It is refreshing to see a vendor that really thinks “outside-the-box”, but MicroStrategy needs to make sure it does not spread itself too thin with a portfolio of disparate products. It will be imperative for it to provide a vision of how the new types of products tie back to what made it so successful in the first place: its core BI platform. This will help its internal operations because sales, R&A, and marketing will understand what the company’s go-to-market strategy is, what will be supported, and, most importantly, what lies ahead for existing BI customers and partners.
MicroStrategy continues to be a heavy-hitter in mobile BI
MicroStrategy has been an avid advocate for mobile technologies as the next big frontier in technology, and this is reflected in the maturity of its mobile BI capabilities. In Ovum’s recent Solution Guide for Mobile BI, MicroStrategy is at the top for both iOS and Android devices, outscoring competing vendors in several categories.
Much of this can be credited to a company looking closely at mobile not only as an extension of BI, but also as a primary way to conduct traditional BI processes such as reporting, KPI monitoring, analysis, and data mining. MicroStrategy is also betting on a roadmap that is strongly influenced by mobile solutions, and Ovum expects it to continue to be a heavy-hitter in the mobile BI space.
Key for a mobile BI solution is that it is intuitive, fast, and personalized, something MicroStrategy has been able to address successfully. The company has made sure that customers can easily develop custom-made mobile applications on top of its core BI platform via the MicroStrategy Mobile App Platform through code-free drag-and-drop development. This allows companies to build BI apps that can easily be adjusted to their needs, roles, and look-and-feel.
MicroStrategy also provides native integration to iOS and Android, which allows for faster touch response and more functionality (as offline data exploration) than web-based solutions. However, MicroStrategy might need to rethink its strategy of exclusively offering native support for mobile solutions. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend is attractive to many enterprises. Indeed, a recent survey by Ovum shows that 57.1% of all full-time employees use a personal device to access corporate data. This percentage is expected to grow, meaning that more versions and types of mobile platform will enter the work place (see Ovum report BYOD: An Emerging Market Trend in More Ways than One).