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A Comparison White Paper by MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy 9 vs. Tableau 7

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I. Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................ 4

II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and Tableau 7 on the Key BI Capabilities .................................... 5

1. Delivering More BI with Less IT Effort - MicroStrategy Delivers the Lowest TCO .............................. 7

2. All User Needs through a Single Platform ..................................................................................... 11

3. Self-Service Through a Fast and Intuitive Web Interface ................................................................ 15

4. High Performance at Any Scale .................................................................................................... 18

5. Quick to Implement and Deploy, Easy to Maintain and Administer ............................................... 22

6. Highly Interactive and Flexible Mobile Intelligence ........................................................................ 26

7. Deep Insight through Superior Analytics ...................................................................................... 29

8. Flexible Technology for Departmental to Enterprise BI .................................................................. 31

III. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology ............................................. 33

MicroStrategy 9 vs. Tableau 7

4

I. Executive Summary

In the business intelligence (BI) marketplace, MicroStrategy competes with a number of vendors, including Tableau

Software. At first glance, it would seem that companies can use either MicroStrategy 9 or Tableau 7 to support

their visualization, reporting and analysis needs. However, throughout the implementation and maintenance of BI

applications, companies are realizing significant differences in the BI capabilities between MicroStrategy and less

robust BI technologies, such as Tableau.

MicroStrategy 9 builds on MicroStrategy’s unique strengths at the high-end of BI to extend the boundaries of

performance, scalability, reliability, and maintainability of enterprise BI. At the same time, MicroStrategy 9 brings

quick-to-deploy BI technology easily within reach of smaller departmental BI initiatives through features such as

multisource data access, In-memory ROLAP, Data Import, and Visual Insight. With MicroStrategy, business can

enjoy the best of both the worlds, i.e. all the benefits of a robust BI platform, while providing exceptional flexibility

and nimbleness to the business users for their self-service needs. Tableau, on the other hand, is a subject-oriented

analysis tool and does not provide a robust, enterprise-grade BI platform. Its capabilities are limited to ad-hoc

analysis and basic dashboard development from simple datasets.

As user and business requirements have become more complex, IT budgets nonetheless have come under

increasing pressure. Organizations need to deliver BI solutions in light of expanding user requirements, increasing

amounts of data, and differing data sources with a minimal amount of IT resources. BI tools, like Tableau,

face significant challenges in managing and maintaining a growing BI deployment as they lack object-oriented

development, centralized metadata repository, robust administration, and centralized security management.

Tableau’s lack of these capabilities results in redundant development and maintenance efforts and higher costs. In

contrast, MicroStrategy’s object-oriented development paradigm, and robust BI platform capabilities enable easy

development and maintenance of BI applications with minimum IT efforts and costs.

For nearly 20 years, MicroStrategy customers have gained an edge over their competitors with fast, agile analysis

using MicroStrategy’s sophisticated technology. Companies and industry analysts widely recognize MicroStrategy for

its administration-friendly architecture, robust security, self-service zero-footprint Web interface, innovative mobile

application platform, and proven user and data scalability.

This document discusses in detail the key differences between MicroStrategy 9 and Tableau 7.

5

II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and Tableau 7 on the Key BI Capabilities

Business intelligence has the power to provide performance feedback and visibility to all people in an organization,

thus enabling businesses to make better decisions every day. However, not all BI technologies deliver on this

promise, falling short on a number of key capabilities demanded of enterprise BI applications. A complete and

efficient BI platform must provide organizations with the following key capabilities:

Key BI Capabilities

1. Delivering More BI with Less IT Effort ...................................................................................................... pg.7

MicroStrategy technology requires far fewer IT personnel for a given amount of BI users because its reusable

metadata is easier to maintain requiring less redundancy, because end users have more self-service capabilities

that offload work from the IT staff, and because it provides a comprehensive suite of administrative tools

requiring less IT administrators. Tableau provides limited metadata reusability across the entire BI platform.

As a result, it requires redundant development and maintenance efforts. Tableau administrators have fewer

administration tools that allow them efficiently manage the BI applications, thus requiring more administrators

per number of end users.

2. All User Needs through a Single Platform ................................................................................................pg.11

MicroStrategy users can access any style of BI via a unified and home grown BI platform. MicroStrategy users get

a single “version of the truth” through interactive Web, Microsoft Office, and mobile device interfaces. Tableau

users are limited in the breadth of BI styles (no enterprise reporting, limited alerting and proactive notification,

limited predictive analysis capabilities, etc.) that they can accomplish. Tableau users typically must recreate

metadata with each report, thus promoting “multiple versions of the truth."

3. Self-Service Through a Fast and Intuitive Web Interface.........................................................................pg.15

To enhance usability, the MicroStrategy Web interface adopts many familiar paradigms including, ribbon

toolbars, accordion controls, control-click multi-select capability, and context-sensitive right-click actions.

MicroStrategy’s next-generation of advanced self-service functionality is designed to provide more control to

business users. The MicroStrategy advanced self-service interface provides incredible speed-of-interactivity,

stunning visualizations, drag-and-drop manipulations, and instant results – thus allowing business users to rapidly

go from data to decisions. Tableau provides limited capabilities through its Web interface. Tableau users can only

perform basic filtering, sorting, and exporting through the Web and cannot create new visualizations or modify

existing visualizations from the Web interface. As a result end users are limited in their abilities to self-serve.

4. High Performance at Any Scale ................................................................................................................ pg.18

MicroStrategy’s high performance at any scale is possible given its In-memory ROLAP architecture, which

leverages the database for much of its processing. Data joins and analytic calculations are processed in the

database whenever possible. MicroStrategy’s unique multi-pass approach provides the flexibility to answer any

analytical question in the most optimal manner. Tableau supports 64-bit for data loading but does not support

64-bit processing for data rendering. As a result, Tableau cannot take full advantage of 64-bit hardware,

limiting its performance and scalability. Tableau does not offer scalable and high performing in-memory ROLAP

architecture. As a result, Tableau deployments are typically departmental with low data volumes and limited

number of users.

6

5. Quick to Implement and Deploy, Easy to Maintain and Administer ...............................................................pg.22

MicroStrategy provides organizations a platform that is quick to implement and deploy as well as easy to maintain

and administer. MicroStrategy’s single code base offers the unique advantage of reusable business logic across

the entire platform. MicroStrategy’s single BI server provides efficient, centralized administration for IT and fewer

moving parts which translate into less downtime. Tableau is quick to implement because it does not require

creating a metadata layer. However, lack of a common reusable metadata layer creates a maintenance challenge

as changes to common business logic are not automatically propagated to the entire BI deployment and Tableau

developers are typically forced to continually and manually synchronize metric definitions across the entire

deployment. Lack of a common semantic layer also promotes multiple “versions of the truth” and can lead to a

“spreadmart” problem.

6. Highly Interactive and Flexible Mobile Intelligence ................................................................................pg.26

MicroStrategy Mobile extends BI capabilities on mobile devices well beyond traditional grid and graph reports

and provides exceptional flexibility for creating purpose-built, workflow-driven mobile applications. MicroStrategy

Mobile apps are built using a metadata driven, point-and-click development paradigm, fully utilizing the

MicroStrategy BI platform infrastructure, security, and reusable metadata components. As a result, mobile

applications are faster and easier to create, easier to maintain, and provide the administration efficiencies needed

to deploy to hundreds of thousands of users while providing the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Tableau

does not follow an object-oriented development paradigm and provides minimum object reusability. As a result,

development and maintenance of mobile applications becomes more challenging. Tableau Mobile provides little

or no flexibility to create workflow driven apps and is used primarily for viewing the existing BI content on the

iPad®. Functionality like delivering multiple forms of information through the app and transaction capability is not

provided, limiting the ability of Tableau to create rich mobile applications for closed loop analysis.

7. Deep Insight through Superior Analytics .................................................................................................pg.29

The MicroStrategy BI platform provides an extensive set of data manipulation and analytic options to allow the

user to delve deeply into a report to identify and discover important trends and patterns in the data. MicroStrategy

users can drill anywhere in the entire data warehouse for boundary-free investigative analysis. MicroStrategy

report designers and analysts can view and embed predictive analytics in reports and then distribute them to all

relevant decision makers and stakeholders. Tableau provides capabilities for performing basic statistical analysis

but does not provide advanced predictive analysis capabilities.

8. Flexible Technology for Departmental to Enterprise BI ......................................................................... pg.31

MicroStrategy’s metadata reusability and life cycle management tools, such as MicroStrategy Object Manager

enable departments to incrementally migrate their business logic into a consolidated enterprise BI environment.

Tableau does not have a tool equivalent to Object Manager to aid in consolidating and reconciling disparate

departmental BI applications into an enterprise-wide BI application.

7

1IDC. “Demonstrating Business Value: Selling to Your C-Level Executives.

1. DELIVERING MORE BI WITH LESS IT EFFORT - MICROSTRATEGY DELIVERS THE LOWEST TCO

With IT budgets under increasing scrutiny and business requirements becoming more complex, today’s

organizations need to critically examine BI costs. The costs of BI extend beyond the initial acquisition. An IDC study,

Demonstrating Business Value: Selling to Your C-Level Executives, concludes, “Because the single largest factor

affecting TCO is staffing cost, IT initiatives that can reduce IT labor costs are likely to find greater acceptance among

financial decision makers, and initiatives that enable IT consolidation or automation can significantly reduce TCO

across the IT infrastructure.” Figure 1 shows that over three years, IT staffing constitutes between 60 and 71% of BI

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership is Dominated by IT Personnel Costs

Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership Breakdown

Staffing (60%)

Downtime – UserProductivity

(15%)

IT Staff Training(8%)

Server Hardware(7%)

Software (7%)

Outsourced Costs(3%)

Source: IDC 2007.

Figure 1: Staffing Costs Consume a Majority of Three-Year Software Lifecycle Costs

Customers and leading industry analysts alike recognize MicroStrategy’s ability to deliver BI to more users and a

great amount of data with fewer IT staff than other BI vendors. Many MicroStrategy customers have expanded their

BI deployments while saving millions of dollars a year in staffing costs by switching from non-MicroStrategy BI tools

to MicroStrategy’s efficient and scalable self-service BI platform. To save costs and ensure successful BI solutions,

decision makers must evaluate the key BI capabilities that reduce IT efforts and make the BI platform easier to

implement, deploy, maintain, and administer.

