. The maps can also include an "affinity visualization" that links map points with lines whose color and thickness depends on the strength of affinity between the two points.
• More Information – New pop-up information windows deliver additional business data. The information windows are context-sensitive when activated, so the data in the window is relevant to the specific area of the dashboard being viewed.  

Also new in MicroStrategy 9.2, business people can now access their dashboards using the Google Chrome™ and Apple Safari® browsers, in addition to Mozilla Firefox® and Microsoft Internet Explorer®.

New Features for High Performance Operation

MicroStrategy 9.2 offers features that provide even higher performance to end users and at the highest levels of usage. These features include:  

• Greater Use of High-speed In-memory BI – With MicroStrategy 9.2, organizations can stage more information in MicroStrategy's high-speed in-memory technology using the new incremental in-memory update features. These features allow companies to avoid refreshing the entire in-memory data store in favor of simply updating the changed portions of data, which frees up additional processing time and allows companies to pre-position even more data into high-speed memory.
• Greater In-memory Hit Rate for Multidimensional Data – MicroStrategy 9.2 includes a capability to automatically redirect queries to in-memory data stores when the data originates from multidimensional data sources, including SAP BW, Microsoft Analysis Services, IBM Cognos TM1, and Oracle Essbase.  
• Automatic Joining of Heterogeneous Data from Multidimensional Sources – MicroStrategy 9.2 offers the ability to automatically and transparently combine multidimensional data with relational data and retain full analytical capabilities, including drilling, sorting, pivoting, adding thresholds, aggregating, and adding calculations. Business people can now report on and analyze information that spans financial databases that are typically stored in multidimensional databases with non-financial data that is typically stored in relational databases.

"MicroStrategy 9.2 is focused on empowering business people to get answers to their questions faster than ever before," said Sanju Bansal, Chief Operating Officer of MicroStrategy. "Visual Insight and the other new features in our latest release dramatically speed data analysis and put the power of BI into the hands of business users."

MicroStrategy Webcast, April 20, 2011:

On April 20, MicroStrategy will host a live webcast, "Introducing a Faster Way to Visualize Your Business Data."  This event will feature new advancements that deliver visual insights to business users, as well as other features introduced in MicroStrategy 9.2. For more information and to register, visit http://www.microstrategy.com/bi-visual-insight-webcast.

About MicroStrategy

Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a global leader in business intelligence (BI) technology. MicroStrategy software enables leading organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make better business decisions. The MicroStrategy platform delivers actionable information to business users via the web and mobile devices, including the iPad, iPhone, and BlackBerry. 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. To learn more about MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), visit www.microstrategy.com and follow us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/microstrategy) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/microstrategy).

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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Contact:
Wende Cover
MicroStrategy Incorporated
703-770-1646
wcover@microstrategy.com

SOURCE MicroStrategy Incorporated