A whitepaper by MicroStrategy Inc. Delivering Cost Effective Enterprise Business Intelligence

1. A White Paper by MicroStrategy
Reducing Total Cost of Ownership:
Delivering Cost Effective Enterprise Business Intelligence

2. Copyright Information
All Contents Copyright © 2008 MicroStrategy Incorporated. All Rights Reserved.
MicroStrategy, MicroStrategy 6, MicroStrategy 7, MicroStrategy 7i, MicroStrategy 7i Evaluation Edition, MicroStrategy 7i Olap Services, MicroStrategy 8, MicroStrategy Evaluation Edition, MicroStrategy Administrator,
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MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server, MicroStrategy Objects, MicroStrategy OLAP Provider, MicroStrategy SDK, MicroStrategy Support, MicroStrategy Telecaster, MicroStrategy Transactor, MicroStrategy Web, MicroStrategy
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Changing The Way Government Looks At Information, DSSArchitect, DSS Broadcaster, DSS Broadcaster Server, DSS Office, DSSServer, DSS Subscriber, DSS Telecaster, DSSWeb, eBroadcaster, eCaster, eStrategy, eTelecaster,
Information Like Water, Insight Is Everything, Intelligence Through Every Phone, Your Telephone Just Got Smarter, Intelligence To Every Decision Maker, Intelligent E-Business, IWAPU, Personal Intelligence Network,
Personalized Intelligence Portal, Query Tone, Quickstrike, Rapid Application Development, Strategy.com, Telepath, Telepath Intelligence, Telepath Intelligence (and Design), MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes, The E-Business
Intelligence Platform, The Foundation For Intelligent E-Business, The Integrated Business Intelligence Platform Built For The Enterprise, The Intelligence Company, The Platform For Intelligent E-Business, The Power Of
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Report Services, MicroStrategy Web MMT, MicroStrategy Web Services, Pixel Perfect, MicroStrategy Mobile, MicroStrategy Integrity Manager and MicroStrategy Data Mining Services are all registered trademarks or
trademarks of MicroStrategy Incorporated.
All other products are trademarks of their respective holders. Specifications subject to change without notice. MicroStrategy is not responsible for errors or omissions. MicroStrategy makes no warranties or commitments
concerning the availability of future products or versions that may be planned or under development.
Patent Information
This product is patented. One or more of the following patents may apply to the product sold herein: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,766, 6,173,310, 6,260,050, 6,263,051, 6,269,393, 6,279,033, 6,501,832, 6,567,796,
6,587,547, 6,606,596, 6,658,093, 6,658,432, 6,662,195, 6,671,715, 6,691,100, 6,694,316, 6,697,808, 6,704,723, 6,707,889, 6,741,980, 6,765,997, 6,768,788, 6,772,137, 6,788,768, 6,792,086, 6,798,867,
6,801,910, 6,820,073, 6,829,334, 6,836,537, 6,850,603, 6,859,798, 6,873,693, 6,885,734, 6,888,929, 6,895,084, 6,940,953, 6,964,012, 6,977,992, 6,996,568, 6,996,569, 7,003,512, 7,010,518, 7,016,480,
7,020,251, 7,039,165, 7,082,422, 7,113,993, 7,127,403, 7,174,349, 7,194,457, 7,197,461, 7,228,303, 7,260,577, 7,266,181, 7,272,212 and 7,302,639. Other patent applications are pending.

3. I. Executive Summary.......................................................................................................................... 5
II. BI Applications Expand Over Time to Serve Evolving Business Needs.......................................... 5
III. Components of Total Cost of Ownership ......................................................................................7
Staffing Costs: 63% of TCO............................................................................................................... 8
Downtime Costs: 15% of TCO......................................................................................................... 12
Training Costs: 8% of TCO............................................................................................................... 13
Hardware Costs: 7% of TCO............................................................................................................ 14
Software and Related Vendor Maintenance Costs: 7% of TCO......................................................... 16
IV. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................... 18
Reducing Total Cost of Ownership:
Delivering Cost Effective Enterprise Business Intelligence

5. REDUCINGTOTALCOSTOFOWNERSHIP:DELIVERINGCOSTEFFECTIVEENTERPRISEBUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
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I. Executive Summary
Businesses today are demanding more and more out of the same amount of IT budget. As a result, many Business
Intelligence (BI) buyers are seeking better ways to assess an initiative’s Return on Investment (ROI). Evaluating ROI
requires two components: (1) the business value delivered and (2) the investment costs spent. The business value of
a BI application is often difficult to measure, given that value will continue to evolve and grow over the application’s
lifetime. On the other hand, the investment costs – also referred to as Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – often represent
a more objective and quantifiable estimate. This paper focuses on how organizations can measure and lower their
TCO, thereby increasing their ROI.
Perhaps unexpectedly, TCO is dominated by recurring costs and not by one-time purchase costs. Gartner estimates
that customers spend up to four times the initial cost of their software license during every year to own their BI
applications. The vast majority of these recurring costs are personnel or staffing costs. An IDC research study concludes
that staffing constitutes 60%-85% of the overall ownership costs over three years.1
Staffing costs are driven by two main causes: the effort to manage and maintain a BI application, and the effort to
deliver continually changing and expanding business requirements.
TCO is nearly always underestimated. Staffing needs, the majority of TCO, are difficult to forecast because BI
applications continually evolve and grow. Successful BI applications quickly generate interest from other departments,
growing in number of users, applications, data size, and complexity. The BI application may need to serve expanding
business lines, new partner extranets or additional geographical regions. As every BI project aims to be successful, the
IT manager should also expect that as the BI application matures, so will the variable staffing and ownership costs.
As different BI platforms provide different levels of efficiency and scalability, the amount of IT staff required to deploy and
maintain the BI application will depend greatly on the BI platform chosen. MicroStrategy’s platform delivers efficient and
cost effective BI, producing the effect of economies of scale. MicroStrategy’s architecture has been designed specifically to
minimize the number of personnel needed to maintain and grow BI applications. For example, MicroStrategy provides end
user self-service and ease of administration to reduce IT staffing costs. Today’s demanding ROI-focused expectations require
BI evaluators to carefully consider the differences in platform capabilities and the resulting impact on ownership costs.
II. BI Applications Expand Over Time to Serve Evolving Business Needs
Organizations have increasingly adopted the goal of pervasive Business Intelligence – improved access to information
and analysis tools across the enterprise – yet, only a relatively small percent of today’s workforce benefits from direct
access to business intelligence applications. Organizations too often fall short of the goal of pervasive enterprise BI
due to both functional and economic limitations imposed by BI technology. Many BI tools do not have the functional
capabilities to scale beyond small departmental deployments. In addition, many BI tools are limited in delivering
expanding business requirements due to high ownership costs.
Today’s fast paced, competitive global environment means that business requirements constantly react to marketplace
changes, and business applications must be nimble and flexible enough to keep pace. Constantly changing business
1
IDC. Three Year Server TCO. Based on more than 300 interviews conducted across numerous platforms, presented in composite
form. 2007.

