MicroStrategy, a provider of business intelligence (BI) software, has introduced a new release of the company’s core platform. MicroStrategy 9.3 includes new capabilities and improvements to MicroStrategy's data discovery software, Visual Insight; increased support for advanced analytics from 'R' – the open source language for predictive analysis; and improved connectivity to Hadoop. In addition, MicroStrategy 9.3 delivers a high speed "Google-like" search experience and introduces an innovative, new administration product, MicroStrategy System Manager, for automating manual, multi-step processes.
MicroStrategy Visual Insight 9.3 includes new features to improve data exploration and dashboard-building simple and fast, including three new visualizations – density maps, image layouts, and network diagrams – combined with more than 300 analytical functions that allow for easy analysis of data stored in any type of data source: relational databases, multi-dimensional databases, Hadoop distributions, web services, and personal data stores, such as Excel files.
MicroStrategy 9.3 includes the ability to access business insights stored in Apache Hadoop and SAP HANA data sources. MicroStrategy 9.3 lets business users build reports, perform analysis and conduct visual exploration without requiring any expertise in either technology. The MicroStrategy 9.3 platform includes a Hive Thrift connector for Apache Hadoop as well as a new connector for SAP HANA. Using MicroStrategy's MultiSource Option and In-memory technology, organizations can merge Hadoop and SAP HANA data with other data sources, resulting in high-performance data analysis across multiple data sets.
The new release also expands its analytical functions with more than 5,000 additional computations available within "R" open source project, the widely used statistical computing language. Companies can create business KPI's using the full computational strength of "R" and then apply those computations on their big data using MicroStrategy's reports and dashboards.
MicroStrategy 9.3 delivers a high speed search experience that lets business people find answers quickly, providing business people with an easy search capability that immediately identifies all reports and dashboards that contain the answers they need. MicroStrategy's new search feature also lets users create new reports by auto-completing search entries for the user, thus speeding up and simplifying the process.
In addition, MicroStrategy 9.3 also introduces an innovative, new administration product, MicroStrategy System Manager, for automating the many manual, multi-step processes required to manage a BI ecosystem. For instance, MicroStrategy System Manager is able to automate the migration of BI application changes from the development and testing environments into the production environment. It can also automate the incremental refreshes of cached data, as well as execute large-scale scheduled report distributions as soon as new data is available. MicroStrategy System Manager, the first of its kind in the BI market space, saves BI administration teams thousands of hours of manual effort, provides better performance for users, and significantly reduces administrative costs.
And finally, MicroStrategy Cloud brings together all MicroStrategy 9.3 functionality, analytical databases, and data integration capabilities in one integrated service.
MicroStrategy 9.3 is available as a free 25-user software bundle that brings visual data discovery, mobile apps, dashboards, and report delivery to departments at no charge. For more information, visit www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware/index.asp.