MicroStrategy

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MicroStrategy
Type Public
Traded as NASDAQ: MSTR
Industry Business intelligence and mobile software
Founded 1989
Headquarters Tysons Corner, Virginia, USA
Key people

Michael J. Saylor (Co-founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer)
Jonathan Klein (President and Chief Legal Officer)
Paul Zolfaghari (President)
Douglas Thede (Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Bob Watts (Chief Operating Officer and Senior Executive Vice President)

Peng Xiao (Chief Technology Officer and Senior Executive Vice President)
Products MicroStrategy Analytics Platform, MicroStrategy Mobile, MicroStrategy Cloud, Express, Wisdom, Alert, Usher
Revenue $594.61 million USD (2012)[1]
Employees 3,200+ worldwide[2]
Website www.microstrategy.com

MicroStrategy, Inc. is a provider of business intelligence (BI), mobile software, and cloud-based services. The company is based in the Washington, D.C. area and serves companies and organizations worldwide. Founded in 1989 by Michael J. Saylor and Sanju K. Bansal, MicroStrategy develops software that enables organizations to analyze internal and external data in order to make business decisions and to develop mobile apps. Its proprietary software can be deployed in companies' data centers, or as cloud services. Notable clients include Facebook,[3][4] Starbucks,[5] and Lowe's Companies.[6]

Overview

MicroStrategy develops and sells business intelligence, mobile software, and cloud-based services. The company’s software performs analytics on a variety of data, such as sales figures,[7] payroll data,[8] and inventory[9][10] in order to inform users' business decisions.[11]

MicroStrategy remains one of the few independent, publicly traded BI software providers[12] in the business intelligence (BI) market. Its primary business analytics competitors include SAP Business Objects, IBM Cognos, and Oracle's BI Platform.[13][14]

MicroStrategy is headquartered in the Washington, D.C. metro area and has worldwide operations across 26 countries, in cities including New York, San Francisco, Paris, Warsaw, Madrid, London, Milan, Dubai, Tokyo, Sydney, and São Paulo.[2][15] The current CEO and chairman of the board of MicroStrategy is Michael J. Saylor, the company's co-founder. Sanju K. Bansal, the other co-founder, is executive vice president and vice chairman of the board.[16][17]

History

Michael J. Saylor started MicroStrategy in 1989 with a consulting contract from DuPont, which provided Saylor with $250,000 in start-up capital and office space in Wilmington, Delaware. Saylor was soon joined by company co-founder Sanju K. Bansal, whom he had met while the two were students at MIT.[18] The company produced software for data mining and business intelligence using nonlinear mathematics,[16] an idea inspired by a course that Saylor and Bansal took at MIT.[19] During this time period, MicroStrategy experienced rapid growth. In 1992, the company gained its first major client when it signed a $10 million contract with McDonald's, and increased revenues by 100% every year between 1990 and 1996.[18] In 1994, Saylor and Bansal moved the company's offices and its 50 employees from Delaware to Tysons Corner, Virginia.[20] MicroStrategy had its initial public offering in June 1998.[21] On its first day of trading, the stock price doubled.[22]

In March 2000, after a review of its accounting practices, MicroStrategy announced that it would restate its financial results for the preceding two years,[23] which resulted in an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.[24] A lawsuit was subsequently filed against MicroStrategy and certain of its officials over fraud.[25] In December 2000, Saylor, Bansal, and the company's former CFO settled with the SEC without admitting wrongdoing by each paying $350,000 in fines. The officers also paid a combined total of $10 million in disgorgement. MicroStrategy itself was charged with a number of violations and settled with the SEC by hiring an independent director to ensure regulatory compliance.[26][27]

By the fourth quarter of 2003, the company added over 200 new corporate customers based on the strength of its business intelligence platform[28] and grew sales steadily, posting increased revenue for every quarter through the end of 2007.[29] New clients during this period included the United States Postal Service, DHL Express, and Priceline.com.[30][31] In 2007 and 2008, the company was named one of the 200 Best Small Companies in America by Forbes.[32]

In 2010, MicroStrategy began developing and deploying business intelligence software for mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and iPad.[33] Also in 2011, the company expanded its offerings to include a cloud-based service called MicroStrategy Cloud.[34]

In 2012, MicroStrategy expanded beyond its BI and mobile products with the release of Wisdom, a market research tool which allows for a demographic analysis of social media platforms such as Facebook.[35]

Products

MicroStrategy's software allows users to search through and analyze large amounts of data from a variety of sources, including data warehouses, Excel files, and Hadoop distributions. The most recent major release of the software is 9.3, which was released in September 2012.[36] MicroStrategy also provides Visual Insight, a data visualization tool.[13]

MicroStrategy Mobile, launched in 2010, allows customers to build and deploy mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry that deliver business intelligence data without needing to reformat the data for different platforms.[37][38] MicroStrategy Cloud is a cloud-based platform as a service that allows businesses to provide business intelligence without investing in infrastructure.[39][40] MicroStrategy’s Express is a software as a service (SaaS) data discovery analytics product.