6. MICROSTRATEGY:BESTINBUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
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requirements may include the need to quickly roll out a new product, report off a new data source, or comply with
increased security and regulatory requirements. BI applications must be able to accommodate such dynamic business
requirements as well as end user functionality requirements.
Successful BI applications typically experience compound growth in size and complexity over a period of several
years. According to industry analysts, the goal of adding incremental value carries organizations through BI maturity
phases, each with a distinctive usage pattern, analytical tools, and strategic impact. During the initial production
implementation, BI requirements usually begin with a departmental data mart providing a few technical power users
with static reporting. After a year or two of this departmental self-service reporting, organizations move towards
wider adoption. Partners and customers may demand secure Web applications, and the business user population may
need to leverage e-mail alerts and mobile devices to increase field efficiency. A few years later, after reaching cross-
departmental adoption, better use of data and analysis leads to a snowball effect. As a BI platform gains more users
and adds more applications and data sources, organizations benefit from exponentially greater business value.
Since enterprise BI applications mature and evolve over time, organizations seeking to leverage TCO analysis must
evaluate their potential needs and requirements over a five year time period. Figure 1 shows an example of the effects
of expanding business requirements on TCO over a typical five year life cycle of a BI application. BI platforms can be
generally grouped into three types – Work Group BI, Departmental BI, and Enterprise BI.
Figure 1: BI Platform TCO Over Time
A Work Group BI technology is designed to quickly meet the needs of a small work group. However, as organizations
attempt to add more users or more complex analytics, the IT staff then needs to perform more and more manual and
repetitive tasks to grow the application. Increased requirements beyond a few users and static reporting requirements
cause Work Group BI ownership costs to increase almost exponentially.
Similarly, Departmental BI technology, optimized for departmental use, is not designed to scale to large data
volumes or hundreds of users across multiple departments. For example, in attempting to expand to a Web extranet,
Departmental BI applications often need to purchase third party security software to secure Web network traffic and
third party server clustering management services to provide server failover. Organizations using Departmental BI find
that the TCO increases in proportion to expanding requirements.
In contrast, when implementing MicroStrategy’s Enterprise BI technology, organizations have the option to increase
the application scale without experiencing a proportional cost increase. Enterprise BI platform technologies, such as
automated regression testing and a highly reusable metadata, allow organizations to leverage previous investments to
meet new requirements quickly and cost effectively. Enterprise BI applications are designed to expand with economies
of scale – the larger the application, the more savings gained.
TotalCostofOwnership$
Time (Years)1 2 3 4 5
Work Group BI Departmental BI
TCO Savings from Using
MicroStrategy
Enterprise BI
TCO Savings from Using
$
$

7. REDUCINGTOTALCOSTOFOWNERSHIP:DELIVERINGCOSTEFFECTIVEENTERPRISEBUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
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YEAR 1 YEAR 2-4 YEAR 4-5
NUMBER OF USERS • 100 Power Users • 500 Power Users
• 2,000 Business Users
• 700 Power Users
• 4,000 Business Users
• 1,400 Partner Users
• 10,000 Customer Users
NUMBER OF
DEPARTMENTS
• North America:
Finance and Sales
Reporting
• North America: Finance, Sales
Reporting, HR, Inventory Planning
• Europe: Sales Reporting
• All departments
HOW MANAGEMENT
VIEWS BI
• Management views
as cost center
• Management views as
empowering decision makers and
monitoring corporate performance
• Management views as competitive
advantage
HOW MICROSTRATEGY
DELIVERS LOWER TCO
• Unified BI architecture
• Powerful
development tools
• Centralized and automated
administration tools
• Enterprise data and user privilege
security
• Automatic SQL tuning
• Automated change management
• End user self-service
• Centralized application monitoring
• Clustered 64-bit application servers
III. Components of Total Cost of Ownership
TCO breaks down along two broad areas – one time costs and recurring costs. One time expenditures include
investments in staffing, hardware, and software of the initial application deployment. Recurring costs include largely
the staffing overhead to maintain, upgrade, and expand existing applications; any additional required hardware; and
vendor software license maintenance fees. Different BI platforms incur varying TCO depending on specific technical
capabilities and the ability to scale. As recurring expenses consume the majority of TCO, these recurring costs are what
limit organizations from delivering pervasive BI.
Analysts’ TCO estimation methods vary slightly but still reach similar conclusions: A BI project requires a significant
amount of skilled personnel, which represents the largest cost component over the BI application’s lifetime. Gartner
estimates that customers spend 20-30% of the annual IT budget on software, 40-50% on staffing costs, and the
remaining 20-40% on infrastructure costs. Microsoft told the Wall Street Journal “…that the initial purchase is only
5% of the total cost of owning and maintaining a program.”2
IDC estimates that staffing including maintenance,
development, training, down time, and outsourcing, constitutes between 60-86% of typical three year server
ownership costs.3
Many may be surprised to learn that hardware and software each represent approximately only 7%
of the overall costs.4
Over five years, a single trained IT resource can cost more than $500,000.5
Therefore, a change
in even a few IT resources can add or subtract millions of dollars to an organization’s TCO. Figure 2 shows IDC’s
breakdown of TCO and the significant proportion of staffing costs.
Organizations can lower the majority of application ownership costs by identifying technical capabilities that will
decrease staffing needs. For example, some tools are aimed at isolated departmental deployments and do not offer
IT the ability to re-use objects. As a result of the lack of object reusability, these tools require almost a proportional
increase in staff as the complexity of the project increases. Another example of staffing cost savings is a unified
administration console. BI tools that require administration through different interfaces create redundancies, inflating
2
“Microsoft Wages Campaign Against Using Free Software,” The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2002.
3
IDC. Three Year Server TCO. Based on more than 300 interviews conducted across numerous platforms, presented in composite
form. 2007
4
IDC. Three Year Server TCO. Based on more than 300 interviews conducted across numerous platforms, presented in composite
form. 2007
5
Assume annual IT salary = $70,000. Assume annual IT salary organizational overhead = $30,000. Assume 5 years.