8

MicroStrategy Ranked Highest for Administration Efficiency

0.4 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.40.8 1.0 1.2 2.20.6

arplan

Bissantz

Board

Cubeware

IBM Cognos Analysis

IBM Cognos Reporting

IBM Cognos TM1

Information Builders

Infor PM

Jedox PALO

Microsoft SSAS

Microsoft SSRS

MicroStrategy

MIK

Oracle BIEE

Oracle Hyperion

Pentaho

QlikTech

SAP BO Webl

SAP BO Deskl

SAP BW/ BEx Suite

SAS

TARGIT

1.02

1.18

1.72

N/A

N/A

1.96

2.40

N/A

2.16

N/A

1.51

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1.96

N/A

N/A

MicroStrategy Ranked #1 for Administration Efficiency

0.55

0.39

0.71

0.59

Source: The BI Survey 9 (2010) – This chart provides a KPI score for the deployed seats per administrator head. The KPI is calculated so that higher administration costs lead to a lower KPI and vice versa.

Figure 2: MicroStrategy Technology is Recognized for its Ability to Support Many More Users for Each IT Administrator

MicroStrategy technology requires far fewer IT personnel for a given amount of BI users because its metadata is

inherently easier to maintain and because end users have more self-service capabilities that offload work from the

IT staff.

“ We evaluated several leading BI products and, using a total cost of ownership model, determined

that MicroStrategy had the best combination of ease-of-use, time-to-market, successful retail

implementations, and robust analytical capabilities.”

– IT Senior Coordinator of Purchasing, Private Label and Reporting, Whole Foods Market

The following table lists out key capabilities in which the MicroStrategy 9 platform helps organizations reduce costs

when designing, deploying, administering and maintaining BI applications.

9

KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY

MICROSTRATEGY 9 TABLEAU 7

Min

imiz

ing

Des

ign

Eff

ort

Dynamic Report Personalization

YES • MicroStrategy has very robust Prompting

engine. End users can dynamically author reports at run time by selecting attributes, metrics, metric levels, templates, filters, and even hierarchies. This greatly reduces report design dependency on IT and the number of reports for IT to maintain.

NO • Prompting is not supported by Tableau.

Only basic element list prompts can be simulated by means of filters. Object prompts (like column and filter prompting), hierarchy prompts, and metric level prompts are not supported. This results in creating and publishing more views of reports than necessary.

Automatic Multi-source Drill Anywhere

YES • Business users can automatically drill

anywhere to any data source without IT hard coding.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau does not support automatic drill-anywhere capabilities. Drilling is available automatically only on time dimensions.

Formatting over the Web

YES • Easy What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get

(WYSIWYG) formatting allows business users to format reports at runtime without IT support.

NO • WYSIWYG design or modification is

not supported over the Web. Only basic actions like filtering, sorting, and exporting can be performed from the Web interface.

One Repository of Reusable Business Logic

YES • Report developers can reuse all existing

business logic across the entire platform rather than spending time recreating business logic.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau lacks a reusable semantic layer. The lack of object reusability makes the BI environment more difficult to maintain, and increases the risk of having “multiple versions of the truth.”

Visual Analysis for Rapid Decision Making

YES • MicroStrategy Visual Insight allows

business users to intuitively visualize, filter, and drill into their data. The drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG interface allows business users to make data driven decision quickly and without any IT involvement.

YES • Visual analysis can be performed but

requires a thick client. End users using the Web interface for performing analysis are restricted to filtering, sorting, and exporting.

Min

imiz

ing

Dep

loym

ent

Effo

rt

One Report Design Automatically Deploys to Any Interface

YES • The same report design is automatically

optimized for interacting through all interfaces including Web browsers, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office; and formats including PDF, Flash, and HTML.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau provides limited integration with Microsoft Office productivity tools. Exporting interactive analysis to Flash is not supported.

Browser Agnostic Zero-footprint Web

YES • Eliminates client installation costs and

ensures application is automatically updated.

• Provides secure access for any browser without IT effort or reliance on ActiveX downloads or IE Active X dependence.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau supports a zero footprint Web interface. However, the capabilities provided by the Tableau Web interface are very limited.

Easy to Customize and Upgrade

YES • Upgradable plug-ins instantly customize to

corporate look and feel without coding effort.

• Customizations are managed in a central location and can be upgraded with minimal IT effort.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau provides very limited capabilities to perform customizations.

Automated Deployment YES • Automated life cycle management tool

synchronizes objects across development, test, and production environments thus greatly reducing manual work associated with BI deployments.

NO • Tableau does not provide automated life

cycle management tools.

10

KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY

MICROSTRATEGY 9 TABLEAU 7

Min

imiz

ing

D

eplo

ymen

t Eff

ort

Data Import from the Web Interface

YES • MicroStrategy Data Import functionality is

for business users and provides the ability to easily import data from local files or relational databases and quickly converts them into dashboards or visualizations without any IT involvement.

NO • Tableau does not provide Web-based

data import functionality. As a result, Tableau end users will have to either depend on the IT for creating and uploading analysis to the Tableau server or install the Tableau desktop thick client for accessing data and creating analysis on their own.

Min

imiz

ing

Ad

min

istr

atio

n E

ffo

rt

Single Server YES • A centralized server dramatically reduces

administrative effort and complexity.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau’s server supports only creating analysis and visualizations. Tableau does not support all styles of BI through its server.

Single Point of Administration

YES • Administrators need to create users and

security settings once and these settings apply to the entire MicroStrategy platform without requiring duplicate IT efforts.

NO • Security has to be defined redundantly for

each Tableau workbook and there is no way to centrally apply security across the entire Tableau deployment, resulting in redundant administration efforts.

Out-of-the-Box System-wide Monitoring

YES • Prebuilt system performance dashboards

allow the administrator to immediately analyze system usage data down to the details and to easily optimize resources.

• Automatically logs object change history without requiring IT staff efforts, easing auditing process.

LIMITED ◗

• Tableau provides the capabilities to log and monitor activity on the server. However, it does not provide prebuilt system performance dashboards and reports that allow the administrators to analyze system usage data down to the details and to easily optimize resources.

• Automatic change management is not supported out-of-the-box.

Automated Scripting Control

YES • Reduces repetitive and time consuming

administrative tasks through automated command line scripts.

NO • Tableau does not provide a scripting

interface to automate repetitive administration task. As a result, administration workload increases.

Min

imiz

ing

Mai

nte

nan

ce E

ffo

rt

Automated Report and Data Integrity Checking

YES • MicroStrategy administrators can uncover

inconsistencies or errors before business users see them while reducing 98% of manual regression testing efforts.

NO • Tableau does not provide automated

regression testing tools to detect report and data discrepancies. Tableau developers have to manually ensure report and data consistency.

Highly Reusable Business Metadata

YES • IT staff have to maintain only one

business metadata object in one place, and this one definition is reused across the entire platform to reduce IT maintenance efforts.

NO • Tableau provides very limited metadata

reusability. This forces report developers to spend more time redundantly creating report objects.

Scalable In-Memory ROLAP Architecture

YES • MicroStrategy customers can instantly

leverage multiple types of data assets without moving data.

NO • Tableau does not have an scalable in-

memory ROLAP architecture.

Automatic Change Management

YES • MicroStrategy’s unified platform and object-

oriented development method ensure that a change is propagated to all related objects, ensuring one “version of the truth” with minimal IT maintenance effort.

NO • Tableau’s lack of a common reusable

metadata layer creates a maintenance challenge as changes to common business logic are not automatically propagated to the entire BI deployment. Tableau developers are typically forced to continually and manually synchronize metric definitions across the entire deployment.

11

2. ALL USER NEEDS THROUGH A SINGLE PLATFORM

The ideal architecture for business intelligence is the one that provides organizations with a single and cohesive

model of the business that can be automatically displayed through any user interface. MicroStrategy users have

the option to access a single “version of the truth” through interactive Web, Microsoft Office, and mobile device

interfaces. MicroStrategy 9 includes a newly re-engineered Web user interface that is designed to be faster, more

powerful, and more personalized than ever before. The MicroStrategy 9 Web architecture boasts a wide range of

performance-enhancing changes that make the user interface interactive and instantly responsive to user requests.

Five Styles of Business Intelligence Through a Single Platform

Figure 3: Users Can Seamlessly Traverse All Styles of BI from a Unified Platform and a Single Interface

“ MicroStrategy’s long history and devotion to producing world-class business intelligence technology provided

us with extreme confidence that we are making the right decision for our casino partners. MicroStrategy’s

interactive dashboards with advanced data visualizations will allow our clients to view complex data in

an easily understood and graphically appealing manner to improve decision-making. In addition, we look

forward to implementing MicroStrategy’s Mobile BI on the BlackBerry®, iPhone®, and iPad®, which will give

our customers far greater flexibility in business intelligence than is currently available today. ”

– President, Aristocrat Technologies

Scorecards &

Dashboards

Enterprise

Repor4ng

OLAP Analysis &

Visual Explora4on

Data Mining &

Predic4ve Analysis

Mobile Apps &

Aler4ng

•  Ad Hoc Analysis

•  Predic4ve Analysis

•  Data Mining

•  Visual Explora4on

•  Slice & Dice Inves4ga4ve Analysis

•  Root Cause Determina4on

•  Page‐perfect Opera4onal Repor4ng

•  Pixel‐perfect Business Repor4ng

•  Print‐perfect Statements & Invoices

•  Opera4onal Dashboards

•  Dynamic Scorecards

•  Metrics Management

•  Mobile Applica4ons

•  Massive Informa4on Distribu4on

•  iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, email

•  Excep4on‐based Alerts

12

KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 TABLEAU 7

Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards

• Dashboards integrated with industrial-strength BI platform

• Fast WYSIWYG Pixel Perfect™ design

• Single design environment

• Automatically drill anywhere in any data source from the dashboard

• Native parallel Flash and DHTML visualizations

• Multiple layers of analysis

• Multi-layout dashboards

• Automatic multi-panel filtering

• Dashboard templates reduce design time

• Dashboard output caching in HTML, PDF, Excel, and Flash for instantaneous response

YES Dashboards are created using reports and objects from MicroStrategy’s single metadata. Intelligence Server provides its sophisticated processing, security, caching, and analytical capabilities.

