Microstrategy with Contentyze

How to use Microstrategy Platform in your Business?

MicroStrategy is a US company specializing in business intelligence solutions. It can operate locally or done from the cloud. The central functionalities can be found in MicroStrategy Analytics, MicroStrategy Mobile and Usher.

MicroStrategy, based in Vienna, Virginia, was founded in 1988. It offers business intelligence solutions for companies. The software can be operated on your own computer or obtained as a service from the cloud.

MicroStrategy competes with products such as IBM Cognos, SAP Business Objects or the BI platform from Oracle. MicroStrategy products can be divided into different categories.

These divisions include MicroStrategy Analytics, MicroStrategy Mobile and Usher. The current version of the software (as of March 2018) is MicroStrategy 10.

The BI solutions of the MicroStrategy Suite

MicroStrategy provides an integrated platform for consolidated data analysis. Data from various sources can be connected and processed using intelligent analysis methods. The data can come from Excel files, from the data warehouse or big data sources such as Hadoop databases.

The latest software, MicroStrategy Suite, consists of the main components MicroStrategy Analytics, MicroStrategy Mobile and Usher. The MicroStrategy platform enables the creation of formatted reports and provides dashboards and various options for ad hoc queries. Connections to the web can be established via multiple interfaces. Integration in Microsoft Office and a software development kit (SDK) for developing your own applications is also supported.

MicroStrategy Analytics, MicroStrategy Mobile, and Usher

MicroStrategy Analytics can analyze huge amounts of data from large companies. The generated reports can be made available in various ways to the different departments and working groups of the organization.

It enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share results via the web or mobile devices. Dashboards and other self-service tools are available for this.

MicroStrategy Mobile, introduced in 2010, is a software platform for the integration of analysis options in mobile business apps for devices such as smartphones and tablets. Different operating systems, such as Android or iOS, are supported.

Thanks to MicroStrategy Mobile, business intelligence data is accessible across platforms without the need for data customization. Apps that use MicroStrategy Mobile deliver BI information from existing data sources such as the data warehouse, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or other information sources.

Usher is a solution for managing and generating digital identities. It allows companies to manage digital or physical access to resources securely and conveniently. MicroStrategy is based on digital badges for the authentication and authorization of users.

Among other things, there are three-factor authentication, time-limited access codes, and bidirectional PKI encryption are supported.

MicroStrategy software features

The services of the MicroStrategy software can be provided via local servers or via the MicroStrategy Secure Cloud. The service-oriented architecture collects dynamic metadata objects and provides the central processing services for business intelligence analyzes.

Various interfaces, integrated gateways and drivers are used to connect to the company's resources and data sources. These resources include, for example, databases, mobile device management systems, cloud services or company directories.

The analyzes can be carried out from desktop, web and mobile user interfaces. The user interfaces can be personalized for the various users such as developers, administrators or analysts.

MicroStrategy and Big Data

MicroStrategy allows the use of a wide variety of data sources, regardless of whether they are simple tables or distributed Hadoop file systems (HDFS). The collection of the data is also possible without involving the IT department. A large number of immediately usable connectors allow the connection with different big data technologies such as Cloudera, Pivotal, IBM BigInsights or Hortonworks. All SQL-on-Hadoop technologies are available for interactive queries.

The benefits of MicroStrategy software

MicroStrategy solutions allow business intelligence and analysis applications to be made available quickly. The platform supports BI applications with high performance and can process huge amounts of data. With personalized tools and interfaces, the MicroStrategy software can be used in various corporate areas.

MicroStrategy software combines modern analysis methods with mobile, cloud-based technologies for BI applications. The knowledge gained through the analyzes supports the company's processes and helps to make well-founded decisions based on the available data.

The various components of the MicroStrategy architecture interlock seamlessly. The core of the BI ecosystem is the data queries, dashboards and reports.

MicroStrategy Usher provides a powerful digital identity management system that replaces traditional forms of authentication with so-called digital badges. Digital badges make it easier to assign user rights and ensure secure access for the various types of users.

Visualize data

• Give your data a face: MicroStrategy offers powerful out-of-the-box visualization tools and the option of using your own or third-party diagrams.
• Enterprise Reporting: Send automated personalized reports to users across the company.
• Dossiers and dashboards: Provide management and employees with interactive dossiers and dashboards for an independent analysis.
• Data Discovery: With the Toolbox, business users can create dashboards and dossiers themselves.
• Geo Mapping: Use knowledge from location information with the mapping functions based on ESRI maps.

Prepare data

The open architecture of MicroStrategy enables easy connection to data sources and systems. Connect to a source, prepare your data and benefit from fast and comprehensive processing options.

• Data Connectivity: Connect to a wide variety of data sources, from data warehouse to NoSQL and Big Data.
• Data preparation: Integrated processing and parsing functions support you in converting and transforming your data.
• Screen: Mobile dashboards with MicroStrategy
• Screens: Store Inspector App with MicroStrategy

Share insights

• The right data at the right time: Make data and analyzes available at any time - mobile or on the desktop, delivered as planned and sent to the right user with authorization.
• Collaboration: Functions such as commenting, sharing views or mentioning colleagues support collaboration in teams.
• Send reports automatically: Distribute reports, dossiers and documents to any number of users based on events, times or limit values
• Mobile solutions: Provide your employees with powerful apps to work efficiently from anywhere.
• Personalized processing: The rights management enables you to distribute row- and column-based access rights, for example, to make a customized report available to any number of users.

Use big data

The flood of data is increasing steadily, especially in large companies. MicroStrategy allows you to connect data from various big data resources and analyze them based on machine learning models.

• Native connectors: A large number of native connectors (e.g. Hadoop, MongoDB, Hortonworks or Google BigQuery) support you in connecting to existing big data resources.
• Machine learning and predictive analytics: Create machine learning models, visualize the results in MicroStrategy and use the integration options with open source and third-party software for statistics and data acquisition.

Beyond Microstrategy

If you are already using Microstrategy, we have a good news. You can make it more powerful by connecting it with Contentyze, our Natural Language Generation tool. Contentyze will allow you to quickly generate reports in plain English directly from your data in Microstrategy.

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