8. MICROSTRATEGY:BESTINBUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
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administrator staffing costs by several magnitudes. As different BI platforms provide different levels of end user self-
service, efficiency and scalability, the amount of IT staff required to deploy and maintain the BI application will vary
greatly depending on the BI platform chosen.
Figure 2: 3 Year TCO Breakdown, IDC Study 2007
MicroStrategy’s technology was built to offer self-service and optimum performance scaling to thousands of users
without requiring a large staff of trained IT professionals. MicroStrategy has developed software that eliminates costs
in each TCO category:
1. Staffing, including Outsourced costs
2. Downtime
3. IT Training
4. Hardware
5. Software
MicroStrategy optimizes IT staff efficiency through many technical capabilities. For example, MicroStrategy’s user-
friendly report design enables more users to gain access to the entire data warehouse with fewer report developer
resources. MicroStrategy’s reliable BI platform provides features such as automated integrity testing and server
clustering to avoid the costs associated with the downtime of the BI applications. Capabilities such as MicroStrategy’s
single flexible interface minimize both developer and end user training time. Hardware costs are cut through
efficiencies of scale such as efficient, automatic caching, database specific queries, and eliminating the need for a
proprietary cube data staging environment. MicroStrategy’s unified platform allows organizations to incrementally add
plug and play functionality at the product and user level, one method MicroStrategy provides leverage of software
licenses. This white paper explains how MicroStrategy’s enterprise strength, scalable platform and self-service
technology enable organizations to achieve pervasive BI at the lowest industry ownership costs.
STAFFINg COSTS: 63% OF TCO
According to several leading analyst firms including IDC and Gartner, the staffing needs of a BI application represent
the largest cost component comprising between 40 and 63% of the total costs over a five year period.6
Staffing costs
are measured in salary plus a load factor to account for benefit and overhead and account for all Full Time Equivalents
(FTEs). In North America, the annual staffing cost of a trained IT professional can be conservatively estimated to be
6
IDC. Three Year Server TCO. Based on more than 300 interviews conducted across numerous platforms, presented in composite
form. 2007
Staffing 60%
IT Staff Training 8%
Downtime-User Productivity 15%
Outsourced Costs 3%
Server Hardware 7%
Software 7%

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$100,000, with $70,000 in salary and $30,000 in overhead. FTEs include consulting and outsourced costs. Staffing
resources support the client machines, servers, storage, security, applications, and users.
The level of efficiency of the chosen BI platform will greatly impact the amount of required staffing resources. For
example, self-service allows users to perform the majority of the tuning required in their reports, saving unnecessary
cycles of report developer staffing costs. Technologies with centralized administration reduce administrator resources
by several orders of magnitude. A highly re-usable business layer, or metadata, decreases IT maintenance efforts by
reducing the amount of reports to maintain. Automatic dependent object updates eliminate manual quality assurance
efforts. In choosing a BI platform, BI buyers have an opportunity to select certain technical capabilities that will
drastically reduce IT maintenance efforts.
MicroStrategy’s Unique Report Prompting and Ability for End Users to “Surf and Save” Decrease the
Need for IT Report Developers
MicroStrategy’s self-service capabilities allow users to analyze at the speed of business, and then to easily create and
format their own reports without IT involvement. MicroStrategy report developers build controlled ad-hoc analysis
sandboxes that provide templates for thousands of potential report combinations. At report run time, users choose
any number of related filters, business criteria, calculations, subtotals, and formatting. Once users have answered
prompts on desired report objects and formatting, users can continue to analyze data and then save personal report
versions in their profile folders for sharing. This self-service “Surf and Save” paradigm is similar to saving a bookmark
of a Web page. All variations of user built reports will automatically share a common cache. No other vendors provide
the ability for users to choose all report objects at run time. The lack of these self-service capabilities in other BI
products results in IT building, maintaining, testing and upgrading hundreds of extra variations of reports. As a result
of MicroStrategy’s unique report prompts, a few MicroStrategy report developers can meet the dynamic requirements
of thousands of business users.
End Users Perform Intuitive and Drill Anywhere Analysis across All Data Assets without IT Dependencies
End user investigative analysis including the ability to drill anywhere – up, down or across hierarchies – is available
from any starting report in a MicroStrategy application. Any level of MicroStrategy Web user can easily launch into
intuitive, out-of-the-box Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) analysis, including right click menus for drilling, insert
percent to totals, sorting, pivoting, and formatting. In addition, users access a library of more than 250 basic, OLAP,
mathematical, financial and statistical functions that can be used to create business metrics and key performance
indicators. MicroStrategy translates users’ requests into SQL or MDX, which is specifically tuned for the database or
data source type. As a result, users are free to perform uninterrupted OLAP analysis on their entire data warehouse
and other data assets without IT dependencies. Other BI tools confine drilling and the use of complex analytics to pre-
built cubes. Cubes represent secondary data staging repositories that must be maintained by IT professionals. Many
other vendors’ larger BI implementations dedicate an entire team of trained professionals to building and maintaining
proprietary BI cubes. Many other vendors’ business users have to wait for IT to fulfill their requests before users can
proceed with further reporting and analysis.
MicroStrategy Business Abstractions Reduce IT Data Warehouse Maintenance Time
The data schema within the database cannot always satisfy dynamic business needs, yet constantly updating the data
structure requires significant database administrator and BI architect efforts. Business users often need to define their
own data groups or clusters of data elements, irrespective of how data is stored in the database. For example, users
might want to find the Top 10% of the most profitable customers by different business categories displayed in separate
rows on a report. Since this data changes every time new data is loaded into the warehouse, maintaining these new
groupings in the database causes significant additional overhead. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server solves this problem
with easily created abstraction objects called Custom Groups and Consolidations, which define specific segments without