Users design dashboards from MicroStrategy’s single Web interface using already familiar design paradigm. Dashboards are created in a Pixel Perfect, zero-footprint Web interface, WYSIWYG and freeform layout.

MicroStrategy dashboards provide high interactivity via selector controls that allow users to dynamically apply filters to all dashboard components and to synchronize data across multiple analytical layers of information. Users can automatically drill throughout the full depth and breadth of the data warehouse to obtain more detailed information or view related information. MicroStrategy dashboards provide multipanel and multi-tab layers for various views of data. Multiple dashboards can also be assembled into a single dashboard book. MicroStrategy 9 dashboard templates provide reusable starting points with sophisticated formatting that can make any business user a dashboard designer. Pre-calculated dashboards are cached for instant viewing in HTML, PDF, Excel, and Flash.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau dashboards cannot be created over the Web and requires a thick client for development. Dashboards do not support Pixel Perfect positioning. This creates a development challenge and leads to suboptimal utilization of screen real estate.

Tableau desktop lets users automatically drill up and down within the time dimension. However, drill hierarchies have to be pre-defined for other dimensions. Drilling can only be performed up or down within the same hierarchy. It is not possible to drill from one hierarchy to another.

Exporting Tableau dashboard to Flash for interactive offline analysis is not possible. In order to view a dashboard user will either require the desktop client or will have to log into the Tableau Web. Sending interactive dashboards as an email attachment is also not supported.

Tableau dashboards support multiple tabs. However, multiple layers of analysis within the same tab is not supported, resulting in suboptimal utilization of dashboard real estate. Dashboard templates are not present to reduce dashboard development time and efforts.

Rapid Comprehension of Data Through Advanced Visualizations

• Out-of-the-box library of advanced visualizations

• Automatic drilling from visualizations

• Easy to create and deploy customized widgets

• Flexible properties support different types of data comparisons

• Extensible library of visualizations and widgets created by 3rd parties

• Customizable advanced visualizations and widgets

YES MicroStrategy 9 provides an out-of-thebox library of advanced visualizations and widgets that enhance the understanding of complex data and highlight patterns and trends.

MicroStrategy provides a library of advanced visualizations, including Bullet Graphs, Micro Charts, Interactive Heat Maps, Interactive Bubble Charts, Grid of Graphs, Bubbles Grid, RSS, Fish Eye, Media, Cloud, Time Slider, and Stack Area Charts. All visualizations have drilling capabilities and enable users to select data elements that filter out other areas of the dashboard. Each MicroStrategy widget has flexible capabilities and properties that enable users to immediately identify or further investigate trends or anomalies in the data. For example, the Heat Map widget incorporates OLAP technology that enables users to filter data based on numeric values.

MicroStrategy customers can extend the advanced visualizations library by importing 3rd party visualizations. Advanced dashboard designers can edit or create their own visualizations or widgets. The widgets are built using the power of Adobe® Flash® and are part of MicroStrategy’s single platform.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau provide limited out-of-the-box library of advanced visualizations. Tableau does not provide Gauges, Waterfall widgets, Funnel Graphs, RSS Readers, Media, Data Clouds, Time Series Sliders (they have very basic time series visualization), Interactive Stacked Graphs, and Weighted List Viewers.

Tableau provides limited selector controls. Also, nesting of selectors is not supported. Tableau lacks Fish Eye Selector, Date Selectors, Radio Buttons, Button Bars, and Link Bars.

Tableau does not allow extending or importing visualizations.

13


Robust Enterprise Reporting

• Pixel Perfect absolute positioning

• OLAP-enabled grids and graphs

• Horizontal and vertical display of data

• Desktop publishing formatting

• Advanced Export to Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or PDF

• High quality printing

• Templates for rapid design

YES MicroStrategy offers comprehensive report styles for banded reports. These documents are highly interactive, providing in-place OLAP analysis through pivoting, drilling, and Excel-like formatting toolbars.

Highly formatted documents are built using common desktop publishing paradigms such as rulers and Pixel Perfect positioning, all in a zero-footprint Web.

MicroStrategy’s export to PDF capabilities support advanced PDF features such as table of contents and watermarks. Export to Excel supports export of multiple document layouts to multiple Excel worksheets.

Print-perfect reports can be printed exactly as seen to any network printer. MicroStrategy documents can be printed horizontally or vertically. Users can dynamically change the page layout, apply fit-to-page functionality, and customize headers and footers for any report.

MicroStrategy provides out-of-the-box templates and the ability to create custom templates in order to decrease design time. These templates can be saved and shared across multiple projects.

NO Tableau does not provide Enterprise Reporting capabilities and is limited to only ad-hoc visual analysis of data and basic dashboard development. Creating highly formatted, pixel perfect reports, is not supported.

Information Delivery and Proactive Notification

• Ability to self-subscribe and subscribe others to report deliveries

• Alerting and thresholds

• Wide range of output types: Web, e-mail, print, fax, wireless, and file server

• Report bursting

• Portal integration, with support for portal servers including: Microsoft SharePoint, SAP NetWeaver Portal, Oracle WebLogic, and WebSphere

YES Users can subscribe themselves and other users to personalized reports and alerts. Report deliveries can be triggered by dynamic events, exception thresholds, or time schedules. Personalized content can be delivered via portal, print, email, wireless, or file servers.

MicroStrategy’s platform leverages highly scalable technology that slices a single report and dynamically bursts personalized information to the right users. Reusing a single report across hundreds of users saves processing resources.

Portal integration is available out-of-the-box, with support for portal servers such as Microsoft SharePoint, SAP NetWeaver Portal, Oracle WebLogic, and WebSphere. Portlet-to-portlet communication is also available out-of-the-box, making it easier to inject BI into a portal.

NO Tableau does not support native report bursting features and does not provide the ability to self-subscribe, or subscribe others to personalized reports or alerts based on dynamic events, exception thresholds, or time schedules.

Tableau Server does not provide the capabilities to send alerts to end users via mail or mobile devices when a threshold condition is met or a KPI exception happens.

14


Flexible and Powerful OLAP Interactivity

• Drill anywhere fosters investigative analysis

• Derived elements and derived metrics for on-the-fly calculations and groupings

• View filters for quick data filtering

• On the fly creation of derived elements, custom groups, subtotals, etc.

• Built-in financial and statistical functions

YES The MicroStrategy BI platform provides an extensive set of data manipulation options to allow the user to delve deeply into a report to identify and discover important trends and patterns in the data. Users can drill anywhere in the entire data warehouse for boundary-free investigative analysis.

New derived metrics, derived attribute element groups, filters, and subtotals can be created on-the-fly using existing metrics and attributes in the report. This functionality makes it possible for users to perform new calculations, custom groupings, and filtering directly on the report at the speed of thought.

MicroStrategy’s analytical engine provides hundreds of built-in financial, statistical, and mathematical functions.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau does not support automatic drill-anywhere functionality. Drilling is automatically enabled only on the time dimension. In order to create drill paths Tableau developers have to predefine hierarchies using the desktop interface. The pre-defined hierarchies only allow drilling up and down within the same hierarchy. Users cannot drill from one hierarchy to another.

Tableau does not recommend modeling the entire database at once as it is a subject-oriented analysis tool, i.e. a tool for performing analysis on only the subject at hand. Because of this reason, there are typically 100’s of small datasets floating across the tableau deployment. Drill hierarchies have to be individually defined and maintained for each of these datasets as the hierarchies are not common across the entire deployment. This also means that users are restricted to performing analysis within a given dataset and cannot seamlessly drill into the entire breadth and depth of the corporate data, limiting their investigative analysis capabilities.

New objects like new metrics, derived metrics, subtotals, or new reports cannot be created from the Tableau Web interface, and as such, the analysis capability of end users is significantly constrained.

Seamless Microsoft Office Integration

• All Office products supported (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook)

• Leverage all BI reports and reporting objects

• Full new report creation

• Ability to save logic created in Excel back to enterprise metadata

• Persistent and interchangeable formatting across Office and Web

• Server based configuration for client settings, user, host, and IP address settings

YES MicroStrategy delivers the complete reporting and analysis environment to Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook users. MicroStrategy Office applications are linked to MicroStrategy security and administration, ensuring 100% data consistency across the enterprise. Users are able to access existing reports or create new ones from within Microsoft Office applications. Changes made through Microsoft Office are immediately reflected across MicroStrategy Office and Web interfaces and can be saved to the enterprise business logic metadata layer. Microsoft Office formatting changes are preserved after automatic data updates.

The Web administrator can set client side settings and security. Users can change their passwords through the familiar Microsoft Office interface.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau provides the ability to export data to Excel. However, it does not support exporting the data in its original format. Graphs and charts can be exported as images.

Tableau users cannot access existing reports or create new reports from within the Microsoft Office applications and cannot save logic and formatting created in Excel back to the Tableau metadata.

15

3. SELF-SERVICE THROUGH A FAST AND INTUITIVE WEB INTERFACE

MicroStrategy 9 provides capabilities for business personnel to create their own ad hoc report designs easily from

their Web browser. Using drag-and-drop actions through the MicroStrategy 9 Web interface, any business person can

assemble virtually any report by adding attributes and metrics to a simple report template without the need to know

any technical details about the data or the underlying databases. With MicroStrategy 9, business users also have the

ability to interactively build analysis with dozens of visualization options. To enhance usability, the MicroStrategy 9

Web user interface adopts many familiar Microsoft paradigms, including ribbon toolbars, accordion controls, control-

click multi-select capability, and context-sensitive right-click actions.

MicroStrategy Provides End Users with a Fast and Intuitive User Experience

Figure 4: Design and Format a MicroStrategy Report Using a Fast and Intuitive User Interface

MicroStrategy’s next-generation of advanced self-service functionality is designed to provide more control to business

users. Business users can easily import their personal or corporate data directly from the MicroStrategy Web interface

and quickly convert the raw data into insightful visual analyses, reports, or dashboards. The MicroStrategy Visual

Insight interface provides incredible speed-of-interactivity, stunning visualizations, drag-and-drop manipulations, and

instant results – thus allowing business users to rapidly go from data to decisions.

“ We were impressed with MicroStrategy’s self-service architecture, ease-of-use, highly visual dashboards,

and mobile reporting that allows us to put the analytics and reporting in the hands of the business user.

