MicroStrategy Brings BI To Microsoft Office Users

Business intelligence vendor MicroStrategy today introduced a product designed to allow users to report BI data into Microsoft Office desktop applications.

The software package, called MicroStrategy Office, leverages Microsoft's Smart Client architecture to link MicroStrategy's BI back-end to applications such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook.

Multiple BI vendors enable reporting into commonly used Office applications, particularly Excel. The new MicroStrategy product is designed to differentiate itself from those offerings by remembering users' selection criteria and the way they choose to format data within their Office applications, said MicroStrategy CEO Sanju Bansal.

MicroStrategy Office will help bring advanced analytics to a broader number of users, particularly non-technical staff who are already accustomed to using common desktop applications, said Dan Vesset, research manager for analytics and data warehousing at research firm IDC.

"To a large extent, it's an extension of MicroStrategy's solution to people who would not normally be using business intelligence," Vesset said.

Bansal put the cost of the new application at $595 per user, plus annual maintenance of 18 percent.