Intelligent Enterprise

Better Insight for Business Decisions

RSS
Webcasts
Whitepapers
Subscribe
Home

April 22, 2003

Enterprise BI Platform & Suite

Macro Strategy

Enterprise BI is a Tall Order

by Mark Smith

Continued from Page 1

Reliability. In an environment with ever increasing numbers of users and volumes of information, the BI deployment must continue to satisfy performance expectations. To keep up, IT must fully understand the underlying architecture and how the server technology manages users, connections, and interaction with information. In the 7.2 release, MicroStrategy enhanced key architectural elements, including Intelligent Cubes and caching, which improved system reliability.

Version 7 provided a re-architecture of the server technology to support broader user deployments through clustering, along with the ability to access and analyze larger volumes of data. Intelligent Cubes and Web Universal, along with Intelligence Server and Web servers, form a four-level caching architecture to manage performance for end users.

Functionality. This aspect of BI solutions is the most often critiqued. The functional requirements for BI usually center around access, analysis, and delivery of information and vary by user classification and organization. Users typically range from executive management and analysts to managers and employees who consume information. The performance management process is another functional area BI may need to serve, which involves understanding, optimizing, and aligning business at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. The 7.2 release includes a wide array of new types of flexibility in end-user reporting and analysis (See Figure 2 and Figure 3.) .

MicroStrategy Web Professional is a new thin-client DHTML Web user interface that provides functionality comparable to any desktop application. In addition, a new WYSIWYG reporting design and delivery environment supports formatting and layout capabilities. For the first time, users can directly collaborate (share, email, print, and schedule) with others on metrics or reports, leveraging integration with MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server.

The Intelligent Cubes technology lets you build multidimensional cubes that give the end-user community the freedom to perform analysis without IT intervention. You can schedule these cubes to be created automatically for accessing and analysis. Also, because the cubes contain the base information, the Intelligence Server can perform calculations from them without querying the source RDBMS.

Adaptability. Organizations need to be free to grow and adapt BI technologies to meet their specific business requirements. For IT and the business side to effectively apply BI requires a wide variety of customization and development capabilities, beyond merely tailoring end-user interfaces or reports. In the 7.2 release, a multitude of enhancements enable the product to be integrated into the enterprise.

MicroStrategy Web Universal, for instance, is a new application-server for tiered implementations that deploys MicroStrategy on a variety of new platforms, including IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic Server, Sun ONE, and Apache Tomcat on Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Linux.

Installation and Operation

The MicroStrategy 7i suite of server and client products comes on a single CD. The process of installing the software, reviewing the instructions, and using the sample data is the simplest I've seen from any BI software provider. This product is very easy to configure, and gives you a straightforward means of accessing and analyzing information.

Suggested Improvements

This competitive BI market demands enhancements and incremental new functionality on an annual basis, and MicroStrategy is known for being responsive to customer requirements. MicroStrategy needs to make some minor improvements to its Web-based reporting and analysis capabilities, such as ranking, multivariable charting, and metric threshholding. It also needs to provide more granular-level formatted reporting, something it has scheduled for year-end delivery.

MicroStrategy should examine bidirectional and open collaboration of information through the support of integrated discussion forums. It also should address the need for what-if or scenario-based analysis, which help with planning, forecasting, and potentially even budgeting.

Strikes a Balance

MicroStrategy's integrated BI platform provides a wide array of capabilities to end users via its own set of tools or through the support of third-party tools and custom application development. The MicroStrategy 7i 7.2.2 release recognizes a wide scope of challenges that organizations face when deploying BI enterprisewide: usability, manageability, reliability, and adaptability.

Rate This Article

Comments:

Optional e-mail address:

The new user interface in MicroStrategy Web and analytical empowerment in MicroStrategy OLAP Services make MicroStrategy a good solution for a broad range of BI requirements. The ability to leverage a wide range of third-party BI tools that integrate on top of the 7i platform can help preserve existing investments while maintaining end-user acceptance of existing and future products. Organizations looking for a good balance of end-user functionality and robustness of platform for business intelligence should consider the MicroStrategy 7i suite.

Mark Smith [mark.smith@ventanaresearch.com is the CEO and senior vice president of research at Ventana Research, an advisory services and research firm providing insight and education on best practices and technology in performance management.