|
[First! for the Web]
MicroStrategy Announces DSS Administrator
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wednesday, February 19, 1997
Source: Business Wire
----------------------------------------------------------------------
VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE) via Individual Inc. -- First
Comprehensive Environment for Developing, Deploying, and
Administering
Data Warehouse Applications to the Enterprise and Beyond
MicroStrategy, the largest relational on-line analytical processing
(ROLAP) vendor, today announced DSS Administrator(TM), the newest
addition to its comprehensive suite of products and its award-winning
ROLAP architecture. DSS Administrator is a set of tools that provides
the industry's first and only environment for developing, deploying,
and maintaining very large data warehouse and web-based DSS
applications.
"The cost of administering a complex data warehouse application is
comparable to, if not greater than, the cost of developing it," said
Michael J. Saylor, president and CEO of MicroStrategy. "As the Web
becomes the distribution mechanism of choice for data warehouse
applications, system usage requirements will dramatically increase.
Consequently, the need for administrative tools will become all the
more essential, with web-based warehouses adding a unique set of
administrative requirements. With MicroStrategy's introduction of DSS
Administrator, companies now have the cost-effective tools they need
to manage and monitor applications designed to support thousands of
users and millions of queries via the Internet."
DSS Administrator provides the ability to easily manage very large
applications with thousands of users and user groups who share a
number of reporting requirements. DSS Administrator can be used to
publish multiple DSS applications from the same warehouse-virtual data
marts-to meet the specific needs of different user communities. The
product provides comprehensive analysis of warehouse usage statistics,
which can be used to calculate charge-back amounts for commercial DSS
applications where users pay "by the query" for the information
consumed. These analyses can be used to tune the system to ensure a
highly available, high performance application. DSS Administrator
provides support for the entire data warehouse life cycle, from the
prototype and testing phase to development, deployment, and ongoing
maintenance. Its easy-to-use interface drastically reduces the time
and effort required to port a DSS application from a testing platform
to a development and deployment environment.
"As large numbers of corporations start to deploy data warehousing
applications to the enterprise, the cost and effort required in the
management and monitoring of these systems becomes a major concern,"
said Wayne Eckerson, senior analyst, Patricia Seybold Group.
"MicroStrategy is one of the first vendors to address these issues by
introducing DSS Administrator to cost-effectively administer DSS
projects."
ShopKo Stores Uses DSS Administrator for Web Based Warehouse
ShopKo, a $2 billion discount retailer, is using DSS Administrator
along with MicroStrategy's other products to build a data warehouse
application for deployment within the enterprise and to its partners
and customers over the Internet.
"DSS Administrator is helping us manage multiple DSS application
projects using the same warehouse and handle the large number of users
and application objects involved in VLDB deployments," said Gene
Klawikowski, director of IT at ShopKo. "DSS Administrator is providing
us with comprehensive DSS project management functionality that
significantly reduces the time and effort required to move
applications through the development, testing, quality assurance,
training and deployment phases of the project life cycle."
The warehouse usage analysis provided by DSS Administrator is allowing
ShopKo to fine tune its application for optimal performance. The
statistics are also enabling ShopKo to monitor how its users are
accessing the warehouse. "In the future, we can foresee a situation
where we make it possible for external parties, such as partners and
vendors, to access our warehouse to determine things like how well
their products are selling," notes Klawikowski. "We envision that DSS
Administrator's monitoring functionality will be critical if we decide
to charge-back the users of the warehouse."
Large User Community Management
Applications distributed to an entire enterprise or via the web are
typically accessed by a large, diverse, and continuously changing set
of users. In addition, these users traditionally have different
reporting and analysis requirements. DSS Administrator enables large
user community management by allowing DBAs to publish reports and
other application objects to either groups or individual users,
thereby providing an application that meets the requirements of
hundreds, thousands, and potentially millions of users.
DSS Administrator also allows DBAs to manage both enterprise and web
users via the same interface. This enables companies to encourage
complete information sharing regardless of the delivery mechanism
because DSS Administrator allows reports to be moved from web to
non-web users.
Virtual Data Marts for Managing Multiple DSS Applications on a Data
Warehouse
Large corporate data warehouses contain information that can be used
for enterprise-wide applications, departmental applications, or
commercial DSS applications. DSS Administrator allows the creation of
applications that contain "packaged" subsets of the warehouse to serve
different user communities. DSS Administrator can be used with
MicroStrategy's DSS Architect to create and maintain many independent
applications on the same physical warehouse, thus removing the need to
duplicate data into several different data marts. Using DSS
Administrator, DBAs can move reports and other application objects
between users in these different applications, allowing users to
transparently share parts of the warehouse and access reports unique
to their needs-enabling the creation of "virtual data marts."