MicroStrategy’s history in the business intelligence sphere also gave us confidence that we had chosen

the right technology partner.” – IT Specialist at Silverstar Casinos

Add/Remove

•  A*ributes

•  Metrics

Many

Views

Easily Filter

data Visually Analyze Data or

use OLAP enabled Grids

Drop Zones for

mulCdimensional

analysis

Add/Remove• Attributes• Metrics

Easily filterdata Drop Zones for

multidimensional analysis

Visually analyze data or use OLAP enabled grids

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User-Friendly Interface

• Drag-and-drop actions

• One-click access

• Familiar Microsoft paradigms

• Tree view navigation

• Ribbon toolbars and menus

• Accordion controls

• Personalized interface

• User collaboration capabilities

• Context-sensitive online help

• Sophisticated formatting for final report presentation

YES The MicroStrategy Web interface leverages many familiar, user-friendly paradigms, including folder-tree navigation, ribbon toolbars, accordion controls, control-click multi-select capabilities, and context-sensitive right-click actions.

MicroStrategy 9 enables collaboration via comments that can be added to reports to provide instructions to other users and to share information. Every report can maintain and display a set of notes with details on who left the note and when.

MicroStrategy provides users comprehensive, context-sensitive help throughout the interface.

MicroStrategy Web allows users to format reports and save custom format styles. These include row-level headers, row-level values, column-level headers, column-level values, metric headers, metric values, subtotal headers, subtotal values, custom groups, consolidation, and reports.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau provides an intuitive and user friendly interface. However, the capabilities provided are very limited. For example, Tableau Web users cannot create new reports, format existing reports, or add new metrics to existing reports. This severely limits the end user analysis capabilities and makes them dependent on the IT department. If the end users want to create their own analysis they will have to install and learn the Tableau desktop thick client. Installing the Tableau desktop thick client is not practical in case of large scale deployments with 100s of information consumers.

Self-Service Web Interface

• Fully interactive interface with controls for data formatting, manipulation, and analysis

• Real-time changes without a publishing process

• Creation of report objects, such as prompts and filters, over the Web

• What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) design and editing of any report type over the Web

• Zero-footprint Web interface from any browser

YES MicroStrategy puts wide-ranging control in the hands of business users, minimizing the need for IT personnel to perform the same functions. Business users are able to rapidly create, manipulate, format, and analyze any report themselves, all through a single Web interface. Report objects such as prompts, filters, derived metrics, thresholds, and totals can also be created over the Web. Individual columns and rows on a grid can be selected quickly and users can easily format, drill, pivot, and perform other tasks on-the-fly.

Changes are available right away without any need to publish or export information to other environments.

Business users create highly formatted reports using any metadata object using a zero-footprint, WYSIWYG design paradigm that drastically shortens report development time.

MicroStrategy Web is zero-footprint, and does not rely on Java or ActiveX. As a result, report designers and business users can use any browser to design and interact with reports.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau users have limited options to analyze and modify data over the Web. Users can only sort, export, filter, and refresh data. Users cannot format the visualizations that are published to the Web or change the visualization styles. Further, users cannot create or modify visualizations, filters, prompts, metrics, thresholds, or subtotals over the Web limiting their data analysis capabilities. As a result of this limitation:

• Only a select few can actually create analysis (as the desktop license is expensive), this also means that end user requests will have to be routed through a professional developer requiring unnecessary iterations before business users can actually get to the point of performing analysis.

• In scenarios requiring large scale rollouts, end users will most likely use the Web client which provides very basic capabilities (filtering, sorting, etc). Users cannot modify the analysis to perform ad-hoc analysis thus missing most of the benefits that visual analysis tools offer.

WYSIWYG design or modification is not supported over the Web.

Visualizations must be published to Tableau server for consumption through Web. Real-time changes without a publishing process is not supported by Tableau.

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Advanced Self-Service Functionality

• Data Import

• Visual Insight

YES The Data Import and Visual Insight functionality is designed to give more control to business users. Business users can convert raw data into decisions in minutes and without assistance from the IT department.

Using Data Import functionality, business users can easily import personal or corporate data from local files, Excel files, or relational databases through the MicroStrategy Web interface. The imported data can be easily converted into interactive reports or dashboards without any IT assistance.

MicroStrategy Visual Insight allows business users to visually identify patterns, trends, and anomalies in data. Business users can intuitively query, visualize, filter, and drill into their data. A drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG interface enables business users to visualize the changes as they are made. MicroStrategy Visual Insight provides incredible speed-of-interactivity, detailed visualizations, and instant query results, thus allowing business users to rapidly go from data to decisions.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau does not provide the capability to import data from the Web interface, desktop client is required to set up connections to data sources. As a result, end users will have to make requests to the IT department to set up access to data sources as they will not be able to import personal or corporate data that they want to analyze directly from the Web interface.

Similarly, Tableau does not provide the capability to build visual analysis through the Web interface. This severely limits the end user self-service capabilities.

Instant Response to User Actions

• Extreme AJAX Web interface

• High degree of client-side processing while maintaining a zero-footprint Web client

YES The MicroStrategy Web architecture adheres to an Extreme AJAX model, shifting processing from the Web server to the Web browser for any browser type. By spreading the processing workload, the user is given a much more responsive and interactive Web experience while still preserving a true zero-footprint Web interface.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau supports a zero-footprint Web interface. However, the functionality supported by the Web interface is limited to basic actions like sorting and filtering.

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Dynamic Report Personalization

• Comprehensive parameter and question prompting (column, filter, search based, value, hierarchical)

• Personal answers saved for reuse across different reports

• Security profiles personalize report content for individual users

YES In MicroStrategy, a single report can span hundreds of possible data combinations tailored to different user needs.

MicroStrategy prompts provide report input parameters that control most aspects of a report, and give the user significant ad hoc reporting capabilities. Prompts enable the personalization of reports from a single report definition, reducing the number of objects stored in the metadata repository.

• Advanced report parameters, like object (column) and hierarchy prompts, allow users to select the business attributes and KPIs to include in the report at run-time.

• MicroStrategy Web displays prompt values and report contents that are permitted by the user's security profile. For example, when running a prompted report, dashboard, or document, the user can only select prompt answers that he has permission to see. In a similar way, when running a report, only the metrics and attributes that the user has permission to see will be displayed to the user.

NO Prompting is not supported by Tableau. Only basic element list prompts can be simulated by means of filters.

Object prompts (like column and filter prompting), hierarchy prompts, and metric

level prompts are not supported. This results in creating and publishing more views of reports than necessary. On the other hand, with MicroStrategy, a single highly prompted report can suffice the analysis requirements of thousands of users across multiple departments.

Furthermore, Tableau does not provide a standalone prompt object that can be reused across the entire deployment or across multiple Tableau data sources.

4. HIGH PERFORMANCE AT ANY SCALE

MicroStrategy technology has long been the performance leader at high user counts and data scale. MicroStrategy

9 continues and extends that leadership with adaptive caching technology called In-memory ROLAP and SQL

generation optimizations that can deliver the highest query performance, even when accessing hundreds of

terabytes of data. In-memory ROLAP takes advantage of the huge addressable memory space now available on 64-

bit computers to provide high performance middle-tier databases that can respond directly to data requests from

reports, dashboards, and OLAP analyses.

“ We look forward to using MicroStrategy 9 In-memory ROLAP technology to help us improve our user

experience with faster response times and to take unnecessary pressure off our Teradata system.”

– Manager of BI Architecture, eBay

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In-Memory BI Fills a Void in the Performance Curve of a BI System

BEFORE IN-MEMORY BI AFTER IN-MEMORY BI

Output Caching

In-memory On-Disk

Caching Query

Database Query Slower

Response Time

Data SetCachingReport

CachingOutput Caching

Database Query

Data SetCaching

In-memoryQuery

Report Caching

In-memory On-Disk

Caching Query

FasterResponse Time

Figure 5: MicroStrategy In-Memory BI Provides the Combination of Fast Response Time from Multidimensional Caching and the Flexibility of Ad Hoc Query BI

ROLAP is unique among BI architectures in that it can model whole relational databases as if they were a single

multi-dimensional cube. In this case, the cube is virtual since relational databases often contain terabytes of data

that could not fit within any physical cube technology. MicroStrategy’s virtual cube provides MicroStrategy users

with the ability to perform OLAP interactions with the data and drill freely throughout the vast virtual cube without

the severe size limitations of MOLAP architectures.

“ MicroStrategy’s new In-memory ROLAP option is game changing. Unlike other in-memory approaches on

the market today, it is fully integrated with an enterprise BI environment and provides high performance

transparently to business users. The way in which large amounts of data are stored and accessed in-memory

is so seamless that I was skeptical until I saw the actual SQL generated and witnessed the performance. ”

– Cindi Howson, Founder of BIScorecard

MicroStrategy 9 Multisource ROLAP Allows Data Environments to be Optimized for Performance and Cost

MicroStrategy Virtual Cube

MarketingData Mart

MicroStrategy Virtual Cube

MfgData Mart

EnterpriseData Whse

SalesData Mart

FinancialData Mart

Lookups, Aggregates,Summary Data

Enterprise Data Warehouse

Supporting Hub and Spoke Data Architectures Balance the Workload Across Databases

SQLServer

Teradata

MySQL

Netezza

SybaseIQ

SQLServerDB2

Figure 6: MicroStrategy Multisource ROLAP Helps Decrease Time to Value by incorporating Hub and Spoke Architectures and Decrease Cost by Switching Database Processing from the Enterprise Data Warehouse to Alternative Lower Cost Databases.

20

Successful BI systems often experience dramatic growth in user populations. It is increasingly common for a single

MicroStrategy BI installation to support thousands and even tens of thousands of business users. The technical

challenge in these circumstances is to be able to efficiently accommodate thousands of concurrent user sessions

while providing high performance and easy administration. MicroStrategy 9 supports 64-bit Java Virtual Machines

(JVMs) in both J2EE Web servers as well as ASP.net Web Servers. The dramatically expanded memory available

in 64-bit JVMs supports many more concurrent user sessions, and allows users to display and interact with larger

reports and dashboards.

