White Papers

The following documents, written by MicroStrategy and other industry experts, address the technical questions you have on business intelligence, data warehousing and decision support.

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS:

Nigel Pendse: Summary Results from The BI Survey 7

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Seven Leading Applications of BI Software

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Gartner Report: Magic Quadrant for BI Platforms

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» Read Analyst White Papers

BI Market Consolidation: Re-igniting the Debate of Open Systems vs. Closed Systems (pdf - 170KB)

The recent acquisitions in the BI market are re-igniting the debate on the most fundamental issue in enterprise software today – whether it is better for companies to have their software supplied by a few conglomerate vendors or by a range of independent vendors. This MicroStrategy white paper focuses on the contrasting dynamics of open system vs. closed system solutions and also addresses the new set of issues for customers to consider as they evaluate their BI options in light of the acquisitions of Business Objects, Cognos, and Hyperion by SAP, IBM, and Oracle, respectively.

Reducing the Total Cost of Ownership of Business Intelligence (pdf - 207KB)

The business value of a business intelligence application is often hard to measure, given that value will continue to evolve and grow over the application’s lifetime. In contrast, the investment costs – also referred to as Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – often represent a more objective and quantifiable estimate. This paper focuses on how organizations can measure and lower TCO, thereby increasing the Return on Investment (ROI) for their business intelligence applications.

Business Intelligence as a Driver for Business Transformation (pdf - 257KB)

This white paper demonstrates some of the powerful benefits to be achieved using BI to transform business. Using the real-life example of Intel Corporation's Global Procurement Reporting (GPR) project, the paper illustrates how a Business Intelligence-driven methodology can be very effective in implementing business transformation programs within an enterprise framework. By recognizing Business Intelligence as a transformative inflection point, Intel's GPR initiative became a major contributor to the $300M business value realized to date in the company's e-Procurement program. The article suggests that by formalizing the design approach utilized by GPR and adopting it throughout the enterprise, transformation programs will dramatically increase their chances for attaining pre-defined business value.

MicroStrategy Universal Edition: Delivering Increased Business Intelligence Capacity Through MicroStrategy Universal Edition (pdf - 895KB)

This White Paper explores the promise and benefits of 64-bit Business Intelligence with MicroStrategy Universal Edition. Learn about the limitations of a 32-bit BI architecture and how to migrate to 64-bit MicroStrategy Universal.

Critical Success Factors Deploying Pervasive BI, a joint white paper from Informatica, Teradata, and MicroStrategy (pdf - 538KB)

This joint white paper from Informatica, Teradata, and MicroStrategy details best practices and approaches for pervasive business intelligence and data integration for operational excellence.

Aberdeen Group Benchmark Report: Business Intelligence in Retail: Bringing Cohesion to a Fragmented Enterprise (pdf - 772KB)

This paper details how retail businesses can utilize business intelligence to harness the power of massive customer and transaction data warehouses into a set of manageable performance metrics.

TDWI Best Practices Report: Deploying Dashboards and Scorecards (pdf - 2513KB)

This TDWI Best Practices Report by Wayne Eckerson is based on a survey of more than 600 corporate IT professionals, business consultants, and business users. The paper outlines current trends found in dashboard and scorecard deployments, as well as best practices for achieving operational success with dashboard and scorecard projects.

TDWI Best Practices Report: Strategies for Managing Spreadmarts: Migrating to a Managed BI Environment (pdf - 1254KB)

According to TDWI Research, more than 90% of all organizations have spreadmarts -- shadow data systems that are usually built on spreadsheets and exist outside of approved, IT-managed corporate data repositories. This paper provides practical solutions for bringing spreadmarts into a managed business intelligence environment that stores data and logic centrally in a uniform, consistent fashion and allows individuals to access this data using their tools of choice.

Ventana Research Report: MicroStrategy Takes Big Step in Enterprise and Operational BI (pdf - 30KB)

Ventana Research CEO & EVP of Research Mark Smith reviews MicroStrategy's dynamic enterprise dashboards and other new features of the MicroStrategy 8.1 platform release.