10. MICROSTRATEGY:BESTINBUSINESSINTELLIGENCE
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modification to the underlying data. Complex data queries are automatically generated without end-user coding, ensuring
users always get an updated picture of their data. This type of flexibility empowers end users to quickly adjust business
grouping without incurring extra data warehousing and performance tuning costs. MicroStrategy abstraction objects save
data modeling time and implementation and allow the application to move at the speed of business requirements.
MicroStrategy Provides the Highest Number of Reusable Metadata Components,
Reducing IT Development Efforts
Most competing BI tools focus on developing individual reports as quickly as possible, and in neglecting the reusability
of the report components, these tools incur high ownership costs. This method of quick “one off” report development
is not scalable for a large number of reports. For true enterprise-class scalability, the BI architecture should allow each
report to be developed faster than the last report. Compared to other BI platforms, MicroStrategy has the broadest
range of reusable objects in its metadata repository and results in the most efficient application development.
In the MicroStrategy metadata, there is only one definition of any object regardless of how many times it is used in
different reports and objects. As a result, there are fewer objects to maintain than in other BI tools. For example, a
MicroStrategy Top Stores filter, defined as “All stores whose sales exceed the average by 2 standard deviations,” can be
reused in many other objects including: a top stores grid report, a top stores graph report, a metric, a filter, or a prompt.
All MicroStrategy objects from the data abstraction layer all the way to higher level business definitions are reusable
across reports, dashboards, and scorecards, speeding development time. MicroStrategy’s dashboard visualization widgets
and components, such as selectors controlling a line chart, can be also reused across completely different reports. Other
BI technologies rely far less on reuse, and far more on each developer’s ability to create the same underlying components
over and over again for use in individual reports. Not only is manual repetitive development tedious and error prone, it
is also slow and expensive for the organization. The result of MicroStrategy’s single platform and reusable objects is that
for given user requirements, MicroStrategy will require far fewer report developers, regression testers, and less end user
training time than other BI platforms and will deliver tremendous cost savings and IT efficiencies.
Figure 3: With MicroStrategy’s Reusable Metadata, Companies Experience greater Consistency Across Reports
“MicroStrategy offers ease-of-deployment, ease-of-use, ease-of-administration, exceptional scalability and powerful
analytics that can drill down to the most minute detail.”
– Comcast Cable Communications, Inc.
MicroStrategy
Metadata
Other BI
Vendors
Report-
Specific
Components
REPORT DESIGN
REPORT COMPONENTS
Layout
Format
Calculations
Parameterization
Templates
Filters
Autostyles
BUSINESS ABSTRACTION
Metrics
Hierarchies
Custom Groupings
Transformations
DATA ABSTRACTION
Attributes
Facts
Tables
Aliases
Report-
Specific
Components
Reusable
Metadata
Reusable
Metadata