“ The most critical factor for our organization is the speed with which we can react to the needs of the

business. MicroStrategy enables our executives and other business users to run reports and analyses

within seconds, which in turn, allows our employees to make timely decisions that dramatically impact

the business. Also, our high performance BI environment encourages the use of BI across the company,

providing greater visibility into the business for more employees.” – Chief Information Officer, FAMIQ


Quick Response Time

• In-memory ROLAP

• Dynamic sourcing

• Dynamic multi-level caching

YES MicroStrategy’s In-memory ROLAP capabilities leverage 64-bit operating systems to improve the overall performance of the BI system. In-memory ROLAP cubes improve the performance of the most time-consuming and frequently used queries, while still allowing users to seamlessly navigate the entire data warehouse.

When building a report, the report developer never has to explicitly reference an In-memory ROLAP cube. Dynamic sourcing capabilities automatically direct queries to In-memory ROLAP cubes whenever possible. Administrators can be assured that the In-memory ROLAP cubes they create will automatically and immediately improve overall query performance.

MicroStrategy provides automatic caching at multiple levels, including element list, metadata object, report dataset, XML definition, document output, and database connection caching. Caching makes the entire BI system efficient by reducing redundant computations and network traffic.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau does not provide a in-memory ROLAP architecture. Tableau is a Windows application and it does not support other platforms. As a result, Tableau cannot take full advantage of the existing hardware infrastructure.

Tableau does provide a tool similar to MicroStrategy to automatically recommend and create in-memory cubes based on the usage statistics to maximize the performance gains.

Tableau’s caching capabilities are limited and it does not support caching the metadata objects, or caching of element lists. In a clustered environment the caches are not shared across the different nodes. The options provided for cache configurations are also limited.

21


High Performance ROLAP Engine

• Push-down joins

• Push-down analytics

• Multi-pass SQL

• Support for all implementations of multi-pass SQL, including the use of temp tables, derived tables, and common table expressions

• Minimize network traffic

• Automatic aggregate awareness

• Database-specific SQL generation and optimization through VLDB drivers

YES MicroStrategy’s ROLAP architecture uses the database for much of its processing. Data joins and analytic calculations are processed in the database whenever possible. MicroStrategy’s multi-pass approach provides the flexibility to answer analytical questions in an optimal manner. Any technical advances in the database are seamlessly accessible to the MicroStrategy platform. By leveraging the database to its fullest extent possible, large volumes of transaction level data are processed efficiently and network traffic is minimized.

Automatic and intelligent support for common data warehouse optimization techniques like aggregate tables and table partitioning ensures that the MicroStrategy SQL engine maximizes database usage for every analysis. VLDB properties allow for further fine-tuning of the SQL engine on both a global and report-by-report basis. Through VLDB drivers, MicroStrategy can optimize table join sequences, databases’ parallel execution capabilities, query optimization hints, and other database-specific tuning parameters. Global SQL query optimization algorithms optimize complex queries to reduce the number of SQL passes, providing further performance improvement to queries.

LIMITED ◗Tableau does not recommend its customers to model the entire database and positions itself as a “subject-oriented” analysis tool. Tableau SQL engine is not designed to handle complex datasets and is suitable for only simple datasets with a single fact table. As a result, Tableau is limited in its ability to answer complex business question involving data from multiple fact tables and complex datasets.

Tableau does not support database specific SQL generation or database specific optimizations using VLDB settings. MicroStrategy on the other, hand has implemented unique optimizations for all major database vendor including Aster, Vertica, Greenplum, Netezza, and Teradata.

Tableau does not support multisource push-down joining capability. When accessing multiple sources using Tableau, the data is pulled from each individual data source to the mid-tier and then joins are performed on-the-fly by the mid-tier client, resulting in unnecessary network conjunctions and inefficient data processing.

Calculations like percent to total or dimensional/level metrics are not performed at the database level; rather, these types of calculations are computed on-the-fly by the Tableau mid-tier, resulting in wasteful utilization of the database processing power.

Market Proven Enterprise Scalability and Performance

• Native 64-bit BI processing

• 64-bit Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) support

• Server Clustering for failover recovery and load balancing

• Customer references for large user and data scale production deployments

YES The MicroStrategy platform is designed for enterprise scalability. Native 64-bit processing allows MicroStrategy to support large numbers of users and data volumes while improving performance. MicroStrategy supports native 64-bit processing for all major operating systems, and across the entire BI platform.

MicroStrategy also fully supports 64-bit Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) in both J2EE Web servers as well as ASP.net Web Servers. The expanded memory available in 64-bit JVMs allows for optimal Web performance across the enterprise. One server can maintain more concurrent user sessions and run much larger reports, reducing overall hardware costs.

A cluster-capable server provides load balancing and automatic failover capabilities, so system resources are allocated efficiently and system uptime is maximized. MicroStrategy clustered servers support asymmetric configurations, so each cluster node can support different applications. All cluster nodes share caches and in-memory cubes and all changes made to the metadata objects and security settings take effect immediately.

MicroStrategy has many customer references for deployments to thousands of users who are reporting and analyzing tens of terabytes of data.

NO Tableau supports 64-bit for data loading but does not support 64-bit processing for data rendering. As a result, Tableau cannot take full advantage of 64-bit hardware, limiting its performance and scalability. Tableau does not offer scalable and high performing in-memory ROLAP architecture. As a result, Tableau deployments are typically departmental with low data volumes and limited number of users.

Tableau is a Windows only application and therefore deployment options are limited.

The distributed configuration of Tableau Server helps with performance, but does not help with reliability. Tableau does not provide fail-over of the application database; if the primary machine goes down, the cluster as a whole is inoperative.

Tableau has limited customer references for large scale user and data implementations and is typically used in small departmental deployments.

22

5. QUICK TO IMPLEMENT AND DEPLOY, EASY TO MAINTAIN AND ADMINISTER

MicroStrategy 9 can deliver BI solutions quickly with little or no IT support. MicroStrategy’s unified BI architecture

offers many IT timesaving features including object reuse and optimized administration. MicroStrategy 9 allows

organizations to create a single shared business logic layer, the metadata, which presents a single cohesive model

of the business. Object reuse across the entire platform facilitates faster application development. Object reuse

across the entire platform also minimizes IT maintenance effort, since IT only needs to maintain one object instead

of several (or several hundred) object copies. Object reuse ensures a single “version of the truth” that persists across

all reports, dashboards, and analyses, regardless of who creates them.

MicroStrategy Allows Report Designers to Create Reusable Metadata Components

Range of MetadataElements Used in Reports

REPORT DESIGN

Layout

Format

Calculations

REPORT COMPONENTS

Parameterization

Templates

Filters

Autostyles

BUSINESS ABSTRACTION

Metrics

Hierarchies

Custom Groupings

Transformations

DATA ABSTRACTION

Attributes

Facts

Tables

Aliases

MicroStrategy Other BI Technologies

Report-Specific

Components

Report-Specific

Components

ReusableMetadata

Components

ReusableMetadata

Components

Figure 7: The More Comprehensive the Reusable Metadata, the More an Enterprise can Ensure Fast and Managed Development

MicroStrategy designed its architecture to minimize administration overhead through capabilities such as a single

administration point, reusable and automated cell level data security, and automatic internationalization features.

A central point of control across the entire platform reduces overhead. MicroStrategy’s universally-applied reusable

security system protects the privacy of the data and dynamically filters out data from any report based on the

security profile of each business user. MicroStrategy 9 offers the ability to automatically present every report,

dashboard, or OLAP analysis in the local language of each business user viewing the information without requiring

any additional design work by report authors. MicroStrategy capabilities, such as centralization and automation,

allow administrators to deliver secure BI to any user base, whether to a department or to thousands of users, with

minimal IT effort. any additional design work by report authors. MicroStrategy capabilities, such as centralization

and automation, allow administrators to deliver secure BI to any user base, whether to a department or to

thousands of users, with minimal IT effort.

“ The new BI system has reduced the time we spend on monthly reporting by more than 50%. There is now

more time to spend on operations and innovation.” – IT Specialist, Silverstar Casino

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Unified BI Architecture

• Single interface provides seamless integration of analytics and reporting for root cause analysis

• Single metadata reduces IT effort

• Single Server

• Single code base across platforms

• Single, zero-footprint Web interface

YES MicroStrategy’s single code base offers reusable business logic across the entire platform. For example, MicroStrategy’s dashboards can be made from existing reports and objects, speeding development and ensuring consistency of report logic across reports and dashboards.

• MicroStrategy’s single BI server provides efficient, centralized administration for the IT administrator. A single server with fewer moving parts and processes translates into less downtime.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau’s lack of object reusability makes the BI environment more difficult to maintain, and increases the risk of having “multiple versions of the truth.”

Tableau is limited in its ability to provide all five styles of BI. For example, Tableau cannot generate the complete range of enterprise reports (highly structured, multi-page reports); and provides limited capabilities to deliver sophisticated user-driven alerting.

Reusable and Rich Metadata Layer

• Robust abstraction layer where all physical constructs can be modeled logically and hidden from the business user

• Highly reusable metadata

• Automatic change management

• Object-oriented metadata

YES MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata defines an enterprise’s business layer in a single repository. Metadata objects can be nested as building blocks to create more complex objects. If a metadata object changes, every other metadata object dependent on it automatically changes. This ensures consistency across business definitions and minimizes the number of objects to create and maintain.

MicroStrategy assembles all metadata objects necessary for a report and dynamically builds the report SQL at run-time. Complex queries, such as set qualifications, dimensional calculations, and custom groupings, are created easily without requiring manual SQL coding.

NO Tableau’s lack of a unified object oriented metadata results in redundant development and maintenance efforts. There is little object or metadata reusability between dashboards making it difficult to maintain a consistent business view of the data. One change to a business definition would involve making changes to each Tableau application one by one, a mistake-prone and onerous process. The lack of object reusability makes the BI environment more difficult to maintain, and increases the risk of having “multiple versions of the truth.”

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Enterprise-Caliber Administration

• Single management console

• Self-tuning scalable server for maximum performance

• Impact analysis

• Usage monitoring / auditing

• Controlled environment for usage analysis

• Object management / migration

• Change journaling

• Automated regression testing

• Optimization of In-Memory ROLAP environment

YES MicroStrategy’s centralized administration provides a single console for real-time user and system management. Administrators can view and perform tasks on many system-wide activities, including executing jobs, user management, and scheduled services.

MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager provides out-of-the box platform monitoring with hundreds of KPIs and corresponding dashboards to perform impact analysis, auditing and tuning of the BI application.

MicroStrategy Object Manager facilitates metadata life cycle management, metadata dependencies, and project management.

MicroStrategy’s change journaling system captures and logs all changes to the metadata. Change tracking is critical for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Persistent commenting allows distributed development teams to communicate with one another about their changes.

MicroStrategy Integrity Manager automates the report comparison process and verifies the consistency of reports. This tool can detect, compare, and present inconsistencies in reports and data caused by changes in the BI ecosystem. Discrepancies in data values, SQL, and graph display are highlighted. Cube Advisor recommends and automatically creates an optimal set of In-Memory Cubes to reduce database processing and improve response times.

LIMITED ◗

In order to be data scalable, simply being able process large volumes of data is insufficient. Large data volumes are typically associated with

• Complex Schema

• Many tables and columns

• Sophisticated analytical needs

• Large number of users (which typically translates to more reports to maintain)

Tableau is typically difficult to administer under these conditions.

Tableau’s capabilities to queue and prioritize jobs are limited. As a result, the administrator has little control to prevent the server from being overtaxed or to properly prioritize resource allocation.

Tableau provides system statistics to the administrator – for example, how many users are logged in and how many jobs are running. However, Tableau does not allow the administrator to manually log out users or kill jobs. In short, the Tableau administrator can monitor the system, but has little power to act.

Tableau does not support change journaling capabilities out-of-the-box and does not provide object management and migration capabilities to move selected objects from development to production projects.

Tableau does not provide automated regression testing tools to detect report and data discrepancies caused by changes in the BI system.

Industrial-Strength Multi-level Security

• One, reusable setup for platform-wide cell level data security

• Same report yields different views of the information based on user profiles

• User profile determines appropriate level of functionality

• Truly zero-footprint Web interface. No use or download of ActiveX and other plug-ins

• Automatic secure extranet ready with 128-bit encryption

• Integrate with any security infrastructure with single sign-on

YES MicroStrategy provides centralized security administration across the entire platform. Reusable user profiles and privileges automatically ensure users only access the appropriate information and functionality down to the data cell level.

MicroStrategy automatically provides 128-bit end-to-end encryption with a zero-footprint Web client, making it a secure platform behind the firewall.

MicroStrategy automatically integrates with existing security authentication infrastructure such as LDAP, NT, Windows Active Directory, Tivoli, CA SiteMinder, and database security.

LIMITED ◗

Security has to be defined redundantly for each Tableau workbook and there is no way to centrally apply security across the entire Tableau deployment. It is not possible to centrally apply access control privileges to individual objects like metrics, filters, prompts, or custom groups across the entire deployment.

25


Easy to Maintain Global Deployments

• Native support for multilingual deployments

• Configurable translations for multiple content categories, including the interface, error messages, date/number formatting, metadata objects, and report data

• Integrated interfaces and wizards to input translations or import translation strings

• Support for partially translated metadata

• Flexible support for multiple data warehouse translation methods

• Internationalization-aware data pre-calculations

YES MicroStrategy offers the ability to dynamically present every report, dashboard, or OLAP analysis in the local language of each business user viewing the information.

Translation wizards and interfaces make it easy for end users to input or import translation strings into the metadata. Translations can be performed incrementally; fallback language settings allow for partially translated metadata.

Multiple methods of data warehouse translations are supported, including translations at the column-level, row level, table-level, and database-level. A single In-memory ROLAP Cube supports multiple languages so that resources are used efficiently.

NO Tableau currently only supports English, French and German and has very limited international presence.

Tableau does not provide integrated interfaces and wizards to manage multilingual deployments.

Easy to Customize and Migrate Seamlessly

• Single development environment for entire platform

• Easy to create and upgrade customizations via Web Customization editor

• Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) integration

• Flex Builder support

• Extensive API documentation

YES The MicroStrategy SDK is a comprehensive development environment primarily used for integrating MicroStrategy functionality into other existing systems, especially enterprise portals, and customizing and extending the functionality of MicroStrategy Web.

The MicroStrategy Web Customization Editor integrates into the Eclipse IDE. Developers can easily perform MicroStrategy Web customization and migration tasks by eliminating the need to manually modify configuration files.

MicroStrategy provides Flex Builder 4.6 support for creating powerful Internet applications embedded with robust business intelligence.

The MicroStrategy Developer Zone offers developers access to documentation via advanced search functionality such as sorting results by relevance or by date, wild card and exact phrase searching, word highlighting, spelling suggestions, and exclusion searches. MicroStrategy provides developers with an online collaborative community, documentation, and customization code samples.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau does not provide a customization editor that can be used to easily create and maintain customizations.

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6. HIGHLY INTERACTIVE AND FLEXIBLE MOBILE INTELLIGENCE

The use of the Internet on smartphones and other mobile devices has changed the way people communicate and

consume information, creating an exponential rise in the acceptance, adoption, and usage of data. With the ability

to access information at any time, in any location, on a hand-held device, consumers can now make more and more

decisions quickly and easily.

MicroStrategy offers a very robust and innovative mobile app development platform that can be used either

for creating purpose-built, workflow-driven mobile applications, or for directly displaying existing Reports and

Dashboards on mobile devices without the need of re-authoring.

MicroStrategy Mobile Apps:

• Are faster and simpler to develop (no coding) – Created by metadata driven, point-and-click paradigms and

fully utilizing MicroStrategy’s BI infrastructure, security, and reusable metadata components.

• Are easier to maintain – Changes to the centralized BI platform metadata are instantaneously propagated to all

user interfaces, including mobile devices. Changes are made once and only in one place in the metadata, ensuring

a “single version of the truth” and hassle-free maintenance.

• Are enterprise grade – Delivers the full benefits of MicroStrategy’s BI infrastructure: administration, security,

scalability, and performance.

• Provide intuitive and powerful visualizations – Fully leverages MicroStrategy’s vast library of advanced visualizations.

• �Provide�exceptional�flexibility – The MicroStrategy app platform provides exceptional flexibility to create a wide

range of mobile apps that go above and beyond the boundaries of traditional BI, without writing a single line of code.

Most other BI companies are still trying to establish their mobile strategies and are primarily focused on providing

traditional BI through mobile devices. These companies do not offer an app development platform that is specifically

designed for building rich mobile applications, while fully leveraging the underlying BI platform infrastructure.

Information at Your Fingerprints – Using MicroStrategy's Workflow-Driven Mobile BI

Figure 8: MicroStrategy Mobile Intelligence Provides Exceptional Flexibility to Create a Wide Range of Mobile Apps.

App-Centric

Purpose-built, workflow-driven Apps that quickly and easily guide users through their data to discovery, analysis, or decision. Apps fully leverage mobile device capabilities, including the multi-touch interface, sensors (GPS, camera, etc.), communications (voice, email, text), and more.

Enterprise Grade

Designed to deliver the higher levels of performance and scalability demanded by mobile Apps. MicroStrategy delivers in-memory, multi-level caching, ROLAP analytics, robust security, easy extensibility, and comprehensive administration features designed for enterprise deployments.

Fast to App

Fast, code-free app development via MicroStrategy’s metadata-driven, point-and-click paradigm. Build rich, interactive BI apps in just days. Speed deployment by building once and deploying across platform to iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, browsers, Microsoft Office, or portals.

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April 15, 2010

Summary as of April 1, 2010

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iPad 1:55 PM 100%iPad 1:55 PM 100%

iPad 1:55 PM 100%

Channel Overview

Retail

IVR

<15k0

20,000,000,000

450,000,000

400,000,000

350,000,000

300,000,000

250,000,000

200,000,000

150,000,000

100,000,000

50,000,000

0

40,000,000,000

60,000,000,000

80,000,000,000

100,000,000,000

15k-25k 25k-50k 50k+

50+

Total Visits

Top Buyers

Request Visits

Under-drivenPurchases

Offer-drivenPurchases

16-25

25-35

35-50

Call Center

Web

Trend and per-Channel Ranking Current, Last, Last Year’s Quarter

City

Location Income

<15k

15k-25k

25k-50k

50k+

<15k

15k-25k

25k-50k

50k+

3.92%

3.92%

3.93%

3.79%

3.00%

3.09%

3.00%

2.99%

54.34%

54.32%

54.25%

47.79%

39.69%

39.67%

39.67%

36.45%

Current Conversion % Other Conversion % Other Trend

Rural

Series: Repeat Visits

Category: 20092

Value: 348,604,353

Series: Web

Category: Revenue

Value: 186,810M

27

“ We were ‘wowed’ by MicroStrategy’s technology and the ability to build our application in one week

leveraging our existing infrastructure. Our clients are very excited about our new iPhone app and the

capabilities it provides to help them enhance efficiency and improve business performance. We see

tremendous potential for iPhone and iPad apps, which will enable our clients to access important

information whenever they need it.” – CTO, Alloso Technologies


Enterprise grade mobile application

• Minimum development efforts

• Minimum maintenance efforts

• Superior performance and scalability

• Minimum administration efforts

• Multi-level BI platform security extended to mobile devices

• Data protection on the mobile device

YES New reports for the mobile devices are created by metadata driven, point-and-click paradigm fully utilizing MicroStrategy’s BI infrastructure, security and reusable metadata components. As a result, reports for mobile devices can be created rapidly and easily, in a code-free environment. Changes to metadata are instantaneously propagated to all user interfaces. Changes are made only once, and only at one place ensuring hassle-free maintenance.

MicroStrategy Mobile leverages the MicroStrategy platform’s superior performance, scalability, and functionality provides rapid answers to tens of thousands of users through their mobile devices. Performance is further enhanced by efficiently caching reports, and dashboards locally on the mobile device.

MicroStrategy's acclaimed administration tools provides the administration efficiencies needed to deploy mobile applications to hundreds of thousands of users, while providing the industry's lowest total cost of ownership.

MicroStrategy Mobile utilizes the same sophisticated user authorization management framework available in the MicroStrategy platform and in addition, MicroStrategy provides a number of different security features to protect data stored on the device, including but not limited to iOS Hardware Encryption, iOS's "sandbox" to protects app data from other apps, Locally-stored data purged upon exiting the app, remote wipe off in case the device is stolen, etc.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau provides a hybrid app for the iPad. However, for all other mobile devices and operating system access to Tableau content is only supported through the Web browser. Tableau mobile users have to be connected to internet in order to view and interact with the visualization. There is no offline analysis capability and reports cannot be cached on the device for quick answers. As a result, performance of the Tableau mobile deployment is affected.

