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Voice access, HyperIntelligence and new mobility features marked the release of MicroStrategy 2019, the newest version of the venerable business intelligence and analytics platform. Included in the Jan. 7 release are HyperIntelligence features companies can use to tap more than 200 enterprise data sources, including web applications, Salesforce and Office 365.
MicroStrategy uses the term “HyperIntelligence” to describe its system of hyperlinks to customer (and other) data. When, for example, a salesperson sees a customer name in his/her email, spreadsheet, CRM, LinkedIn or in a website, MicroStrategy highlights the customer name with a hyperlink. By simply hovering over the name, or other hyperlinked word, the sales rep can see relevant information, key performance indicators (KPIs) and next-best action stored in what the company calls a HyperCard.
“HyperIntelligence is meant to go after the 70 percent of enterprises who haven’t been served well by information services and the 30 percent who have,” Marge Breya, chief marketing officer at MicroStrategy, told eWEEK. “These are folks are consistently faced with having to look things up that sometimes they won’t even bother doing, but if it’s at your fingertips, we believe we can really help them get what they need. This is something brand new to the industry that we call zero-clicks analytics, where you have ready access to information from many different sources.”
API Enables Integration with Alexa
MicroStrategy also offers an API that gives developers the ability to integrate with Amazon Alexa and other voice-controlled applications for mobile use or elsewhere.
Mobile productivity for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets can be tailored to specific job functions. MicroStrategy said that analysts, developers and architects can use one of three strategies to build apps:
- Mobile Dossiers: interactive books of analytics that render or display accurately on smartphones and tablets
- No code drag-and-drop for branded custom apps that mobilize any system, process or application
- Customized development with SDKs for iOS and Android that let developers extend MicroStrategy content into their apps and record the transaction using XCode or Java-Script.
Laying claim to being the industry’s first enterprise semantic graph, MicroStrategy said its proprietary metadata foundation delivers a robust business glossary and index for all corporate information. As a result, it’s able to consolidate disparate sources to data and deliver a single version of truth. The enterprise semantic graph enriches metadata content with real-time location intelligence and both content and system usage telemetry that enables AI-powered experiences through contextual, personalized recommendations and personalized insights.
Analytics Run Natively on Azure and AWS
The company also said that MicroStrategy 2019 is the industry’s first analytics platform with a consistent architecture that works from on-premises to the most popular cloud environments. The platform runs natively on Microsoft Azure and AWS to deliver best-in-class security, performance, reliability and support with analytics and mobility applications that are ready to scale, the company said.
Also new with MicroStrategy 2019 is a centralized management portal that organizations of any size can use to launch fully configured and ready-to-use enterprise analytics and mobility projects in less than 30 minutes. Administrators have total control of their environments from a single console. There are separate prepackaged deployment options for Team, Department and Enterprise that cover sandbox testing needs to enterprise-ready and high-availability requirements.
Timely Release
Ventana Research Senior Vice President and Research Director David Menninger said the release comes at a time when organizations are looking for ways to make analytics and business intelligence more accessible to line of business personnel.
“MicroStrategy’s HyperIntelligence does just that, bringing information to users as they are going about their day-to-day activities. There is no switching contexts so it allows more continuous and uninterrupted thought processes and decision-making,” Menninger said.
In a switch from its traditional more staggered cadence, MicroStrategy said it will now issue a major new platform release annually, though security and other dot releases as needed will be released throughout the year.