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Dynamic Dependent Object Updates Reduce IT Maintenance Time
Any change to a MicroStrategy object is automatically and instantaneously reflected in every place that references
this object without any IT effort. Automatic updates are possible because all MicroStrategy metadata objects are
constructed using references rather than copies to other metadata objects. For example, a metric can be used to
define a filter and the filter used in a prompt. Any change to the original metric will be automatically reflected in both
the filter and the prompt. Change management is simplified as updates to these business definitions and objects
propagate bottom-up to higher level objects in the BI application. Other vendors’ products require IT professionals to
update repeated object definitions hundreds of times. When a MicroStrategy report is run, the latest object definitions
are used without the need to make any changes to the report itself. These automatic, dynamic object updates reduce
repetitive IT maintenance efforts.
“We have been highly productive using MicroStrategy for several years and found MicroStrategy’s single metadata and
object reuse has reduced our administrative costs. MicroStrategy is a natural fit for our analytic reporting environment
at the enterprise level.”
– AmerisourceBergen
MicroStrategy’s Open Systems Architecture Reduces IT Customization and Integration Time
MicroStrategy is an open systems vendor that embraces any database, portal, operating system, application
server, or browser. MicroStrategy integrates via Web services or Software Development Kit with any IT asset across
the enterprise. IT departments can integrate report results, functionality, formatting, and user interactivity in any
commercial or homegrown IT application.
MicroStrategy Web’s internal cleanly-layered architecture makes interface and application customizations much
simpler. Modifications are isolated to a single layer of the architecture, and are upgradeable, which is normally a labor
intensive job with other BI vendors. No coding is required for most customizations. Any desired changes to the way
MicroStrategy Web presents reports and BI functionality are stored in external XML configuration files. Simple and
upgradeable customizations reduce developer time and effort.
MicroStrategy Integrity Manager Automates Data and Application Regression Testing
MicroStrategy offers customers a tool to automatically test and document all changes to reports and data; this tool
almost eliminates the need for manual quality assurance or regression testing efforts. After a software or hardware
change, such as an upgrade, many other BI tools require dedicated teams of people to run all reports and manually
compare new and previous versions. These quality assurance teams also check reports for incorrect data due to
changes in the data warehouse or in data transformation and loading. This human quality assurance process is labor
intensive and error-prone. Organizations with other BI tools spend significant amounts of money testing the integrity
of the BI application. Due to limited testing resources and the potential for human error, manual efforts still do not
achieve full quality assurance. MicroStrategy Integrity Manager is an automated report comparison tool. Report
SQL, data, and graphs are compared to help customers verify data integrity when changes are introduced in the BI
ecosystem. MicroStrategy Integrity Manager can be scheduled to run on a time schedule, such as nightly, or after
an event, such as a warehouse data load. In automating a repetitive, labor intensive process, MicroStrategy Integrity
Manager helps organizations achieve more efficient staffing costs.
MicroStrategy’s Zero Footprint Web Interface Eliminates Client Installation and Update Costs
MicroStrategy Web applications offer business and IT users a true zero-client footprint that eliminates client installation
costs. MicroStrategy Web is based on the latest Web 2.0 (Dynamic HTML and AJAX) techniques allowing for an
unprecedented level of Windows-like user interactivity through a zero-footprint Web browser. MicroStrategy Web is
only installed on the application server or Web server, and is updated to the latest software version within minutes.

12. MicroStrategy:BestinBusinessIntelligence
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Other BI vendors require client installations and subsequent updates, extra work that results in increased staffing costs.
MicroStrategy users can access the same reports securely through any web browser or hundred of mobile devices.
Many other BI vendors require IT to format reports for viewing on specific devices, requiring IT staff to create and
maintain multiple versions of each report.
MicroStrategy’s Out-of-the-Box Network Security Eliminates Consulting and Maintenance Costs
MicroStrategy’s architecture is secure out-the-box and requires no expensive third party security plug-ins or consulting
fees. Managers require secure network connections to uphold corporate security standards and protected architecture
in order to protect the data warehouse from hackers. Web servers are the most common targets for hackers. It is vital
that there is no direct access to the data warehouse from the Web server. MicroStrategy’s BI architecture avoids this
potential security problem by routing all communications with databases or other data sources through Intelligence
Server. In this configuration, a hacker who gains access to the Web server does not also gain access to the data sources.
MicroStrategy delivers out of the box 128-bit end-to-end network encryption, whereas other vendors require
expensive encryption plug-ins. Many corporate firewalls prevent incoming third party plug-ins as a standard security
procedure. Unlike other BI products, MicroStrategy’s BI platform does not make use of any third party downloads
or plug-ins or a specific Web browser to deliver complete BI functionality to business users. With no third party
downloads or plug-ins, MicroStrategy Web works seamlessly through all standard Web firewalls, making deployment
straightforward and minimizing administration overhead. An architecture protecting connections to the database in
addition to adhering to strict Internet safely standards results in reduced IT security overhead.
“We evaluated numerous vendors and selected MicroStrategy because it provides a full functionality, zero-footprint
Web architecture, robust security, integrated platform, UNIX platform support, large-scale reference customers in our
space and the best total cost of ownership and ROI numbers.”
– The First American Corporation
Downtime Costs: 15% of TCO
Downtime represents a significant cost at 15% of the total cost of ownership. Downtime is wasted end user time
while the system is not running. Analysts generally calculate the cost of downtime by using annual loaded salary
of user time lost during application downtime. Since users may be able to complete other work during downtime,
such as making business calls, the annual loaded salary is discounted by a partial-productivity factor. As a result,
only some portion of the loaded salary is counted as cost. In this calculation, the amount of downtime is multiplied
by a partial discount factor of approximately 10% of the loaded end user salaries, meaning that end users lose
approximately 10% efficiency during downtime.
Down time is not an option for some organizations’ core 24 x 7 operations. For example, mission-critical BI operations
such as checking for credit card security breaches or analyzing credit scores for near real-time offers cannot afford to
be down. Some organizations providing their BI applications as a paid service for their customers will lose revenue
during every minute of downtime. TCO measures only labor costs and does not attempt to measure the cost of
preventing incorrect data or security breaches, which leads to loss of user confidence or worsened business decisions.
MicroStrategy provides industry leading centralized administrator automation capabilities and sophisticated server
clustering technology to maximize uptime.
Dynamic Resources Allocation Allows User and Data Scalability with Increased Uptime
MicroStrategy increases application uptime by using dynamic threads to run semi-simultaneous tasks using the same
processing power. These threads allow multiple users and tasks to efficiently share the same resources. MicroStrategy