Business Intelligence and Banking: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Banking Industry (pdf - 194KB)

The banking industry is becoming increasingly competitive and facing ever-changing regulatory requirements, making it more and more challenging for banks to keep up with the changes—and with the competition. Read how MicroStrategy’s unified architecture offers banks far-reaching opportunities for ever-expanding business intelligence.

Business Intelligence and Communications: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Communications Industry (pdf - 204KB)

Communications companies can use Business Intelligence in many ways, creating smart business solutions across the myriad challenges in the communications industry. This White Paper details how MicroStrategy’s business intelligence solutions are equipping communications providers with the right tools to recognize new revenue streams, streamline operations, and deliver value-added customer experiences.

Business Intelligence and Financial Services: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Financial Services Industry (pdf - 195KB)

With a vast range of customers and customer needs, changing regulations, and growing fraud threats, financial services companies need information management solutions that will allow them to make smart decisions. Read how MicroStrategy’s Business Intelligence platform support financial services companies by simultaneously accesses immense amounts of information, enabling analysis from many sources at once and providing the most thorough and integrated reporting.

Business Intelligence and Government: Major Applications of Business Intelligence at Federal, State, and Local Levels of Government (pdf - 284KB)

Federal, state, and local government agencies face many operational challenges at all levels. With strict budget and performance goals and reporting requirements, as well as diverse and demanding constituencies, government agencies need information management solutions that allow them to make better decisions, keep tight tabs on their operations, and control information security. This White Paper details how MicroStrategy can outfit government agencies with the software to maximize their information gathering and make the best use of the data to improve operational strategies by optimizing their budgets, increasing staff productivity, and effectively allocating resources.

Business Intelligence and Healthcare: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Healthcare Industry (pdf - 438KB)

Skyrocketing healthcare costs and increased competition make it essential for today's healthcare providers to employ information technology solutions that improve productivity and support innovative strategies. This paper details how physicians, hospitals, and payers can leverage MicroStrategy’s BI platform for reporting, analyzing, and monitoring vast amounts of data, improving patient care and healthcare providers’ access to information.

Business Intelligence and Insurance: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Insurance Industry (pdf - 275KB)

This White Paper explores how MicroStrategy’s unified information architecture allows insurance companies to easily integrate and crossreference vast amounts of information from multiple sources, identify relationships within the information, and learn how different factors affect each other and the company’s bottom line.

Business Intelligence and Manufacturing: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Manufacturing Industry (pdf - 237KB)

Faced with intensifying global competition, manufacturing companies need information management solutions that allow them to make better business decisions. This paper details how MicroStrategy can offer the manufacturing industry the business intelligence software to report on, analyze, and monitor the vast networks of data through a business intelligence architecture that helps companies reduce costs, increase revenue, and maximize the value of information.

Business Intelligence and Pharmaceuticals: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Pharmaceuticals Industry (pdf - 230KB)

Working to keep up with an expanding drug market, pharmaceutical companies need information management solutions that allow them to make better business decisions. Learn how the MicroStrategy platform supports the pharmaceuticals industry by facilitating reporting, analyzing, and monitoring of vast amounts of data through a business intelligence architecture that helps companies reduce costs, increase revenue, and maximize the value of information.

Business Intelligence and Retail: Major Applications of Business Intelligence Software in the Retail Industry (pdf - 743KB)

Attracting today’s product-savvy consumer means being prepared to react to the ever-changing retail landscape. This paper discusses how MicroStrategy helps leading retailers to improve performance by allowing access to multiple sources of data to perform sales analyses, track financial performance and staff productivity, and segment customers to better deliver tailored products, services, and special offers.

Deriving Business Insight from Multiple Data Sources Using MicroStrategy BI Platform and IBM® WebSphere® Information Integration Federation (PDF - 792KB)

This paper provides an overview of IBM’s WebSphere Information Integrator™, and step-by-step details of the configuration used for running with the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform™. It addresses the need for companies to maintain enormous amounts of data, in some cases terabytes of data, over a variety of RDBMS platforms, and presents a solution uniquely suited for deploying a common data warehouse across multiple data sources. It also includes results from associated standard DB-certification tests that were conducted to obtain a thorough evaluation of the compatibility between IBM’s WebSphere Information Integrator and MicroStrategy’s Business Intelligence Platform.