Leading relational on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor MicroStrategy continues to earn its reputation as a visionary organisation. In addition to the recent announcement of DSS Broadcaster, the company is currently engaged in research and development on Query Tone, a new concept which harnesses and combines the potential of the world wide web, data warehousing and decision support systems. Eduardo Sanchez, corporate vice-president of international business for MicroStrategy, was in South Africa recently to deliver a keynote presentation at the Data Warehousing and Knowledge Management OE98 conference. The event was sponsored by local MicroStrategy distributor SPL. "There is a dire need for organisations to make valuable business information available," he says. "That is the rationale behind DSS Broadcaster, and Query Tone takes the entire concept of information access to a new dimension." Query Tone will enable the average consumer to obtain information previously accessible only to the top management of Global 2000 companies. The technology will allow users to get an answer to any query against any data located anywhere in the world. "For example, a parent could query medical databases to find the best surgeon for her child's operation, or a college graduate could query a city's real estate database to find a new apartment," Sanchez says. "That is Query Tone, and MicroStrategy will enable it by pioneering and developing ground-breaking technology that lets people use web browsers to sift through large stores of data. "By realising its vision, MicroStrategy will revolutionise the way the world makes decisions." The industry's first information broadcast server, DSS Broadcaster enables the delivery of personalised, exception-based analyses to individuals via e-mail, fax, pager or mobile phone, thereby extending access of information to all levels of the enterprise. According to Sanchez, DSS Broadcaster overcomes one of the main obstacles surrounding data warehousing. "Designing and implementing a data warehouse which can only be accessed by 50 users is a very expensive exercise," he points out. "The objective of DSS Broadcaster is to ensure that everyone in the organisation uses the data warehouse." DSS Broadcaster delivers analyses that have been dynamically generated from vast volumes of data based on each user`s preferences and needs. It finds the answers to complex business questions using the most sophisticated DSS technology available, and then ensures that the right person gets this information at the right time. DSS Broadcaster will be released worldwide in the third quarter of this year. DSS Broadcaster runs on Windows NT Server 4.0. MicroStrategy is the leading provider of industrial-strength decision support products for developing and accessing data warehouses. As the Relational OLAP (ROLAP) industry pioneer, MicroStrategy was the first vendor to deliver high-performance, multidimensional OLAP analysis directly from relational databases without requiring any proprietary multidimensional databases.
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