MicroStrategy Unveils Breakthrough Business Intelligence Reporting Technology

Extends High-Value Business Intelligence to the Masses

MCLEAN, Va., Nov. 17, 2003 -- In a milestone for the industry, MicroStrategy(R) Incorporated (Nasdaq: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence software, today announced the release of a breakthrough business intelligence reporting technology, MicroStrategy Report Services(TM). MicroStrategy Report Services simplifies the deployment of business intelligence applications throughout a large organization -- to all its employees, customers, and suppliers. It provides content-rich, user- friendly reports that can enrich existing business intelligence applications and ease the creation of numerous new ones.

MicroStrategy Report Services is already winning high praise for its ability to deliver the entire range of enterprise report types that companies need. MicroStrategy Report Services can deliver scorecards to executives, 'managed metrics' reports to business-unit leaders, business performance reports to divisional managers, operational reports to all personnel, and invoices and statements to external consumers.

"The bottom-line," MicroStrategy's COO Sanju Bansal stressed, "is that MicroStrategy Report Services brings the best of business intelligence to the masses." He added: "Historically, detailed analysis combined with compelling report formatting has been reserved for a relatively few business analysts. MicroStrategy Report Services can now easily place this premium caliber of insight and user control into the hands of every person in the business. With one technology, companies can now raise their entire 'corporate IQ', allowing all workers to optimize their portion of overall corporate performance."

Making Reporting Accessible & Beneficial for Every Person in an Organization

MicroStrategy identified the following important capabilities of MicroStrategy Report Services:

* Any Type of Enterprise Reporting

MicroStrategy Report Services is designed to let users create and share any type of enterprise report they desire. With MicroStrategy Report Services, all users can receive any type of enterprise report -- from Web- based scorecards with performance indicators to multi-page printed operational reports sectioned across multiple dimensions. MicroStrategy Report Services delivers report design freedom by allowing report designers to easily combine traditional hierarchical banded design techniques and newer Web-oriented zone- based design techniques.

* User-Defined Web Reporting

MicroStrategy Report Services reports can reach thousands of users through MicroStrategy's award-winning unified Web interface, with each user receiving a completely personalized version of each report. All facets of a report are automatically personalized, including report contents, report language, and report drill-down paths. Users can personalize the content of every report further by selecting options from convenient lists when the report is run -- known as parameterized reporting. MicroStrategy's unified Web interface spans the globe in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Swedish automatically out of the box.

* Pixel-Perfect & Print Perfect Design

MicroStrategy Report Services enables user self-service by providing an intuitive design interface to create the perfect report without programming or outside help. MicroStrategy Report Services lets users create desktop- publishing-quality reports on top of their existing data. Users create reports with pixel-perfect precision by simply dragging-and-dropping and then formatting reports for boardroom quality presentation. MicroStrategy Report Services also delivers reports in Portable Document Format (PDF), ensuring printed reports have the same quality as on-screen reports.

* High-Throughput Production Reporting

MicroStrategy Report Services delivers reports to any user touchpoint including the Web, networked printers, email, file servers, and portals. Report delivery can be specified by either administrators or the users themselves, and can be scheduled or event-based. MicroStrategy Report Services meets the rigorous demands of high-throughput production reporting, with a proven throughput of 72,000 reports per hour. MicroStrategy Report Services is appropriate for an organization's entire reporting needs and can ensure every report consumer gets the personalized reports they need through the channel they prefer.

* Seamless User Experience -- Reporting Through Analysis

MicroStrategy Report Services is fully integrated with the rest of the award-winning MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM). Users can seamlessly move from reporting to analysis and back again. Since MicroStrategy Report Services is simply a 'service' in MicroStrategy's service-based architecture, the user interface stays the same as users move from reporting to analysis, minimizing product training and easing user adoption. All existing MicroStrategy reports will not only work with MicroStrategy Report Services, but they can also be made more compelling and approachable with MicroStrategy Report Services.

Leading Industry Analysts, Customers & Partners Applaud MicroStrategy Report Services

Leading industry analysts, MicroStrategy customers and partners are praising MicroStrategy Report Services for its innovations and exceptional capabilities to expand the strategic benefits of business intelligence software further and deeper into an enterprise than ever before.

Nigel Pendse, The OLAP Report

"MicroStrategy is the first vendor to release a fully integrated formal reporting tool that provides traditional list reports, BI-style dashboards and interactive OLAP analyses, in any combination, all in a single module that uses the same infrastructure, security, calculation engine and deployment options as the rest of MicroStrategy's product line," says Nigel Pendse, author of The OLAP Report (http://www.olapreport.com) and The OLAP Survey (http://www.survey.com/olap/). "For many years, pundits have been predicting the convergence of enterprise reporting and BI, but this is the first product to deliver it."

META Group

"Many enterprise IT organizations now prefer a comprehensive BI platform from a single vendor. With the release of Report Services, MicroStrategy rounds out its BI platform with a scalable enterprise reporting solution," said Kurt Schlegel, Meta Group's Program Director.

Forrester

"MicroStrategy customers should find Report Services very attractive in terms of cost, scalability and complementary functionality. Organizations interested in standardizing on a single BI vendor for analytic and enterprise reporting should add MicroStrategy to the short list of candidate technologies for banded and freeform enterprise reporting." -- No Longer Loathing Simplicity, MicroStrategy Enters the Enterprise Reporting Market Intelligently, Keith Gile, Forrester Analyst with Contributing Analyst Philip Russom, October 31, 2003.