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Intelligence Server is an automatic multi-threaded application. After the MicroStrategy application server is started,
MicroStrategy dynamically reallocates threads from one engine to another as the demand for individual engines
varies depending on the nature of user activity and reports executed. This adaptive balancing of internal capacity
ensures effective use of available resources, and allows the MicroStrategy BI platform to automatically scale while
maintaining performance. Automatic multi-threading imposes less of a load on the server by efficiently sharing
resources, ensuring uptime.
Organizations can automatically and fully leverage additional MicroStrategy processors to achieve performance
scalability. Extra resources are accessed as needed by multiple automatically maintained threads. MicroStrategy’s multi-
threading technology results in efficient and scalable use of application servers and reduces downtime.
“The MicroStrategy platform is the business intelligence standard across our U.S. operations. Unlike its competitors, the
MicroStrategy platform offers the power, flexibility and ease of use that we need 24/7.”
– Yum! Brands; KFC, Pizza Hut and Long John Silvers
Taking Advantage of 64-bit Increases Processing Capacity, Decreases Downtime
MicroStrategy’s 64-bit technology minimizes a significant downtime source – when the application server runs out of
memory and cannot handle data processing requests. Upgrading from 32-bit technology to 64-bit technology provides
a massive capacity increase for a business intelligence system. Increased system capacity results in decreased downtime.
Many BI vendors offer to execute on a 64-bit environment, but their applications are still optimized for 32-bit
technology. These 32-bit optimized applications cannot take full advantage of the memory capacity provided by the
64-bit environment and instead are limited to 4 gigabytes of addressable memory. A true 64-bit solution can address
up to 16 exabytes of memory, and as a result can support many more users, provide better performance through
greater cache capacity, and require a reduced number of servers. Increased performance on a reduced number of
servers saves money on hardware and power costs. MicroStrategy’s 64-bit technology provides increased processing
and memory capacity, eliminating downtime costs.
Cluster-capable Load Balancing Intelligence Server Maximizes Uptime
MicroStrategy’s automatic server clustering offers organizations the option to keep their applications running 24
x 7. Each MicroStrategy Intelligence Server in cluster-capable out of the box, and requires no additional third party
software. In contrast, many BI vendors require an additional central clustering management service, which introduces
extra costs and a potential service failure point. The features of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server include flexible,
load balancing, automated failover and fallback, and dynamic asymmetric clustering. Each cluster node is aware
of the caches on the other nodes. Load balancing allows for high performance with 100% uptime by dynamically
distributing processing workload. The failover process is transparent to the MicroStrategy end users, who will not
even realize that a failure occurred. The communication between each node is highly tuned, allowing for maximum
information density per communication and decreased network traffic. This centrally controlled architecture minimizes
administration and maintenance while providing maximum performance of the business intelligence system.
MicroStrategy’s automatic clustering and load balancing prevents expensive downtime costs.
Training Costs: 8% of TCO
Training costs include the time to train IT staff as well as end users. Increased product complexity will lead to greater
training time and costs. Some BI vendors have built their architecture largely by acquiring other companies, a
growth strategy resulting in a complex patchwork of technologies. These vendors require IT staff to learn different

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paradigms for disjointed servers, interfaces, and metadata. Similarly, these vendors offer business users different
interfaces for different levels of analysis. MicroStrategy saves training costs by offering developers and users a single,
flexible interface, which minimizes training time.
MicroStrategy Provides One Single, Customizable Web Interface, Minimizing Training Costs
MicroStrategy business users of any skill level only need to become familiar with one interface and analysis paradigm
to satisfy their reporting, analysis, and monitoring needs. One single, flexible, and customizable interface holds all
functionality options. The MicroStrategy administrator can quickly customize each level of user interface simply by
selecting user privilege checkboxes or running a command line script. Providing users with consistent paradigms and
standard functionality across styles of business intelligence and applications delivers a familiar interface that cuts
training time and increases the likelihood and speed of user adoption.
“MicroStrategy was selected because of its user-friendliness for diverse types of users, integrated platform, technical
capabilities, and attractive total cost of ownership model.”
– World Directories
Dynamic Dashboards Eliminate End User Training Costs
MicroStrategy dynamic enterprise dashboards offer a one-stop shop for information discovery across multiple data
sources and eliminate end user training costs. One dynamic dashboard can provide intuitive impact analysis and data
discovery for a group of executives or thousands of customers. Users can securely access dashboards from any e-mail
inbox or across any Web browser. Business users can instantly click on familiar Web paradigms of tabs, graph choices,
column sorting, and filter selectors. MicroStrategy dashboards showcase a unique analytical advantage: connectors
between dashboard components provide workflow interaction and updates among all reports, eliminating end
user training. One MicroStrategy dashboard can deliver personalized data and dozens of interconnected reports to
thousands of users without end user training costs.
“MicroStrategy Report Services provides an easy-to-use, integrated reporting and analytics platform that provides our
end-users greater business insight. We looked at other competing offerings, but preferred MicroStrategy’s end-user
experience and integrated architecture.”
– AutoTrader.com
Hardware Costs: 7% of TCO
The BI environment encompasses various hardware costs, including application servers, power related to CPU usage,
client machines, and network bandwidth. Client, server, storage and all peripheral hardware typically account for 4 –
7% of BI ownership costs.7
The BI environment also leverages a large IT investment – the enterprise data warehouse
and other data sources. The IT buyer should seek to minimize the BI hardware ownership costs in addition to
maximizing the tremendous investment in the enterprise data warehouse. MicroStrategy customers achieve reduced
server costs and increased database efficiency through key technical capabilities including automatic multi-tier caching,
data warehouse specific, optimized SQL, and MicroStrategy’s “drill anywhere” capabilities.
MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes Eliminate the Need to Maintain a Proprietary Cube Environment and
Redundant Hardware and Databases
In order to provide BI functionality, many vendors use proprietary cubes, which require additional hardware storage
7
4%: Breakdown of TCO for IT Infrastructure workloads over a five-year period (IDC, 2002, “Windows 2000 versus Linux in
Enterprise Computing.” 7%: IDC, 2007. Three Year Server TCO. Based on more than 300 interviews conducted across
numerous platforms, presented in composite form.