Tableau does not does not follow a true object-oriented development paradigm, and does not provide the same extent of object reusability resulting in greater development and maintenance efforts.

Tableau provides very limited administration efficiency tool to easily manage and maintain the deployment. There are typically a large number of Tableau workbooks floating across a Tableau deployment. Tableau Workbooks act as self contained application with their own data and metadata. Managing and maintaining the large number of independent workbooks becomes a challenge for administrators and can easily lead to spreadmart issues.

28


Highly interactive and intuitive user experience

• Native mobile applications

• Device-specific actions

o Multi-touch

o App integration

o Sensor based query

o Mobile Info capture

• BI-specific features perfectly designed to work with device specific capabilities

o Drill anywhere

o Swipe to page-by

o Integrated mapping

o Rich visualizations

o Alerts through push notifications

o Prompting

o Subscriptions

• Offline analysis

YES MicroStrategy provides native Apps for mobile device. The native Apps are designed to fully leverage mobile device capabilities including the multi-touch interface, sensors (GPS, camera, etc.), communications (voice, email, text), and more.

The MicroStrategy Mobile Apps provide a vast range of BI specific functionality that is designed to leverage, and work seamlessly with the device capabilities. The BI functionality includes integrated Google maps, OOTB drill-anywhere, a vast library of advanced visualizations, device specific actions to perform BI specific tasks such as swipe (horizontally or vertically) to page-by, alerts for report refresh or data changes through push notifications, intelligent prompting, metric swapping, and much more.

With MicroStrategy Mobile, reports are cached directly on the mobile devices for fast, offline viewing. Reports are fully interactive; data can be sliced and sorted; and columns can be locked, resized, and reordered for effective comparisons of metrics.

Users can subscribe to reports directly from their Blackberry device and do not have to wait for IT to create subscriptions for them.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau mobile fails to provide intuitive user experience that mobile users are accustomed to. Tableau mobile interface supports only basic filtering and sorting of data. Other BI specific functionality like drill-anywhere, swipe to page-by, alerting through Apple's push notification, prompting using the native controls, metric swapping for efficient real estate utilization, or annotation capability is not supported.

Tableau delivers only traditional BI through mobile devices. They do not provide the flexibility to implement unique workflows to suite specific requirements and business process of different organizations.

Tableau does not support offline analysis by caching data locally on the device. Tableau mobile users must be connected to the internet to view and interact with Tableau BI content.

App Development Platform

• Flexibility to create any information workflow

• Ability to deliver multiple forms of information through the mobile app

• Actionable mobile apps

YES MicroStrategy App platform provides exceptional flexibility to create Mobile apps that can be used to create a very wide range of mobile applications that go above and beyond the boundaries of traditional BI, without writing a single line of code.

MicroStrategy extends the boundaries of the mobile BI App by delivering multiple forms of information to users within the same App. Unstructured information, like images, text, desktop publishing design, web content (web pages, videos), and more. In addition, MicroStrategy Mobile also provides In-App PDF reader, Email, Browser, HTML containers, and optimized ePub handling.

MicroStrategy provides the ability to imple-ment, and embed transactional capabilities into the information driven mobile apps. Using MicroStrategy Mobile, business users can not only monitor key business metrics, but also initiate appropriate ac-tions from within the mobile apps.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau delivers only traditional BI through mobile devices. They do not provide the flexibility to implement unique workflows to suite specific requirements and business process of different organizations.

Tableau mobile BI application is limited only to view the pre-created visualizations and does not support delivering multimedia content like photos, videos, PDF files, or ePub documents through the mobile app.

Tableau does not provide the ability to implement, and embed transactional capabilities into the information driven mobile apps.

29

7. DEEP INSIGHT THROUGH SUPERIOR ANALYTICS

MicroStrategy 9 allows users to freely investigate data and “surf” through the data warehouse without having to

design a new report for each new combination of data that a user wants to see. Users can create analytic metrics

leveraging a wide range of data mining algorithms, statistical, predictive, and OLAP functions, as well as capabilities

for metric grouping on-the-fly. Users can import complex statistical models from specialized third party data mining

applications. MicroStrategy’s unified platform ensures that all these analytic capabilities are available on any type of

report in the entire BI environment.

“ World-class analytics are important and MicroStrategy is a cost efficient way to address our expanding BI

requirement.” – Chief Executive Officer, eHarmony

Figure 9: Advanced Analytics can be Easily Incorporated into and Consumed through Reports, Dashboards and Scorecards.

MicroStrategy’s ability to generate multi-pass SQL is a key element in providing analytically sophisticated business

intelligence applications. Multi-pass SQL is required to answer analytical questions that require several steps and

cannot be answered with a single SQL query block. MicroStrategy generates SQL that performs these multi-pass

queries as efficiently as possible for each particular database. Iterative analysis is the dynamic mechanism that

represents the continuous interaction and advanced analytical techniques between the BI server and the database.

MicroStrategy uses this approach when complex questions cannot be answered using only the database. Not

only does MicroStrategy automatically invoke iterative analysis when required, it also dynamically decides the

most optimal location to perform the calculations, based on its own strengths and the database strengths, while

minimizing data transfer.

“ MicroStrategy’s powerful analytics help us analyze sales performance across locations and model lines for

enhanced sales targeting and inventory management” – Manager, IT Systems, Porsche Cars North

America, Inc.

Web Browser

Apple iPad

Web Browser

iPad 1:55 PM 100%iPad 1:55 PM 100%

Web Browser

Apple iPad Apple iPad

Segmentation Analysis

Trend Analysis

StatisticalAnalysis

30


Efficiently Answer Complex Questions

• Multi-pass SQL

• Reusable analysis objects (e.g., custom groups, consolidations, transformations, conditional metrics, sets)

• Support for complex definitions of analysis objects (e.g., conditional metrics with set conditions, custom groups defined with a mix of metric qualifications and attributes at different levels, set analysis with multi-attribute comparisons)

• All analytical capabilities available across all styles of BI

YES MicroStrategy’s ability to generate multipass SQL allows MicroStrategy to answer analytical questions that require several steps and cannot be answered with a single SQL query block.

The MicroStrategy metadata supports a rich set of reusable analysis objects. In addition to attributes, metrics, and filters, complex objects such as custom groups and transformations can be created and reused in any report. The reusability of these analysis objects allows business users to answer sophisticated questions without requiring IT coding and promotes more efficient application development.

MicroStrategy’s analysis objects can be defined with a high degree of complexity. For example, a custom group can be based on a mix of metric qualifications and multiple attributes at different levels.

LIMITED ◗Tableau Software recommends performing analysis only on the subject at hand and does not recommend modeling the entire database because Tableau is more suitable for performing analysis on simple datasets with a single fact table and cannot handle much complexity. Tableau by default joins all the tables (lookup and fact) in a given connection even for simple queries that do not require joining all the tables.

Tableau does not provide multi-pass SQL generation capabilities, and therefore, is limited in its ability to answer questions that involve:

• Complex set analysis

• Split metrics

• Calculation at different levels of aggregation

For example, questions like “Show me sales by region over the last six months, but only for customers who purchased one of the 5 most popular products in 2004, and for regions where vendors have the most reliable shipment times over all time” are very difficult to answer using Tableau.

Analysis objects like new metrics, derived metrics, consolidation, new filters, or subtotals cannot be created from the Tableau Web interface. As a result, Tableau Web users are limited in their ability to answer complex business questions.

Sophisticated Predictive Analytics

• Single unified platform provides data mining scoring capabilities

• Open platform and cross-vendor interoperability via PMML

• Seamless integration of predictive analytics with casual reporting

• Support for popular predictive analytic algorithms (e.g., Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, Tree-Regression, Clustering, Decision Tree, Association Rules, Time Series)

• Support for complex algorithms (e.g., Neural Network, Rule Set, Support Vector Machine, Ensembles of Models)

• Member of the Data Mining Group, a data mining standards-setting organization

YES The MicroStrategy BI platform delivers data mining and predictive analytics to all users through a fully unified and integrated enterprise-caliber BI system. MicroStrategy Data Mining Services enables organizations to maximize their investment in data mining products by importing their Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) and seamlessly encapsulating the model as a predictive metric for use with any report or document.

Report designers and analysts can view and build predictive reports using MicroStrategy and then distribute these reports to all relevant decision makers and stakeholders. Business analysts can perform further analysis – slicing-and dicing data, creating ad hoc reports, drilling, pivoting, and sorting – on predictive reports. All users continue to inherit all the object reuse, security, administrative, and manageability benefits of the MicroStrategy BI platform.

MicroStrategy data mining scoring capabilities support cross-vendor interoperability. MicroStrategy supports PMML from SPSS, KXEN, SAS, Salford Systems, Oracle, ANGOSS, FairIsaac, StatSoft and R.

MicroStrategy is an active member of the Data Mining Group, providing guidance and leadership to set the PMML standards for the data mining industry.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau offers the capabilities to perform basic statistical analysis. However, Tableau provides limited sophisticated data mining and predictive analysis capabilities.

Tableau does not support complex algorithms (e.g., Neural Network, Rule Set, Support Vector

Machine, and Ensembles of Models).

Tableau is not a member of the Data Mining Group.

Tableau does not support importing third party PMML models into Tableau reports or metrics.

31

8. FLEXIBLE TECHNOLOGY FOR DEPARTMENTAL TO ENTERPRISE BI

Increasingly, departments want their own islands of departmental BI because they need the flexibility and speed

offered by smaller systems that are unencumbered by inter-departmental coordination, budgeting allocations,

and project prioritization. On the other hand, CFOs and CIOs want enterprise BI systems because they offer a

single “version of the truth” and the lowest cost of ownership. With MicroStrategy 9, companies can have both.

MicroStrategy’s flexible BI platform provides multi-source data access, rapid application development, and seamless

migration from departmental to enterprise BI.

