MicroStrategy Integrates Free BI Tool with Microsoft

MicroStrategy Reporting Suite is presented as an alternative to open source business intelligence solutions and is designed for developing and delivering operational reports from enterprise data. Leveraging the new interface, SSAS customers can Web-enable reporting of data from SSAS relational and cube data sources for up to 100 users without cost. Some of the specific reporting capability the MicroStrategy software provides includes performance scorecards, data graphing, rankings and time-based comparisons, business calculations and analytics, report scheduling, and exporting of data to Excel and PDF formats. Thus trends and anomalies in SSAS data can be more easily accessed and discovered in a Web-based report format.

The MicroStrategy Reporting Suite features free core components of the MicroStrategy 9 business intelligence platform, with a one-CPU limit. Users seeking to apply advanced MicroStrategy 9 components or to deploy the suite on more than a single core are required to purchase upgrades, which is where MicroStrategy’s opportunity for growth in both profits and business intelligence market share comes in.

By interfacing its Reporting Suite with Microsoft SSAS, MicroStrategy is greatly increasing the potential user base of its free business intelligence package. Of course, this also greatly expands the potential market for its paid solutions and services.