In addition to this, MicroStrategy offers three standalone software applications. Usher is a mobile identity application, which provides an always-on electronic alternative to traditional employee IDs, keys, and proximity cards.[41][42] Alert is a mobile commerce application that offers retailers and other merchants the ability to create branded mobile apps for marketing, commerce, and loyalty.[38][43] Wisdom is a BI application that can access the data in public application networks like Facebook and Google and provide market intelligence to companies.[44][45][46]

Awards and recognition

In 2011, Apple recognized MicroStrategy's iOS app as one of the best business apps of the year.[47] In 2012, the Business Application Research Center (BARC) ranked MicroStrategy first overall in Mobile BI in the BI Survey 12.[48] Also in 2012, Information Management named MicroStrategy one of the “Forty Vendors We’re Watching” for its ability to understand new business trends.[49]

Restatement

On March 20, 2000, the company restated 1999 revenue to between about $150 million and $155 million from $205.3 million.[50]

References

  1. ↑ "MicroStrategy Announces Fourth Quarter 2012 Financial Results". MicroStrategy. 28 January 2013. Retrieved 5 February 2013. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "About Us". MicroStrategy.com. Retrieved 14 February 2013. 
  3. ↑ David Carr (26 January 2012). "Even At Facebook, Business Intelligence Is Not Viral". InformationWeek. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  4. ↑ Barb Darrow (8 August 2013). "The Structure Show: Parsing Hortonworks, IBM, and all of Facebook’s data". GigaOM. Retrieved 3 September 2013. 
  5. ↑ Doug Henschen (6 July 2011). "Starbucks BI Test: Can Managers Beat Heatwave?". InformationWeek. Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  6. ↑ "MicroStrategy Delivers High Performance for Virtualized Environment Operations". Business Intelligence Journal. 15 March 2011. Retrieved 8 March 2013. 
  7. ↑ Doug Henschen (10 July 2012). "MicroStrategy Amps Up Data Visualization, Big Data Analytics". InformationWeek. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  8. ↑ Heather Havenstein (23 July 2008). "TSA leans on BI to save $100 million". Computerworld. Retrieved 26 January 2013. 
  9. ↑ Rick Whiting (31 January 2005). "Business Objects And MicroStrategy Debut Business-Intelligence Upgrades". InformationWeek. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  10. ↑ Kurt Peters (2 May 2002). "Retailers Praising MicroStrategy’s New Business Intelligence Platform, 7i". Internet Retailer. Retrieved 14 May 2013. 
  11. ↑ Doug Henschen (14 January 2009). "MicroStrategy Upgrade Promises Performance and Flexibility Breakthroughs". InformationWeek. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  12. ↑ Juan Carlos Perez (21 January 2008). "Customers Trust MicroStrategy's Independence". PCWorld. Retrieved 26 January 2013. 
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chris Kanaracus (19 April 2011). "Microstrategy Takes Aim at Self-service BI". Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  14. ↑ Cindi Howson (14 February 2013). "MicroStrategy Doubles Down On Mobile, Data Visualization". InformationWeek. Retrieved 8 March 2013. 
  15. ↑ "Contact Us". MicroStrategy.com. Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Harry Jaffe (1 March 2000). "The Seven Billion Dollar Man". The Washingtonian. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  17. ↑ "Leadership". MicroStrategy.com. Retrieved 1 February 2013. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Jeff Glasser (15 July 1996). "From the Ground Up and Up". The Washington Post. Retrieved 26 January 2013. 
  19. ↑ Chuck Salter (31 March 2000). "People and Technology - MicroStrategy Inc.". Fast Company. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  20. ↑ Mark Leibovich (6 January 2002). "MicroStrategy's CEO Sped to the Brink". The Washington Post. Retrieved 27 January 2013. 
  21. ↑ "Initial Public Offerings Key Data". NASDAQ. 11 June 1998. Retrieved 27 January 2013. 