For example, a company that wished to build a commercial decision
support system for selling data via the web could develop customized
applications for different clients by using existing application
objects to create a new application. Enabling smaller sets of users to
access subsets of the data warehouse maximizes the value an
organization receives from the application, while eliminating the time
and effort developers spend building separate applications for each
distinct group of users.
Warehouse Usage Analysis for Charge-Back
With DSS Administrator, DBAs can analyze a database of statistics to
determine usage patterns, individual user profiles, and other
important information. Using this data, a system administrator can
accurately determine the amount of data extracted and resources used
by individuals and groups of users. This feature enables organizations
to implement commercial DSS applications where external clients are
charged according to the amount of information or resources consumed.
For example, using DSS Administrator, reports and queries can be
segmented based on their popularity or the amount of resources
consumed, and customers can be charged accordingly.
Deploy Highly Available, Performance-Tuned Systems
DSS Administrator enables closed-loop warehouse tuning by providing
DBAs with the ability to view how users are accessing the warehouse
and then optimize the warehouse for enhanced performance. DSS
Administrator can identify the bottlenecks in the query execution plan
for each report and this information can then be used to improve
overall system performance.
In order for DSS applications to be constantly available for people
accessing the warehouse from different time zones, the warehouse has
to be updated and tuned during low usage times. Periods of high and
low activity can be determined by using the warehouse monitor
component of DSS Administrator; warehouse loads and updates can then
be scheduled accordingly.
Full Life Cycle Project Development and Deployment
DSS Administrator provides significant time and resource savings to IS
departments by making it easy to move DSS applications across
different platforms and through different stages of the project life
cycle: prototype, development, testing, and deployment. Now
organizations can roll out their DSS applications to thousands of
users without spending considerable effort moving applications from
the pilot to production stages, and from a few hundred to a few
thousand users. Once the application has been deployed, DSS
Administrator makes it simple to maintain systems with thousands of
users and a greater number of reports and other application objects.
Platform, Pricing and Availability
DSS Administrator is available on Windows 95, Windows 3.11, Windows NT
3.51, and Windows NT 4.0. Pricing for DSS Administrator is based on
the number of DSS Server installations, and is $35,000 per
installation. DSS Administrator is currently available and may be
purchased directly from MicroStrategy or from authorized resellers.
About MicroStrategy, Inc.
MicroStrategy is the leading provider of industrial-strength decision
support products for developing and accessing data warehouses.
As the Relational OLAP (ROLAP) industry pioneer, MicroStrategy was the
first vendor to deliver high- performance, multidimensional OLAP
analysis directly from relational databases without requiring any
proprietary multidimensional databases. In addition, MicroStrategy has
engineered many data warehousing breakthroughs: intelligent agents;
VLDB drivers for terabyte-range scalability; a dynamic, multipass SQL
generation engine; DSS metadata CASE tools; a VLDB-savvy OLAP report
writer; a mission-critical ROLAP server, OLAP over the World Wide Web,
and most recently the industry's first management and monitoring tool
for administering VLDB and web-based DSS applications.
MicroStrategy's contributions have been recognized by the data
warehouse industry through several awards, including the KPMG High
Tech Entrepreneur of the Year and being named to the Database
Programming & Design Database Dozen in 1996 and 1997. MicroStrategy's
clients have been recognized as finalists in the RealWare awards and
Best Practices awards. MicroStrategy's worldwide customer base
includes industry leaders like Wal-Mart, Kmart, MCI, CVS, Glaxo
Wellcome, Rite Aid, Federated Department Stores, Pepsi-Cola, Discover,
Sprint, Bank of America, AT&T, American Express, Coca-Cola, USAA, Sara
Lee Direct, Victoria's Secret, United Airlines, and Hallmark. The
company has partnered with strategic value- added resellers and
leading software and hardware companies including AC Nielsen, Price
Waterhouse, Deloitte & Touche, Computer Science Corporation, Andersen
Consulting, IMS America, NCR, Acxiom Corporation, Tandem, Oracle,
Informix, Source Informatics, Sybase, Red Brick, Sun, and Software AG.
More information about MicroStrategy can be found on the World Wide
Web at http://www.strategy.com/ or by calling 1- 800-927-1868.
EDITOR'S NOTE: DSS Administrator is a trademark of MicroStrategy, Inc.
All other product names are trademarks of their respective holders and
should be treated as such.