MicroStrategy�9�Supports�a�Gradual�and�Incremental�Migration�from�Islands�of�BI�into�a�Consolidated�Enterprise�BI�System

Enterprise DW

HR Dept Sales Dept

HR Sales

Enterprise

Fin

Enterprise HR Sales

Finance Dept HR Dept Sales Dept

Enterprise DWEnterprise DW

HR Dept Sales Dept

Fin

Finance Dept

Fin

Finance Dept

Enterprise

Stage 1Disparate Islands of BI

All Running on MicroStrategy BI

Stage 2Merging Islands of BI

Using MicroStrategy Multi-source

Stage 3Consolidating Data

Re-pointing Metadata to the EDW

HR Sales

Figure 10: MicroStrategy Technology Provides a Seamless Migration Path from Departmental BI to Enterprise BI

“ Organizations need to gradually and incrementally consolidate their departmental and workgroup islands of

BI into a cohesive enterprise framework that ensures a single “version of the truth” and low cost of operation.

MicroStrategy is directly addressing this challenge with MicroStrategy 9, which contains an In-memory BI and

Multi-source BI capability that will make MicroStrategy’s enterprise-caliber technology equally suitable for

workgroup BI and departmental BI. MicroStrategy’s new platform includes capabilities that allow consolidation

and transformation of departmental and workgroup islands of BI without having to redo reports or dashboards

as consolidation takes place.”

– Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President Research, Ventana Research

32


Seamless Migration From Departmental to Enterprise BI

• Metadata compatibility enables consolidation of islands of information

• Metadata abstraction layer enables seamless re-pointing of the data source without affecting the business model

• Advanced migration and environment management tools

YES MicroStrategy’s metadata compatibility enables departments to incrementally migrate their business logic into a consolidated BI environment.

MicroStrategy’s metadata abstraction layer allows companies to “re-point” the metadata to automatically access new data locations without disrupting reports or requiring redesign.

MicroStrategy Object Manager can automatically consolidate disparate departmental BI applications while reconciling all overlaps or conflicts that may arise.

NO Tableau lacks a robust abstraction layer and also lacks advanced migration and environment management tools. As a result, Tableau applications cannot be “re-pointed” to automatically access new data locations without disrupting the reports. Also, incremental migration of departmental application into a consolidated BI environment is not supported.

High Performing Multi-source Data Access

• Unified multi-dimensional business model across multiple data sources

• Optimized retrieval of multi-source data

• Smart Push-Down architecture

• Automatic multi-source drill anywhere

• Support for distributed workload database architectures

• Direct access to multi-dimensional data sources including SAP® BW InfoCubes and QueryCubes, Hyperion Essbase, and Microsoft Analysis Services.

• Direct reporting from salesforce.com

YES MicroStrategy’s unified multi-dimensional business model allows companies to create a single logical view spanning multiple data sources, making it easy to add new data sources. Users are able to seamlessly drill across multiple data sources.

MicroStrategy optimizes the retrieval of data from heterogeneous data sources. MicroStrategy dynamically selects the most efficient data source to query. The MicroStrategy SQL engine automatically creates queries optimized for each data source for fast performance without IT tuning efforts.

MicroStrategy’s Smart Push-Down architecture performs joins at the database layer thereby minimizing network traffic and leveraging the power of modern database engines. MicroStrategy further minimizes network traffic by moving the least amount of data to the most optimal database.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau does not allow joining data from multiple sources at the schema layer; instead, Tableau joins the data from multiple data sources on-the-fly at the mid-tier level creating unnecessary network conjunctions. Tableau’s multi source capabilities are more suitable for simple data mash-ups and can be very tedious to implement in cases where the underlying datasets are complex.

Rapid Departmental BI Application Development

• No need for a data warehouse or ETL tool

• Graphical and intuitive design interface to minimize IT effort

• Automatic detection wizard for creation of business logic and table mappings

• Pre-created templates for quick project and dashboard development

• Command line administrative tool for high volume tasks

• Comprehensive data model support

YES MicroStrategy 9 provides easy access to multiple data sources without requiring a data warehouse. MicroStrategy can instantiate In-memory ROLAP cubes by pulling information from multiple sources, obviating the need of an ETL tool or a data warehouse.

MicroStrategy’s graphical design interface makes it fast and easy to add new data sources and define business logic. A set of pre-created templates speed dashboard development.

MicroStrategy automatically detects data types from data sources and creates the entire business logic layer, speeding development.

MicroStrategy provides a scripting interface that allows project developers to schedule massive and repetitive tasks in a matter of seconds.

LIMITED ◗

The interface to design joins between tables is not graphical and does not support drag and drop actions. As a result, users can easily lose track of the data being prepared, especially when the underlying data is complex.

Pre-created templates for quick dashboard development are not provided. This increases the time and efforts required to create visually presentable dashboards.

Scripting interface to automate repetitive administration task is also not provide increasing the administration workload.

33


Centralized and De-Centralized Administration

• Web-based administration for business managers

• Allows distribution of administrative tasks, including object promotion, data integrity checking, and user management

• Update Packages allow distributed development

YES MicroStrategy 9 allows user and application administration responsibilities to be distributed to business people within individual departments using a Web interface. This offloads administrative tasks from centralized IT personnel and gives departments the ability to have their own databases, their own BI applications, and their own metadata within the same infrastructure as the enterprise BI environment.

MicroStrategy 9 Update Packages can automatically consolidate disparate development teams’ updates and changes.

LIMITED ◗

Tableau provides limited administration capabilities to implement a centralized and de-centralized administration model that provides a centralized security and development infrastructure, while allowing for departmental administrators with a prebuilt and limited scope of capabilities.

III. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength

Technology

MicroStrategy 9 is an advanced technology that allows companies to support all types of BI applications with one

technology. MicroStrategy 9 builds on MicroStrategy’s heritage of high-end BI and further extends the boundaries

of performance, scalability, and efficiency of enterprise BI. At the same time, MicroStrategy 9 brings that same

enterprise caliber BI technology easily within reach of smaller departmental BI initiatives. Just as importantly,

MicroStrategy 9 provides a smooth migration path for islands of departmental BI to merge into a cohesive and

consistent enterprise-wide framework. With MicroStrategy 9, even as departmental BI applications are consolidated

into the enterprise-wide framework, the departments can continue to retain significant autonomy and nimbleness

that they enjoyed previously.

“Today, organizations need a business intelligence solution that can support user self-sufficiency and can

respond more quickly and effectively to local business needs. MicroStrategy 9 provides end users with

more control over the analysis and reports they create and helps them to be more self-sufficient, require far

less IT support, and quickly adapt to changing business requirements.”

– Wayne Eckerson, Director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute

Unlike BI suites offered by other vendors, MicroStrategy offers the only organically grown BI architecture. All

of the MicroStrategy 9 components were expressly built to work within a unified architecture and not as

separate standalone products or acquired technologies that were subsequently joined together. This caliber of BI

technology is now being sought after by companies, not solely for their most demanding BI applications, but for

the purpose of hosting all of their BI applications. Today, companies can standardize all BI into a single, highly-

functional, efficient architecture and reap significant economies of scale and enterprise-wide consistency.

MicroStrategy Incorporated • 1850 Towers Crescent Plaza • Tysons Corner, VA 22182 • 1.888.537.8135 • www.microstrategy.com COLL-1082 0812

Copyright�Information

All Contents Copyright © 2012 MicroStrategy Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.

Trademark�Information

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Services, MicroStrategy MultiSource Option, MicroStrategy Command Manager, MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager, MicroStrategy Object Manager, MicroStrategy Reporting Suite, MicroStrategy

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Analyst, MicroStrategy Desktop Designer, MicroStrategy eCRM 7, MicroStrategy Education, MicroStrategy eTrainer, MicroStrategy Executive, MicroStrategy Infocenter, MicroStrategy Intelligence

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SDK, MicroStrategy Support, MicroStrategy Telecaster, MicroStrategy Transactor, MicroStrategy Web, MicroStrategy Web Business Analyzer, MicroStrategy World, Application Development and

Sophisticated Analysis, Best In Business Intelligence, Centralized Application Management, Information Like Water, Intelligence Through Every Phone, Intelligence To Every Decision Maker, Intelligent

E-Business, Personalized Intelligence Portal, Query Tone, Rapid Application Development, MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes, The Foundation For Intelligent E-Business, The Integrated Business Intelligence

Platform Built For The Enterprise, The Platform For Intelligent E-Business, The Scalable Business Intelligence Platform Built For The Internet, Office Intelligence, MicroStrategy Office, MicroStrategy

Report Services, MicroStrategy Web MMT, MicroStrategy Web Services, Pixel Perfect, Pixel-Perfect, MicroStrategy Mobile, MicroStrategy Integrity Manager and MicroStrategy Data Mining Services are

all registered trademarks or trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated.

All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Specifications subject to change without notice. MicroStrategy is not

responsible for errors or omissions. MicroStrategy makes no warranties or commitments concerning the availability of future products or versions that may be planned or under development.

Patent�Information

This product is patented. One or more of the following patents may apply to the product sold herein: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,766, 6,173,310, 6,260,050, 6,263,051, 6,269,393, 6,279,033,

6,567,796, 6,587,547, 6,606,596, 6,658,093, 6,658,432, 6,662,195, 6,671,715, 6,691,100, 6,694,316, 6,697,808, 6,704,723, 6,741,980, 6,765,997, 6,768,788, 6,772,137, 6,788,768, 6,798,867,

6,801,910, 6,820,073, 6,829,334, 6,836,537, 6,850,603, 6,859,798, 6,873,693, 6,885,734, 6,940,953, 6,964,012, 6,977,992, 6,996,568, 6,996,569, 7,003,512, 7,010,518, 7,016,480, 7,020,251,

7,039,165, 7,082,422, 7,113,993, 7,127,403, 7,174,349, 7,181,417, 7,194,457, 7,197,461, 7,228,303, 7,260,577, 7,266,181, 7,272,212, 7,302,639, 7,324,942, 7,330,847, 7,340,040, 7,356,758,

7,356,840, 7,415,438, 7,428,302, 7,430,562, 7,440,898, 7,486,780, 7,509,671, 7,516,181, 7,559,048, 7,574,376, 7,617,201, 7,725,811, 7,801,967, 7,836,178, 7,861,161, 7,861,253, 7,881,443,

7,925,616, 7,945,584, 7,970,782, 8,005,870, 8,051,168, 8,051,369, 8,094,788 and 8,130,918. Other patent applications are pending.

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