MicroStrategy's DSS Web Gains Widespread Acceptance

LEADING PRODUCT FOR ACCESSING DATA WAREHOUSES VIA THE WORLD WIDE WEB

DB/EXPO, San Francisco, April 16, 1996 -- MicroStrategy, the largest
relational on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor, comments on the
overwhelming support and acceptance of DSS Web, its recently introduced
relational OLAP interface for the World Wide Web. DSS Web is a
server-based product that enables end users to access data warehouse and
decision support applications through standard Internet browsers.

"The response to DSS Web has been tremendous," said Michael J. Saylor,
president and CEO of MicroStrategy. "Every segment of the industry has
expressed interest in using DSS Web to distribute decision support
applications. Publishing a data warehouse over the Web makes it accessible
by both the users within the company and external parties (suppliers,
customers, partners, etc.), and enables a level of decision support that
was not possible until now. With the economic and technical barriers to
data warehouse deployment removed, entirely new markets for decision
support are emerging and companies are realizing that the competitive
advantage will go to those firms which have well-informed employees making
well-informed decisions."

CLIENT WEB-ENABLED DATA WAREHOUSES BEING DEVELOPED

MicroStrategy has a number of customers developing mission-critical
Web-based ROLAP applications using DSS Web. "Our customers are excited
about DSS Web because as a server-based application, it drastically
reduces the end-user installation, deployment, maintenance, training, and
software costs normally associated with data warehouse implementation,"
continued Saylor.

Clients using DSS Web for developing applications include Hannaford Bros.
Co., a $2.5 billion company with stores in New England and the Southeast.
Hannaford is enabling remote decision support by using DSS Web to create a
high performance, easy-to-implement solution for store-level decision
making. With DSS Web, Hannaford's remote users and corporate users have
comparable access to critical data. DSS Web supplies store managers with
access to this information in a user-friendly, easy-to-understand format.
In addition to making this data easily accessible, DSS Web's server-based
architecture dramatically reduces many of the costs associated with
deploying enterprise OLAP applications, while minimizing the overall
impact on Hannaford's information technology infrastructure.

ShopKo is a high-volume, regional, discount department store chain based in
Green Bay, Wisconsin. In addition to carrying a wide selection of 150,000
different items, ShopKo operates complete pharmacy and optometry
departments in all of its stores. Through its ProVantage subsidiary,
ShopKo provides pharmaceutical claims processing and mail-order pharmacy
prescription benefit management services to hundreds of client companies.
The desire to expand its health services business has led ShopKo to
develop a unique initiative to support health insurance providers,
specifically with American Medical Security (AMS), a mid-sized health
insurance company. Using MicroStrategy's entire suite of DSS products,
ShopKo and AMS have developed an OLAP application that provides
enterprise-wide DSS services and allows AMS to more effectively analyze
and market their health insurance business. Using DSS Web, MicroStrategy's
relational OLAP interface for the Web, AMS's regional sales managers,
brokers, and agents throughout the company will be able to remotely access
the system to mine data for a competitive advantage. DSS also makes it
possible for hundreds of ProVantage's client companies to access their
data remotely to analyze their utilization of prescription benefits to
control costs and provide their members with the best possible services.

PARTNERS EXCITED ABOUT DSS WEB

In addition to customers, a variety of industry-leading application,
integration, and platform partners such as NCR, Tandem, Sun and IMS have
announced support for DSS Web. Strategic partners such as NCR recognize
that customers -- including large retail, financial and communication
industry customers -- are looking for WWW-based data warehouse access to
leverage and grow their warehouse investments and improve integration with
suppliers and customers. "We're partnering with MicroStrategy because they
have the most scalable, high-performance relational OLAP solution today,"
said Dan Harrington, NCR's Vice President - Computer Systems Group
Solutions Marketing. "This agreement will enable us to meet our customers'
demand for remote access to information for critical decision making."

IMS, the world's premier source of information and decision support systems
on the health care industry, has integrated MicroStrategy's relational
OLAP products to develop Xplorer, a sophisticated, client/server-based
data management tool designed to support the exploding information needs
of the health care industry. Using Xplorer on the Internet, pharmaceutical
companies can perform sales and marketing analyses enabling them to more
accurately target prescribers, segment markets, and track sampling and
detailing levels by geography and specialty. It also allows pharmaceutical
firms to more effectively manage regional business units and to develop
strategies and negotiate contracts with managed care providers.

LEADING ANALYSTS VERIFY TREND

The importance of this technology can be confirmed by the recent series of
reports written by industry leading analysts. In a new note, "Web
Warehouses: DSS For the Masses," The Aberdeen Group reports on how the
combination of the Web, relational OLAP, and parallel- scalable
technologies will bring Web-enabled data warehouses to the masses. The
report discuses how the Web is helping to eliminate the extraneous costs
and technology weaknesses that have been data warehouse stumbling blocks
for many IS decision makers. Aberdeen sees Web-based data warehouses as
removing some of the barriers that have kept potential users both inside
and oustide of the enterprises from interacting with corporate data. In
its recently published white paper, "OLAP on the Web? Kick Them Tires but
Don't Kick'em Too Hard," the Yankee Group examines the architecture of
Web-based OLAP products and attempts to position them tactically and
strategically within an organization's overall IT plan.

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 views and relational tables; to deliver an off-the-shelf,
three-tier, decision support environment; and to provide OLAP
functionality over the World Wide Web. MicroStrategy has the most
experience in developing decision support systems on data warehouses
exceeding 500 gigabytes. Its 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/.
 
 =========================================================
 From the 'New Product News' Electronic News Service on...
 AOL (Keyword = New Products) and Delphi (GO COMP PROD)
 =========================================================
 This information was processed from data provided by the
 company/author mentioned. For additional details, please
 contact them directly at the address/phone# indicated.
 Trademarks are the property of their respective owners!
 =========================================================
 All submissions for this service should be addressed to:
 BAKER ENTERPRISES,  20 Ferro Dr,  Sewell, NJ  08080  USA
 Email:   rbakerpc@aol.com   --or--   rbakerpc@delphi.com
 =========================================================