Ventana Research

"IT Organizations are now looking to cut costs by supporting fewer software products. Acceptable reporting solutions must now handle any and all kinds of reporting needs from traditional production reporting to business intelligence-related reporting," said Eric Rogge, VP and Research Director with Ventana Research. "MicroStrategy Report Services, which offers leading- edge integration of banded and 'zone-based' report layout approaches, combined with their existing BI modules on a unified architecture will raise the standard for comprehensive, integrated reporting platforms."

The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI)

"MicroStrategy Report Services can deliver the full range of enterprise reports -- from scorecards and dashboards to operational reports -- because of its use of both banded and zone-based report layout," said Wayne Eckerson, Director of Research, TDWI.

21st Century Insurance Company

"We're impressed with the quality and stability of MicroStrategy's newest product, MicroStrategy Report Services," said Brett Gourley, Sr. Project Manager at 21st Century Insurance Company. "Its integration with the MicroStrategy platform allows us to reuse common metadata definitions and security features to rapidly create and distribute enterprise reports. This integration also inherits the scalability and ease of administration found in the proven MicroStrategy 7i architecture. We believe this addition to the MicroStrategy platform will allow us to support virtually all of our analytical data and reporting requirements across our enterprise."

Banco Espirito Santo

"We evaluated MicroStrategy Report Services and we're very excited about this new product due to its out-of-the-box ability to generate pixel-perfect reports. This allows us to distribute large volumes of critical business data in an easy to consume format to our executives, managers and large user community," said Artur Guterres, CIO at Banco Espirito Santo. "Currently, the MicroStrategy platform enables our branches and segment units to track the performance of the entire company, optimize product assortment and make decisions that increase revenue and profitability."

Carl Warren and Company

"After test-driving MicroStrategy's Report Services, we find significant enhancements for our internal needs as well as for our Fortune 500 customers using our mycarlwarren.com client extranet," said Paul Park, Chief Technology Architect at Carl Warren and Company. "Now our clients are able to view and retrieve precisely-formatted, boardroom quality reports directly through the Web for rapid distribution within their enterprise."

IBM

"Our customers demand the mission-critical security, support and scalability that the MicroStrategy architecture provides. Combined with DB2, MicroStrategy Report Services will allow our joint customers to deploy pixel- perfect reporting applications across the enterprise." Karen Parrish, VP WW Business Intelligence Solutions, IBM Corporation.

HP

"With MicroStrategy Report Services, customers are now able to satisfy their reporting needs for all types of users with a single, unified BI platform," said Bruno Castejon, Worldwide Business Intelligence Solutions Director, Enterprise Systems Group, HP. "Combined with the highly scalable and reliable industry-standard HP ProLiant servers, the product can help businesses worldwide take advantage of the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy by extending the value of reporting on an enterprise scale."

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young

"True enterprise reporting requires a highly scalable platform to support large diverse user populations. By combining rich data access, complex formatting and the power of the MicroStrategy 7i architecture, MicroStrategy Report Services will allow our customers to easily deploy successful enterprise reporting capabilities to their users," said Brian J. Queenin, Vice President, Global Leader - Information Management & Business Intelligence, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

For more details on MicroStrategy Report Services, please visit http://www.microstrategy.com/rs

About MicroStrategy Incorporated

Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a worldwide leader in the increasingly critical business intelligence software market. Leading Fortune 2000 companies are integrating MicroStrategy's industrial-strength software into virtually all facets of their businesses. The MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM) distills vast amounts of data into vital, probing insight to help drive cost-efficiency, productivity, customer relations and revenue-generation. MicroStrategy offers exceptional capabilities -- excellent scalability, powerful analytics, user-friendly query and reporting features and an outstanding, easy-to-use Web interface. Top companies are using MicroStrategy to cost-effectively harness large, multi-terabyte databases; empower thousands of employees at all operational levels; and extend the benefits of business intelligence enterprise-wide and beyond to customers, partners and suppliers.

MicroStrategy has over 2,300 enterprise-class customers, including General Motors, Best Buy, Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, Yahoo!, Visa International, Wells Fargo, Telecom Italia, AT&T Wireless Group and Aventis. MicroStrategy also has relationships with over 500 systems integrators and application development and platform partners, including IBM, PeopleSoft, Sun, and HP. MicroStrategy is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol MSTR. For more information or to purchase or demo MicroStrategy's software, visit MicroStrategy's Web site at http://www.microstrategy.com.

MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy 7, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform, and MicroStrategy 7i 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 its estimates of future business prospects or financial results 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 Company's ability to secure financing for its current operations and long-term plans on acceptable terms; the ability of the Company to implement and achieve widespread customer acceptance of its MicroStrategy 7i software on a timely basis; the Company's ability to recognize deferred revenue through delivery of products or satisfactory performance of services; continued acceptance of the Company's products in the marketplace; the timing of significant orders; delays in the Company's ability to develop or ship new products; market acceptance of new products; competitive factors; general economic conditions; currency fluctuations; 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.

Join MicroStrategy on Tuesday, November 18th at 12:00 EST for a special one-time Webcast unveiling of MicroStrategy Report Services. The 90-minute Webcast will include a live demonstration of MicroStrategy Report Services, presentations from MicroStrategy customers and from executives from IBM and the Gartner Group. To register for this one-time Webcast, click on the following link: http://www.microstrategy.com/er1

CONTACT:  Marc Brailov of MicroStrategy Incorporated, +1-703-770-1670,
mbrailov@microstrategy.com


                

SOURCE MicroStrategy Incorporated
Web Site: http://www.microstrategy.com/rs