MicroStrategy Positioned in the 'Leaders' Quadrant of 2011 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms

VIENNA, Va., Feb. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the "Leaders" quadrant in the 2011 "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms" report.(1)

According to Gartner, "Organizations continue to turn to BI as a vital tool for smarter, more agile, and efficient business." Gartner describes Leaders as "vendors that are reasonably strong in the breadth and depth of their BI platform capabilities, and can deliver on enterprisewide implementations that support a broad BI strategy. Leaders articulate a business proposition that resonates with buyers, supported by the viability and operational capability to deliver on a global basis."

A copy of the Gartner report is available, compliments of MicroStrategy, at http://www.microstrategy.com/Gartner.

Over the past 12 months, MicroStrategy has introduced numerous major enhancements to its BI platform to deliver business information significantly faster and make BI easier to use.

MicroStrategy Mobile for the iPhone® and iPad®:

In July 2010, MicroStrategy announced the general availability of MicroStrategy Mobile, a platform that easily extends business intelligence applications (Apps) to the iPhone and iPad. Mobile business intelligence is a logical extension of traditional business intelligence, but requires even higher performance and the ability to serve even larger user populations. MicroStrategy's architecture is engineered to provide the speed and scalability to support the escalating demands of mobile BI applications.

MicroStrategy Mobile takes full advantage of the native capabilities of the iPhone and iPad to deliver an enhanced business intelligence experience to users. By leveraging the user-friendly features of the iPhone and iPad, MicroStrategy Mobile provides intuitive business intelligence that is optimized for the mobile user.

MicroStrategy 9 Release 3:

In the fourth quarter of 2010, MicroStrategy introduced its latest release, MicroStrategy 9 Release 3. The enhancements in this release include dashboards up to 2 times faster, a richer dashboard experience, significant performance improvements, faster startup for new applications, a new geo-mapping capability, and support for web services-based data. 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. This release accelerates BI performance with new algorithms that 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 addition, with MicroStrategy 9 Release 3, companies can get new BI reports up and running in less than 30 minutes.

Upcoming New Products and Technology Enhancements:

MicroStrategy announced an array of planned new products and major technology enhancements in January 2011. An upcoming new product, MicroStrategy Transaction Services will enable companies to improve the speed and productivity of their businesses by connecting mobile devices to back-end transactional systems and databases. Transaction Services will allow mobile Apps and web-based dashboards to be imbued with action-taking features. MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence is an upcoming offering that will make the MicroStrategy BI software platform available as a service in the cloud.  With MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence, MicroStrategy will host and maintain the entire BI environment, including servers, operating system, MicroStrategy 9 software and network. MicroStrategy is also developing a major new capability for data exploration that will allow business people to explore large sets of data quickly and efficiently.  The entire exploration experience will use simple drag-n-drop actions and instant user feedback, which allows business people to obtain the information they need with little or no direct support from IT personnel.

"We believe our placement in the Leaders quadrant by Gartner is confirmation of our commitment to understanding our customers' BI requirements and delivering pioneering innovations that set new standards in the market," said Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy Chief Operating Officer. "MicroStrategy continues to enhance its platform to provide even faster performance and make BI easier to use. Our latest release of MicroStrategy 9 and our new mobile capabilities for the iPad and iPhone are examples of our leadership and innovation in providing an exceptional user experience."  

(1)Gartner "Magic Quadrants for Business Intelligence Platforms" by Rita Sallam, et al. January 27, 2011.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" Quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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 9, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, MicroStrategy Mobile, MicroStrategy Transaction Services, and MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence 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.

This press release may include statements that may constitute "forward-looking statements," including estimates of future business prospects, the general release of planned new products, and technology advancements such as MicroStrategy Transaction Services and MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence and data exploration capabilities 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 extent and timing of acceptance in the market of the MicroStrategy Mobile application platform and MicroStrategy 9 Release 3; continued acceptance of the Company's other products in the marketplace; delays in the Company's ability to develop or ship new products and new technology enhancements, such as MicroStrategy Transaction Services and MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence and data exploration capabilities; market acceptance of new products; competitive factors; general economic conditions, including significant downturns in industries, including the financial services and retail industries, in which we have a significant number of customers; 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.

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SOURCE MicroStrategy Incorporated