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and processing power. Proprietary cubes are created on top of relational databases or other data sources and do
not leverage any database specific functionality. Instead, in order to create and update cubes, it is necessary to pre-
aggregate the information coming from the data warehouse or other data sources. The creation of cubes is time
consuming. Adding additional data to a cube creates a cube size explosion issue and consumes increasing amounts
of database resources. Cubes require hardware storage, which is expensive and must be purchased in large amounts.
Technologies that rely on cubes generate an enormous added burden to the data warehouse system and require
additional hardware resources.
MicroStrategy’s Intelligent Cube technology lets users manipulate reports on a multi-dimensional cache of data rather
than a limited, proprietary cube database. Caches are instantly populated and new Intelligent Cubes are created when
users run a report – without IT assistance. Intelligent Cubes are automatically built once and stored in MicroStrategy’s
unified metadata on the centralized server, where they can be shared across the enterprise. MicroStrategy
administrators can automatically ensure that business users always have the most current information by configuring
the Intelligent Cube data to expire or refresh without any IT effort. MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes provide users data
analysis efficiencies resulting in reduced hardware and server costs.
Multi-Level Shared Caching Results in Less Network and Hardware Used and Increased Performance
MicroStrategy Intelligence Server automatically maintains query and interface performance while reducing hardware
needs by effective caching – sharing and reusing data. With other BI products, query performance decreases as the
number of users on the system increases. Some BI products attempt to implement caching by simply storing data at
a single level of the middle tier, thus missing caching benefits and requiring repeatedly transferring massive amounts
of data between layers. The foundation of caching in the MicroStrategy platform is to implement caches at key
points within the overall query flow and to tune caching based on user activity. MicroStrategy caching prevents large
amounts of data from being transported from the database to the client for every request and therefore consumes less
network bandwidth, an additional hardware cost. Usually network bandwidth capacity is very expensive to enhance
and generally overlooked. Organizations not benefiting from MicroStrategy’s self tuning caching are forced to increase
their network capabilities in order to increase the network bandwidth.
Customers who do not use advanced caching end up buying additional database licenses and hardware to provide
a level of performance that is acceptable to the users. Calculating and transmitting large amount of un-cached
data consumes more CPU processing power of the database. More CPU processor power used also results in more
electricity consumption, a cost traditionally disregarded but that is becoming more apparent in the recent years.
MicroStrategy’s efficient caching reduces costs in network bandwidth, hardware storage space, and processing power.
Figure 4: MicroStrategy’s Caching Delivers High User Scalability Without Sacrificing Performance
Caching
No Caching
Number of Users
AverageResponseTime

16. MicroStrategy:BestinBusinessIntelligence
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MicroStrategy’s Database Specific Optimized SQL Delivers Orders of Magnitude in Increased Performance
on Any Hardware
MicroStrategy’s platform delivers database specific queries that result in increased application efficiency. Business
needs often dictate that information is retrieved from different data sources. A business intelligence system must be
able to communicate with any data source to fulfill these requests. However, data sources have specific connectivity
mechanisms, optimization techniques, and result formats. Since each database uses its own optimized Structured
Query Language (SQL) syntax, a generic SQL statement performs very differently on varying database platforms.
The performance difference can be orders of magnitude depending on the complexity of the query. MicroStrategy
Intelligence Server is optimized to extract data from all major data sources. Forrester, a leading analyst research group,
highlights MicroStrategy above all other BI vendors for providing all Very Large Database settings necessary for reporting
optimization.8
Optimizing SQL in MicroStrategy requires configuring only a few single data source instances. In contrast,
other vendors not leveraging database specific optimization settings will require both more hardware and more IT
tuning effort to achieve the same performance. Non database specific queries consume more database processing
power and more application server processing power. Some database vendors also sell a BI tool optimized for their
specific database. When these customers need to utilize a new data source, they incur the costs of moving data to that
specific database platform. MicroStrategy customers save hardware costs with the option to instantly utilize any new
data source with automatically optimized SQL.
Automatic Drill Anywhere Fully Leverages Database Investments, Reduces Hardware Costs
MicroStrategy “drill anywhere” functionality provides users the option to explore their entire data warehouse without
incurring the additional hardware costs required by most BI vendors. With MicroStrategy’s “drill anywhere” functionality,
a business user can drill from any report to any data field down to the lowest level of detail within the data warehouse.
Unlike other BI tools, MicroStrategy does not require that all drill paths be anticipated and pre-calculated ahead of
time for each report. When a MicroStrategy object is added to a report, it is automatically “drillable.” Drill anywhere
provides access to the full breadth and depth of transaction-level data. For example, a user can drill down from a
report at the quarter level to month, week or date in a single step. When dealing with large data volumes, it is often
impractical or impossible for other vendors’ cube-based BI tools to provide all users this degree of granular access to
data. MicroStrategy’s drill down capability is extremely powerful and also unique in the BI market. All possible drill paths
do not need to be pre-aggregated in the database or in proprietary cubes. MicroStrategy leverages existing database
resources without requiring additional hardware costs, ensuring data scalability.
“eBay selected MicroStrategy because of its exceptional user scalability and its ability to support advanced reporting
and analysis. MicroStrategy also provides excellent query performance with our rapidly growing multi-terabyte
data warehouse.”
– eBay
Software and Related Vendor Maintenance Costs: 7% of TCO
The software and related vendor-supplied maintenance support costs represent 5–10 % of five year BI ownership
costs. Software costs include the initial purchase of the software as well as the annual cost of service contracts,
which are typically around 18-25% of the software license costs. Though software and maintenance costs represent
only a minority stake in costs, many organizations, particularly unseasoned BI buyers, fixate on these license costs,
8
Forrester Research, Inc. Evelson, Boris. Data, Data Everywhere!: Very Large Database Issues And Implications For Business
Intelligence July 23, 2007. Figure 6: BI Specialist’s Advanced Optimization Features Work Best Via Database Integration.