  22. ↑ David A. Kaplan (12 July 2012). "Michael Saylor: MicroStrategy's boy king grows up". Fortune. Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  23. ↑ David S. Hilzenrath (22 March 2000). "For MicroStrategy, A Matter of Timing". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 January 2013. 
  24. ↑ David S. Hilzenrath (14 April 2000). "SEC Investigating MicroStrategy". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 January 2013. 
  25. ↑ "MicroStrategy Chairman Accused of Fraud by S.E.C.". December 15, 2000. Retrieved Jul 11, 2013. 
  26. ↑ Debra Lau (18 December 2000). "Forbes Faces: Michael Saylor". Forbes.com. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  27. ↑ David S. Hilzenrath (15 December 2000). "Saylor, Associates Settle Fraud Charges". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 January 2013. 
  28. ↑ Catherine Yang (8 February 2004). "MicroStrategy's Second Wind". Businessweek.com. Bloomberg. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  29. ↑ Kim Hart (1 February 2007). "Software Company's Strategy Pays Off". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  30. ↑ Anitha Reddy (8 July 2003). "MicroStrategy Wins Contract With Postal Service". The Washington Post. Retrieved 5 February 2013. 
  31. ↑ Kim Hart (29 March 2007). "McLean's MicroStrategy Nets Three More Clients". The Washington Post. Retrieved 5 February 2013. 
  32. ↑ "The 200 Best Small Companies". Forbes. 8 October 2008. Retrieved 27 January 2013. 
  33. ↑ Alex Kayle (7 July 2010). "iPad spells end for traditional BI". ITWeb. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  34. ↑ Cindi Howson (31 January 2012). "MicroStrategy Cloud, Social And Mobile Bets Pay Off". InformationWeek. Retrieved 14 May 2013. 
  35. ↑ Cindi Howson (23 July 2012). "MicroStrategy Bets On Visualization, BI for Facebook". InformationWeek. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  36. ↑ Andrew Brust (14 September 2012). "MicroStrategy 9.3 takes on self-service, Big Data, cloud and iPhone 5". ZDNet. Retrieved 8 March 2013. 
  37. ↑ Elena Malykhina (9 October 2007). "MicroStrategy Offers Business Intelligence Software For BlackBerrys". InformationWeek. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 "Specialty retailer Tilly’s launches new mobile commerce application for consumers". Progressive Media. 14 January 14, 2013. Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  39. ↑ Chris Kanaracus (28 September 2011). "Microstrategy Targets Excel Users With Cloud Personal BI". PCWorld. Retrieved 25 January 2013. 
  40. ↑ Kristen Doyle (13 July 2012). "MicroStrategy unveils Cloud Express". ITWeb. Retrieved 26 January 2013. 
  41. ↑ Steven Overly (14 April 2013). "MicroStrategy’s office of the future includes mobile identity and cybersecurity". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2 October 2013. 
  42. ↑ Bill Flook (2 October 2013). "Michael Saylor on the iPhone 5s, mobile ID and the new 'biometric war'". Washington Business Journal. Retrieved 2 October 2013. 
  43. ↑ Bill Siwicki (14 January 2013). "Specialty retailer Tilly's launches a mobile commerce app". Internet Retailer. Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  44. ↑ Barb Darrow (25 January 2012). "MicroStrategy bets big on Facebook data". GigaOM. Retrieved 8 March 2013. 
  45. ↑ David F. Carr (25 January 2012). "Facebook: The Database of Wealth And Power". InformationWeek. Retrieved 26 January 2013. 
  46. ↑ "Wisdom Product Sheet". Wisdom.com. Retrieved 8 February 2013. 
  47. ↑ Shamila Janakiraman (23 December 2011). "MicroStrategy Mobile Placed among the Best Apps in the Business iPhone App Category". TMCnet.com. Retrieved 26 January 2013. 
  48. ↑ "MicroStrategy receives highest ranking in numerous KPIs in The BI Survey 12, industry’s largest independent survey". ITWeb. 22 November 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2013. 
  49. ↑ "Forty Vendors We’re Watching: 2012". Information Management. 18 September 2012. Retrieved 14 May 2013. 
  50. ↑ "MicroStrategy To Restate 1999 To Oper Loss 43 Cents-51 Cents/Shr". 

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