Relational OLAP Confirmed as Superior Architecture for Data Warehouse &
Decision Support Applications

MICROSTRATEGY RESPONDS TO PLATINUM'S ACQUISITION OF PRODEA

VIENNA, Va., January 19, 1996 -- MicroStrategy, the largest relational
on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor, today responds to Platinum
Technology, Inc.'s announcement regarding its intent to acquire Prodea
Software Corporation.

"We believe this acquisition reinforces the rapidly growing trend of
corporations choosing ROLAP tools, rather than multidimensional OLAP, to
develop enterprise data warehouses and decision support applications,"
said Michael J. Saylor, President and CEO of MicroStrategy. "ROLAP MEETS
COMPANIES' REQUIREMENTS FOR A SOLUTION THAT COMBINES SOPHISTICATED
MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS CAPABILITIES WITH THE OPENNESS AND SCALABILITY
OF STANDARD RELATIONAL DATABASES, RATHER THAN REQUIRING ADDITIONAL
INVESTMENTS IN PROPRIETARY MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATABASES."

"Given the growth of the ROLAP marketplace during 1995, and the resulting
increase in competition, we believe that acquisitions like this are
inevitable," said Sanju K. Bansal, MicroStrategy's Executive Vice
President. "As the smallest and newest vendor in the ROLAP industry,
Prodea was a perfect candidate for acquisition by a larger, more
established company that has the resources necessary to compete in this
rapidly expanding market."

"The acquisition makes sense," continued Bansal. "Prodea has the right
architecture, but an under-developed product line. This acquisition will
enable Platinum to help Prodea complete its product suite by building on
the product's core functionality." Platinum now faces the significant
challenge of adding and positioning the new products in relation to its
existing offerings.

"We believe this acquisition has positive implications for MicroStrategy,"
said Saylor. "THE ACQUISITION POSITIONS PLATINUM, ALONG WITH MANY OTHERS,
AS AN EXCELLENT CANDIDATE FOR PROVIDING A RELATIONAL OLAP FRONT-END USING
MICROSTRATEGY'S DSS SERVER PRODUCT AS THE ENGINE." MicroStrategy's DSS
Server provides the only relational OLAP engine with complete business
functionality, including derived metrics (percent- to-total,
contribution), comparison analyses (this period/last period,
period-to-date), ranking (top 10, 80/20), and non-aggregatable metrics
(inventory, sell-through). MICROSTRATEGY ENABLES VENDORS SUCH AS PLATINUM
TO FOCUS ON THE FRONT-END CAPABILITIES WHILE LEVERAGING DSS SERVER'S
POWERFUL RELATIONAL OLAP ENGINE.

ABOUT MICROSTRATEGY, INC.

MicroStrategy is the leading provider of relational OLAP products and
services for developing and accessing enterprise data warehouses.
MicroStrategy has been recognized by Database Programming & Design as one
of the Database Dozen: twelve companies that define the direction of the
database industry. MicroStrategy was the first vendor to define a decision
support object framework introducing intelligent agents and
exception-reporting alerts; to develop a logical transparent map between
multidimensional data views and relational tables; and to deliver an
off-the-shelf, three-tier, decision support environment. MicroStrategy has
the most experience in developing decision support systems on data
warehouses exceeding 500 gigabytes. MicroStrategy's DSS Agent product line
is widely used by Fortune 1000 corporations worldwide, and in alliances
and partnerships with a variety of industry- leading companies.

MicroStrategy has offices in Washington, San Francisco, New York, Boston,
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, London and Barcelona. Corporate headquarters is
located at 8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Vienna, VA 22182; Phone:
703-848-8600; Fax: 703-848-8610; Internet: info@strategy.com; World Wide
Web: http://www.strategy.com/.
 
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