MicroStrategy’s 13th annual user conference 2010 kicked off with a bang at Las Vegas this year. MicroStrategy World has always presented us a great opportunity to spend time with our customers and partners to catch up and plan for the upcoming year, and this year was no different! There was record attendance of more than 1,500 customers and partners attending, signifying the beginning of what is looking to be a very strong year for BI.

Systech has been a regular at the MicroStrategy World for the past several years. This year we were a silver sponsor for the event. We were delighted to be on the exhibit floor along with our partner Pi Solutions to present our success strategies and experiences using BI to enhance business performance. Some of the exciting new attractions on this year’s Systech exhibit floor featured unique presentations and demonstrations highlighting “Discover the power of Analytics” solutions for various industries. Not only was our solution well received by our client base but was extremely well received by the audience who were exposed to Systech’s BI for the first time. At the event, we got a chance to re-connect with Systech alumni and it was gratifying to see them cheering and celebrating our success. Krish Lakshmi Narayan, summarized the sentiment when he said that it was great to see Systech’s growth in BI and the level of participation at the conference. Several Alumni also brought their entire team over to our booth and introduced Systech as the company which trained them of their BI expertise.

Adhering to their tradition, MicroStrategy world started off with a dashing performance – this year by Gwen Stefani (Or maybe a look alike…hey you never know in Las Vegas!)! The general session generated tons of energy and excitement – it included Sanju Bansal’s welcome, Mike Saylor’s keynote on Mobile Intelligence, Mark LaRow’s keynote on the Micro Strategy Technology Strategy, and Micro strategy customer panel.

The highlight was definitely the keynote from Mike Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy. Mike declared in his keynote, “We are on the verge of a new era that will result in a new class of applications that will change the way we think about our business.” Saylor made the most compelling speech of why mobile may revolutionize BI. Saylor said, “Computing is entering its fifth generation in which desktop Internet applications are giving way to a new generation of Mobile Internet applications. In the Mobile Internet age, applications which were mildly successful when used at one’s desk suddenly become incredibly effective and valuable when consumed on the go, anywhere and anytime business is being conducted. A Mobile information access will likely eclipse desktop information access in the near future. This heightened level of usage, combined with the richness of the mobile interface, will change the way information is consumed and MicroStrategy intends to be at the forefront of this wave. MicroStrategy 9 is designed to outperform competitive BI architectures, and is well-suited to provide intelligence in the age of the Mobile Internet. Our goal is to enable our customers to deliver Mobile Intelligence ahead of their competition to their employees, their suppliers, and their customers.”

Mark LaRow’s keynote focused on the strategy and the launch of MicroStrategy 9 release 2. MicroStrategy boasted its in-memory solution last year in MicroStrategy 9. With MicroStrategy 9 Release 2, they have improved its cache load times, query processing times, and memory consumption. VP of Marketing Mark LaRow claimed that cubes consume 70% less memory in the latest release, making an already scalable solution more so. With the upgrade to 64-bit BI, empowered business people to conduct analysis quicker, leverage more BI functionality, and to create their own reports without IT help.

The event featured more than 100 educational sessions, and an update on MicroStrategy’s latest technology advances. MicroStrategy outlined their technology advancements and strategy to emphasize the important impact of advancements: speed of thought performance, mobile intelligence, enabling an information gateway, rapid time to value, lower cost of ownership, making BI pervasive and the future with predictive analytics and next generation user interfaces through navigation and visualization.

At the conference, MicroStrategy recognized companies for achieving outstanding business performance with their MicroStrategy-based business intelligence applications. These companies were recognized because of the way their dashboards and dashboard technology enhanced the way the business decisions were made. The winners from this year were AmerisourceBergen for extranet deployment, Con-way Freight for advanced analytics, Yahoo for data analytics, Lowes for user scalability, Ross Stores for enterprise deployment and Brian Fox from Citi for individual excellence in business intelligence.

AmerisourceBergen was recognized in the Extranet Deployment category for its InSite system. The InSite system supports AmerisourceBergen’s community pharmacy clients across the U.S. with powerful dashboards and scorecards that provide rich analytics and tailored information. The extranet allows pharmacy owners to quickly identify suspect claims that may contribute to profit leakage, and uncover opportunities to expand their business and reduce unnecessary costs. AmerisourceBergen is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical services companies, with operations primarily in the United States and Canada. Chuck Reed, from ABDC acknowledged the Systech team for its integral role in the project at the award ceremony, thus recognizing Systech’s contribution in skill and resources for the project.

MicroStrategy World 2010 was a jam packed event filled with learning and networking! We had a chance to personally experience MicroStrategy, examine the new product technology, collaborate with customers and review their progress. On the whole it was clearly evident that we would be seeing a seismic shift in the way business is conducted. And most of all it was exciting and rewarding to connect with everybody in Systech’s BI/DW ecosystem – our client base, our partners and our alumni friends!

Here’s to a productive 2010!

Vaishnavi Gollapudi
The Editor, BI Insight

Systech has been weaving MicroStrategy’s award winning BI platform into its proven methodology for creating sophisticated Business Intelligence environments since 1998.

View Systech’s MicroStrategy Technology Practice
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