MicroStrategy Announces Beta Release of New SaaS Business Intelligence Offering, Based on Existing MicroStrategy Cloud Platform

- MicroStrategy Cloud Express Service Enables Companies to Securely Deliver Personalized Business Analysis to Groups of Any Size in Minutes, without Large-Scale IT Investment

AMSTERDAM, July 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- MicroStrategy® Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence (BI) software, today announced the beta release of MicroStrategy Cloud Express, the only SaaS-based BI solution that enables anyone – regardless of organizational size or technical skill – to automate publication of personalized, pixel-perfect reports and dashboards to any size group, up to hundreds of thousands of recipients.

The addition of MicroStrategy Cloud Express adds a new service level to the MicroStrategy Cloud, which first became available in 2011 with Personal and Platform service options. MicroStrategy Cloud now includes three distinct services:

• Personal. With free Personal service, anyone can experience the power of MicroStrategy business intelligence in the cloud, simply by creating a free account, uploading their data, and then analyzing it using rich interactive visualizations with just a few clicks. Users can then quickly share insights with colleagues or friends in a matter of minutes.
• Platform. Platform service is based on a tightly integrated, highly optimized infrastructure that combines the latest MicroStrategy business intelligence software, plus its analytical database as well as data integration hardware and software from best-of-breed partners. A one-stop-shop for enterprise BI needs, the full MicroStrategy Cloud Platform is available as a managed service to companies that need to utilize the full power of enterprise business intelligence, quickly build and deliver enterprise mobile apps, or harness the potential of Big Data analytics. Both Personal and Express services are based on MicroStrategy's Cloud Platform.
• Express. MicroStrategy's new Express service extends the Personal experience to enable subscribers to automatically build, schedule, and deliver customized analytics and other content to any number of recipients based on their organizational role or privileges. Subscribers can quickly get started, get results, and start publishing their data and insights. Recipients can access pixel-perfect reports or interact with dashboards and other content through a secure, high-performance mobile application experience.

MicroStrategy Cloud Express will be released as a subscription-based service. Subscribers only pay for the services they consume each month, so it's easy for organizations to start small and grow their implementation over time. Subscribers will also be able to transition to full Platform services if they require additional functionality not included in Express. Organizations can move from the MicroStrategy Cloud service to an on-premise solution if they desire. This approach gives businesses the flexibility to get started quickly and grow organically, yet gives IT departments the option to take an active role to support new solution requirements or closely manage the system for security, governance, compliance, or other needs.

"MicroStrategy Cloud Express brings extremely powerful analytical and reporting features together with unprecedented ease of use," said Sanju K. Bansal, MicroStrategy Chief Operating Officer. "The new Express service will change the way organizations approach data publishing, liberating them from the usual time and budget-related constraints."

Please visit the MicroStrategy Cloud website for a detailed comparison of all MicroStrategy Cloud services, including Personal, Platform, and Express. 

To view a video about MicroStrategy Cloud, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmxvYXvUEKE.

New Express Service Transforms Data Distribution and Consumption

The mass distribution of personalized, pixel-perfect reports is one of the most powerful and productive applications of enterprise business intelligence technology. Yet, because deployment of such mass reporting solutions generally requires large IT investment and significant custom application development work, this use case remains limited to the largest businesses with the biggest budgets.

MicroStrategy Cloud Express delivers an innovative approach that finally makes powerful personalized data publishing faster and more cost-effective while dramatically reducing its technical complexity. With the new Express Delivery functionality, Express subscribers can quickly build pixel-perfect documents and reports designed for mass distribution. MicroStrategy has streamlined the process of adding personalization in these reports. Any user with minimal training can create distributions targeted to individual recipients based on factors, such as organizational role, geographic location, or other criteria. These Express distributions are easy to set up and can quickly be configured for recurrence on a scheduled basis.

Organizations can also use the Express service to publish analytics and content to recipients via a native iPad app. A simple template-based approach makes it easy for any Express subscriber to build a mobile app in minutes. The app will enable recipients to quickly tap into MicroStrategy dashboards and reports, as well as other relevant content, such as videos, presentations, or PDF documents.

There are hundreds of applications for this publishing technology. For example:

• A retailer could distribute a customized mobile dashboard benchmarking daily performance to thousands of store locations.
• A financial services provider could send richly formatted monthly statements to tens of thousands of consumer or business customers.
• A pharmaceutical company could programmatically send quarterly sales performance and commission statements to its entire sales force or reseller channel.

"MicroStrategy strikes the perfect balance between ease of use and functionality with Cloud Express.  Having never used a BI product, we were able to create a robust system within days of our launch," said Vincent Cipriani, Senior Business Analyst of Alarm.com, a beta customer of the new service.  "In particular, the Express Delivery personalization feature is fantastic. It allows us to build one report, and then distribute it to our entire sales force in a way that each individual user only sees data for their personal accounts.  In the past, we had to create a separate Excel-based report for each individual sales representative, so that's a huge time saver."

A Growing MicroStrategy Cloud Ecosystem

Introduced just one year ago, MicroStrategy Cloud subscribers now include a wide range of companies, with some of the largest, most successful businesses in the world.  Customers include:

• A "Big Three" American automotive manufacturer.
• A global giant in consumer health, biologics, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices.
• A Fortune 500 biotech company.
• A Fortune 100 leader in technology sales, marketing, and logistics for the IT industry.
• One of the world's most respected luxury hotel brands with presence in 35 countries globally.
• One of the nation's best known insurance brands.
• One of the top five largest retail banks in the U.S.
• One of the largest providers of news and data to the financial, legal, tax and accounting, healthcare, science and media markets.
• A top three provider of technology, project management, and information services to the oil and gas industry.

Organizations are embracing MicroStrategy Cloud services because developing large-scale BI infrastructure is typically a multi-year project that involves significant operational and financial risk. MicroStrategy Cloud Platform services eliminate inefficient and risky processes related to planning, architecting, sourcing, contracting, budgeting, hiring, training, installing, testing, deploying, and more. Platform services can be made available in 48 hours for new subscribers.

Platform services couple the latest in-memory, 64-bit business intelligence technology with massively parallel, high-memory database architecture. MicroStrategy's world-class platform is designed to deliver the highest available levels of security and operational control and is continuously monitored and optimized by an elite team of performance specialists. Platform infrastructure is maintained in secure, SSAE16 SOC-1 Type II compliant facilities in North America and Europe.

Companies interested in participating in the MicroStrategy Cloud Express service beta program can contact MicroStrategy at cloud@microstrategy.com. 

About MicroStrategy Incorporated

Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a leading provider of enterprise software platforms for business intelligence (BI), mobile intelligence, and social intelligence applications.  MicroStrategy's BI platform enables leading organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make better business decisions.  Companies choose MicroStrategy BI for its ease-of-use, sophisticated analytics, and superior data and user scalability.  MicroStrategy's mobile intelligence platform helps companies and organizations build, deploy, and maintain mobile apps across a range of solutions by embedding intelligence, transactions, and multimedia into apps.  MicroStrategy's social intelligence platform includes a number of applications that help enterprises harness the power of social networks for marketing and e-commerce, as well as a suite of free consumer friendly apps that use MicroStrategy's enterprise technologies.  The MicroStrategy Cloud offering combines MicroStrategy and third-party software, hardware, and services to enable rapid, cost-effective development of hosted BI, mobile, and social applications.  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, MicroStrategy Cloud, MicroStrategy Cloud Express, and MicroStrategy Cloud Platform 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:
Warren Getler
MicroStrategy Incorporated
+1-703-744-6258
wgetler@microstrategy.com