MicroStrategy Announces the Release of MicroStrategy 9.2.1, Featuring Exciting New Product, MicroStrategy Transaction Services

TYSONS CORNER, Va., July 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced the general availability of MicroStrategy 9.2.1. The latest release from MicroStrategy features an exciting new product, Transaction Services, which allows people to efficiently initiate actions and transactions from a mobile device. Organizations can use MicroStrategy's Platform for Mobile Apps to create the mobile apps they need to stay competitive. In addition, MicroStrategy 9.2.1 includes new enhancements to mobile security and Visual Insight, which allows people to get the business answers they need quickly and without assistance from their information technology (IT) teams. Together, these innovations will significantly extend the ability for companies to run their businesses and communicate with customers on their mobile devices.

From Insight to Action with MicroStrategy Transaction Services

MicroStrategy Transaction Services is a new product that helps companies accelerate the speed and productivity of their businesses by building mobile apps that connect to back-end transactional systems and databases.  As an integral component of the MicroStrategy BI platform, Transaction Services allows mobile apps and web-based dashboards to include action-taking features, including submitting orders, one-click approvals and denials, notes for tracking and directing business activity, and write-back to data sources. Using either SQL for database transactions, or XML for web services applications, thousands of user transactions are stored, triggering new business processes, reallocating resources, and accelerating business activity.

With MicroStrategy's web-based design tools, and MicroStrategy Transaction Services, Transaction apps are easy to develop. No coding is needed to assemble app interfaces that enable data input. Users can design apps using a range of flexible input controls: text boxes, calendar and time pickers, sliders, on-off switches, and dropdown lists.  App designs are stored in MicroStrategy's metadata repository and are accessible via web-based editors. A separate transaction report manages the write-back, allowing it to be reused in multiple mobile apps. Furthermore, MicroStrategy's simple, click-to-configure application assembly enables companies to build mobile front-ends to existing transactional applications that may have little or no BI content.

"Our business analytics benchmark research has shown that being able to take immediate action on the outcome of analytics is a leading priority for organizations, yet one that has been difficult to accomplish in mainstream business applications," said David Menninger, Ventana Research, Vice President and Research Director.  "MicroStrategy addresses this need with MicroStrategy 9.2.1, which bridges the gap between BI and enterprise applications, and empowers business people to use mobile applications and mobile devices to connect directly to back-end transactional systems, thereby enabling decision makers to execute a wide range of real-time actions."

"MicroStrategy has reached a milestone in mobile computing with the latest release of MicroStrategy 9.2.1," said Thomas Ball, Lead, BI Platform Development at Starbucks Coffee Company.  "We are pleased to use our existing MicroStrategy Platform to build Mobile Apps that connect our business users to back-end operations systems, and allows them to interact with these systems in real-time from their mobile devices.  We look forward to our workforce taking actions based on analytical insight, and accelerating the pace of our business."

"We envision using MicroStrategy 9.2.1 to build a wide range of new transactional applications that will facilitate business tasks, such as entering organizational target KPIs in our corporate and departmental dashboards and measuring how close we are to attaining our goals," said Margherita Bruni, Business Intelligence Practice Director at AARP. "Executives and managers will be empowered to take actions and make decisions more easily on their mobile devices, thereby moving the business forward with a higher level of agility."

Distribute Multimedia Content on Mobile Devices

To embrace mobile apps as new information channels, organizations are embedding multimedia into mobile apps. Companies see the value of enriching their enterprise mobile apps with how-to videos, guides, and manuals to equip their mobile workforce with any type of information they need, and the tools to understand and act on that information. Companies are also using multimedia in mobile apps to deliver the latest promotional videos, commercials, and product endorsements directly onto their customers' mobile devices.

MicroStrategy Mobile supports displaying videos, graphics, books, brochures, and web content. A built-in PDF reader and in-app connections to email and a browser allows users to return to the same place in the MicroStrategy app after viewing the multimedia content. Changes to content are automatically updated in the app without any need to compile and publish the app.

New Mobile Security Enhancements

The security of information transmitted and stored on mobile devices is of paramount importance. MicroStrategy 9.2.1 includes the following new security features for the iPad and iPhone:

• Encryption: AES encryption is applied to data while in transit from Mobile Server to the MicroStrategy Mobile client, as well as when stored on the mobile device.

• Confidential Authentication Mode: Administrators can set apps to be confidential, which requires users to log onto the application when opening the application, as well as after a period of inactivity. User credentials are validated against the Mobile Server while online, and against locally cached and encrypted credentials while offline.

• Authentication with a certificate server: Mobile clients can download a certificate, used to authenticate the mobile device, from a certificate server. This allows administrators to remotely revoke access requests from specific mobile devices.

Improvements to Visual Insight & New Data Visualization Features

Released in MicroStrategy 9.2 in March 2011, Visual Insight gives business people a better way to analyze data that is simple, powerful, and fast. Data from across the enterprise, regardless of where it resides, can be accessed in Visual Insight, typically in less than 30 minutes. Insights buried in tabular data can be discovered by using highly interactive data visualizations, and without any support from IT teams.  Additional graphs and charts make analyzing data sets of any type or size in a visual, interactive way even more powerful. Visual Insight analyses can now be viewed on an iPad.

"We're clearly excited about the new Visual Insight feature in MicroStrategy 9.2.1, which displays highly interactive data visualizations that guide business users to uncover insights from tabular data easily," said Guillermo Ramas, Vice President at Novation, LLC.  "With MicroStrategy 9.2.1, buyers at VHA's member hospitals will be able to easily interact with all kinds of visualizations on the iPad or iPhone, and make real-time decisions that capture savings opportunities."

Visual analysis continues to get more powerful as more visualizations are added and are available via the iPhone and iPad:

• Map visualization has improved network graphs, location markers, and bubble markers.

• New image viewer and photo uploader widgets are available on the iPad and iPhone.

• Improved user interactivity in the Time Series widget.

• New Heat Map visualization on the iPad includes gestures to analyze data.

• Graph Matrix widget on the iPad allows quick comparison of data in a table of charts.

With the new enhancements in MicroStrategy 9.2.1, organizations can use MicroStrategy's platform to build hundreds of different Mobile Apps and mobilize their business processes, marketing, sales channels, and business intelligence.

"The new mobile apps that combine analysis, information, and transactions are redefining the way companies operate," said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy Chief Operating Officer. "MicroStrategy's leadership in mobile business intelligence extends even further with MicroStrategy 9.2.1.  These significant platform enhancements give our customers greater capabilities to deploy highly-secure, information-driven mobile apps across their enterprises."

For more details about MicroStrategy Transaction Services, visit http://www.microstrategy.com/mobile/transactions/.  To download MicroStrategy Mobile for iPhone, visit http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microstrategy-mobile-for-iphone/id376256699?mt=8.  To download MicroStrategy Mobile for iPad, visit http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microstrategy-mobile-for-ipad/id382821025?mt=8.

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:

Claudia Cahill
MicroStrategy Incorporated
703-270-2207
[email protected]

SOURCE MicroStrategy Incorporated