INDUSTRY

MicroStrategy Incorporated, a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence software, today announced a new strategic alliance with MapInfo Corporation, a leading global provider of location- intelligence solutions for the enterprise. The solution integrates MapInfo's sophisticated geographic querying and visualization capabilities with MicroStrategy's business intelligence (BI) platform, and allows organizations to efficiently monitor, report and analyze their enterprise data. With the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM) and MapInfo technology, customers now have the added capability of location analysis integrated seamlessly through a unified, easy-to-use Web interface that delivers a full range of enterprise reports and analytics. Users are able to both query and visualize operational data geographically, helping to increase profitability and enhance customer intimacy. MicroStrategy's industrial- strength business intelligence platform extends high-value enterprise reporting and analysis to mass users. "This was an alliance driven by our joint customer needs, as many of our customers are already using MicroStrategy to anchor their BI applications. This integration extends the functionality of MicroStrategy by providing a bi- directional geographic interface allowing users to move in and out of the data, flipping back and forth between the map and report. The impact of this is that we are enabling companies to add the dimension of location, thus expanding the effective power of their business intelligence solutions," said Michael Hickey, COO at MapInfo. "This will help them develop key insight, previously missing from their BI applications, such as identifying new market opportunities, uncovering location driven customer issues that will allow them to build stronger customer loyalty and increasing operational efficiencies by better managing key assets versus customer locations." "MicroStrategy prides itself in aligning with technology leaders like MapInfo," said MicroStrategy's COO Sanju Bansal. "By increasing the MicroStrategy portfolio with proven, highly integrated technology from the leading provider of location intelligence, we can expand our overall market reach, ultimately strengthening our leadership position in the business- intelligence space."