CONTACT: Lisa Houde | MicroStrategy, Inc. | (703) 848-8692 |
[email protected]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Feedback] [Index] [Search] [Customize] [Individual, Inc.]
[Main] [Up] [< Prev Story] [Next Story [Calendar]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
[Individual, Inc.]
|
| [First! for the Web]
MicroStrategy Introduces First Training Course in Data Warehouse
Maintenance and Administration
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tuesday, April 1, 1997
Source: Business Wire
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE) via Individual Inc. -- "Enterprise
DSS-Managing Your Environment" Teaches End Users How to Administer
Production Data Warehouse Applications
Managing hundreds (if not thousands) of users, overseeing multiple
applications on the same warehouse, moving applications through the entire
development life cycle from pilot to production... DBAs commonly face these
types of problems and more when trying to administer production
applications deployed throughout the enterprise. In response to these
difficulties, MicroStrategy, the largest relational on-line analytical
processing (ROLAP) vendor, today announced the availability of its newest
training course, "Enterprise DSS-Managing Your Environment" The class
provides corporate customers and strategic partners with the skills
necessary to develop, deploy, and maintain very large lata warehouse and
web- based applications.
"To be truly successful, customers need the right tools to monitor and
manage very large data warehouse applications," said Sanju K. Bansal, chief
operating officer at MicroStrategy. "This training course provides
attendees with the skills they need to cost- effectively manage and monitor
applications designed to support thousands of users and millions of queries
throughout the enterprise or via the Internet."
The class focuses on providing attendees with hands-on experience using
MicroStrategy's DSS Administrator, the industry's first set of tools to
provide a comprehensive environment for developing, deploying, and
maintaining very large data warehouse applications. The class teaches
students how to use MicroStrategy's products to effectively handle critical
maintenance and performance issues such as load balancing, warehouse
optimization, query prioritization, and development life cycle maintenance.
"This course is outstanding," said M. Nanette Yuzon, advanced systems
engineer at EDS. "As a developer, DSS Administrator is a tool that I cannot
live without. The product enables me to update our applications and do
quality assurance with the click of a button. Once again, MicroStrategy is
leading the industry with its innovative products and its excellent
customer education. I am very excited about both the class and the
product."
About MicroStrategy, Inc.
MicroStrategy is the leading provider of industrial-strength decision
support products for developing and accessing data warehouses. As the
Relational OLAP (ROLAP) industry pioneer, MicroStrategy was the first
vendor to deliver high-performance, multidimensional OLAP analysis directly
from relational databases without requiring any proprietary
multidimensional databases. In addition, MicroStrategy has engineered many
data warehousing breakthroughs: intelligent agents; VLDB drivers for
terabyte-range scalability; a dynamic, multipass SQL generation engine; DSS
metadata CASE tools; a VLDB-savvy OLAP report writer; a mission-critical
ROLAP server, OLAP over the World Wide Web, and most recently the
industry's first management and monitoring tool for administering VLDB and
web-based DSS applications.
MicroStrategy's contributions have been recognized by the data warehouse
industry through several awards, including the KPMG High Tech Entrepreneur
of the Year and being named to the Database Programming & Design Database
Dozen in 1996 and 1997. MicroStrategy's clients have been recognized as
finalists in the RealWare awards and Best Practices awards.
MicroStrategy's worldwide customer base includes industry leaders like
Wal-Mart, Kmart, MCI, CVS, Glaxo Wellcome, Rite Aid, Federated Department
Stores, Pepsi-Cola, Sprint, Bank of America, AT&T, American Express,
Coca-Cola, USAA, Sara Lee Direct, Victoria's Secret, United Airlines, and
Hallmark. The company has partnered with strategic value-added resellers
and leading software and hardware companies including AC Nielsen, Price
Waterhouse, Deloitte & Touche, Computer Science Corporation, Andersen
Consulting, IMS America, NCR, Acxiom Corporation, Tandem, Oracle, Informix,
Source Informatics, Sybase, Red Brick, Sun, and Software AG. More
information about MicroStrategy can be found on the World Wide Web at
http://www.strategy.com/ or by calling 1-800-927-1868.
DSS Administrator is a trademark of MicroStrategy, Inc. All other product
names are trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as
such.
CONTACT: MicroStrategy, Inc. | Lisa Houde, 703/848-8692,
[email protected]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Feedback] [Index] [Search] [Customize] [Individual, Inc.]
[Main] [Up] [< Prev Story] [Next Story >] [Calendar]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Individual, Inc.]
|