Related Links

Web Seminars

MicroStrategy Incorporated unveiled a new product, MicroStrategy Office(TM), that brings high-value business intelligence technology to users of Microsoft(R) Office applications, including Word, PowerPoint(R), Excel, and Outlook. MicroStrategy Office can significantly expand the ranks of an enterprise's knowledge workers who can access enterprise data and enhance their work in all facets of business operations.

"MicroStrategy Office's potential user base is substantial. It enables new kinds of business intelligence applications by opening a wide new window for non-IT workers to enterprise information through the vehicle of the popular Microsoft Office applications," said IDC's Research Manager Dan Vesset. "MicroStrategy Office is likely to provide a significant contribution to the way business people use business intelligence, empowering any Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word user to natively access enterprise-wide data with the necessary consistency, security and scalability."

"MicroStrategy Office represents a leap forward in making secure, enterprise data available to users in the context of how they really work. MicroStrategy is ahead of most of the competition here," said Wayne Eckerson, Director of Research at The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI).

 MicroStrategy Office's Benefits for Enterprises:

1. Simple, Transparent Window for All Enterprise Data
Business users require an easy and scalable way to incorporate business information in the day-to-day work embodied in their office productivity applications. An average business user, who spends much of his or her day using such office productivity applications as Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, generally does not include enterprise data in his or her documents and work. In the rare instances where IT departments or financial reporting departments link Excel to backend databases, a very high programming and maintenance burden is required to make applications work and keep them working. MicroStrategy Office significantly changes this equation by providing a simple, transparent window into enterprise data.

2. Easy Empowerment for Business Users - No Technical Training Needed

Even the most casual, non-IT users will be able to access the full depth of enterprise data through their familiar office productivity applications - as they need just apply the Microsoft Office skills they already possess.

3. Engendering a New Range of Business Intelligence Applications
By merging MicroStrategy's industrial-strength business intelligence capabilities with Microsoft Office workflows, companies will be able to deploy a new range of business intelligence applications.

4. Leveraging MicroStrategy's Industrial-Strength Business Intelligence Platform
MicroStrategy Office fully leverages MicroStrategy's industrial-strength business intelligence platform and adheres to Microsoft Office's latest Smart Client architecture - offering scale, manageability, security, enterprise- wide consistency for any database. MicroStrategy Office is a standard Microsoft Office add-in, unobtrusive to users and consistent with the Microsoft Office look and feel.

MicroStrategy Office is also a series of .net Web Services completely consistent with Microsoft's services-based architecture standards.

This piece is brought to you by the Information Management editorial staff.