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probably because license costs are most easily quantifiable and the majority of license costs are paid upfront.
Though MicroStrategy offers a more efficient architecture that delivers a lower cost of ownership, MicroStrategy
license and vendor maintenance costs are competitive with other vendors. As a result, MicroStrategy customers
enjoy a much lower TCO than other vendors.
A Single Architecture Offers Incremental Growth and Greatest License Leverage
MicroStrategy’s single architecture lets customers buy just the functionality they need and the option to
incrementally grow their BI solution as their requirements naturally expand. MicroStrategy has designed plug-
and-play components so that each addition brings new functionality to build on pre-existing content so that no
rework is required. As a result, a MicroStrategy customer can add the OLAP services module to the engine, and all
previously built grid reports automatically become Intelligent Cube reports with wide range of new functionality. In
addition, a MicroStrategy customer can add the Report Services Module and be able to reuse all the previously built
grid and cube reports and datasets for the new Pixel Perfect™ document. And finally, a MicroStrategy customer can
add the Narrowcast Server module and immediately use any grid reports, Intelligent Cube reports, and document
reports as the basis for e-mail alerts and proactive notifications. Other vendors, who do not have the advantage
of a single architecture built on a unified code base, require customers to spend money on overlapping licenses to
increase functionality.
Administrators Can Easily Customize the Single User Interface by Enabling Privileges
With the option to customize a Web single interface for all functionality, MicroStrategy’s customers do not need
to purchase multiple, overlapping user licenses. The MicroStrategy Web interface is easily tailored to the needs,
role, and skill level of each user or user group. Although MicroStrategy Web offers sophisticated functionality for
advanced users, novice users are shielded from any complexity; they get a very simple interface with few toolbars
and buttons. As users’ BI knowledge and needs expand, additional functionality is granted via a user privilege
checklist. Since single user objects are re-used across all MicroStrategy products, privilege maintenance is minimal
and effective. Other vendors require users to purchase a license for each user interface, so that a single user will
require multiple licenses. These multiple licenses are not only more expensive, but customers waste money on
overlapping functionality. MicroStrategy provides a single flexible interface so that customers can gain from the
most efficient license use.
MicroStrategy Provides Customer Driven Enhancement Requests and Seamless Upgrades Included in
Maintenance Price
MicroStrategy’s cost efficient maintenance and upgrade policies deliver significant new functionality, driven by
customer and market driven platform enhancement requests, while minimizing software costs. MicroStrategy
has a long history of serving the most demanding enterprise needs by delivering scalable analytics serving the
largest user bases, the most complex analytic and customization needs, and the most massive data volumes. In
general, MicroStrategy has offered customers the option for new enhancement and new product functionality
under existing maintenance agreements. For example, MicroStrategy Report Services’ customers can download
new visualization widgets without incurring additional maintenance costs. In contrast to BI competitors, whose
complex migrations typically require additional software license upgrade charges, MicroStrategy does not charge
any migration transfer tax.
“MicroStrategy fits the needs of our growing business with its dynamic, cutting-edge features and the scalability to
keep our growing user base apprised of business performance.”
– Wilton Industries

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IV. Conclusion
It is essential for BI buyers to evaluate the Total Cost of Ownership, since today’s IT budgets have come under
increasing scrutiny and business requirements have become more complex. Business intelligence applications must
now be developed, deployed and maintained with the minimum of IT resources, while serving more users across the
global organization. Clearly, the BI architecture can be either a liability or an asset to IT departments. A technologically
superior architecture will meet a broad range of end user needs while minimizing the amount of IT maintenance and
administration.
Staffing costs will constitute the large majority of TCO over the next five years. Therefore, IT buyers should evaluate
technical capabilities impacting staffing costs. An IDC study, Demonstrating Business Value: Selling to Your C-Level
Executives, concludes, “Because the single largest factor affecting TCO is staffing cost, IT initiatives that can reduce
IT labor costs are likely to find greater acceptance among financial decision makers, and initiatives that enable
IT consolidation or automation can significantly reduce TCO across the IT infrastructure.”9
An architecture with
duplicative or redundant metadata, user interfaces, administration consoles and servers – software inefficiencies – will
be difficult to manage and more costly to maintain.
Although the initial BI application may not be initially forecasted to reach a large size, the right choice of a scalable BI
platform upfront can ensure that there are no cost restrictions to future growth. MicroStrategy provides the technical
capabilities necessary for cost effective BI. For example, the capability for user self-service, including MicroStrategy’s
advanced report prompts and surf and save reports, dramatically reduces the need for trained IT report developers.
Staffing man hours can be further reduced largely through MicroStrategy’s single re-usable metadata, which enables
organizations to add new applications at the speed of business. MicroStrategy’s leverage of 64-bit technology and
out-of-the-box server failover clustering are two methods of keeping the enterprise BI platform running efficiently
and 24x7. MicroStrategy’s single unified architecture and interface are key methods of reducing user training costs.
Hardware costs can be lowered by efficient caching and MicroStrategy Intelligent Cubes. MicroStrategy customers
enjoy many options to save on software costs including the ability to add functionality incrementally while leveraging
all previous investments. MicroStrategy has built its architecture to scale cost effectively in order to help organizations
achieve the goal of pervasive BI – better decision making across the enterprise.
MicroStrategy is widely recognized for its meticulously engineered software based on a single code base, scaling to
applications of all sizes; leveraging any hardware, operating system, and data source infrastructure while making
BI more approachable for the average business user. Multi-year customer deployments found that by leveraging
MicroStrategy’s capabilities, customers were able to add thousands of users, dozens of BI applications, and grow data
volumes without requiring significantly more IT full-time employees and hardware resources, therefore achieving an
efficient TCO.
9
Perry, Randy. Gillen, Al. IDC. Demonstrating Business Value : Selling to Your C-Level Executives. April 2007

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