MicroStrategy and Sun Announce Partnership to Bring Data Warehousing to the Web; DSS Web And DSS Server To Run On Solaris Platform

Business Wire, March 28, 1996

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 28, 1996--MicroStrategy, the largest relational on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor, and Sun Microsystems Computer Company Thursday announced that Sun has joined the MicroStrategy DSS Partners Program as a platform vendor and MicroStrategy has joined Sun's Catalyst partner program.

The partnerships strengthen the ability of the two organizations to work together to develop integrated technology solutions that meet customer requirements. As part of the agreement, the two companies announced that DSS Web, MicroStrategy's relational OLAP interface for the World Wide Web (WWW), and DSS Server, MicroStrategy's open ROLAP server engine, will be ported to the Solaris multiprocessing/multithreading operating environment.

"The growing demand for web-based data warehouses requires exceptionally scalable solutions to accommodate an increasing amount of data and the millions of users who may want to access it," said Mark Tolliver, vice president of market development for Sun Microsystems Computer Company. "The combination of DSS Web and the Solaris SMP operating environment represents an ideal solution to provide cost-effective data warehouse and decision support access via the web."

In addition to the Solaris port, DSS Web also supports the Sun environment by enabling organizations to customize applications by taking advantage of Java and JavaScript. DSS Web is fully compatible with HTML, allowing application developers to embed Java applets within the HTML documents to create sophisticated WWW applications. Using JavaScript, DSS Web allows for application customization by creating highly tailored web pages, including advanced decision support objects to display information.

"Sun's database-friendly architecture makes it an ideal platform for our joint customers to leverage MicroStrategy's industry-leading tool set to deliver mission-critical their ROLAP applications to end users," said Sanju K. Bansal, MicroStrategy's executive vice president. "By providing superior deployment speed, unlimited access, and a single point of maintenance, DSS Web enables corporate IS to simultaneously reduce costs, lower development risk, and increase user functionality. We are very excited about the partnership."

About Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems Computer Company is a world leader in the design, manufacture and sale of network computing systems and is a division of Sun Microsystems Inc. Recognized for quality and innovation, the company's SPARC workstations and multiprocessing servers each hold the No. 1 UNIX marketshare position. These systems are used primarily by business, educational institutions and governments worldwide for technical, commercial, industrial, and software development applications.

About MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is the leading provider of relational OLAP products and services for developing and accessing enterprise data warehouses. MicroStrategy has been recognized by Database Programming & Design as one of the Database Dozen: twelve companies that define the direction of the database industry.

MicroStrategy was the first vendor to define a decision support object framework introducing intelligent agents and exception-reporting alerts; to develop a logical transparent map between multidimensional views and relational tables; to deliver an off-the-shelf, three-tier, decision support environment; and to provide OLAP functionality over the World Wide Web.

MicroStrategy has the most experience in developing decision support systems on data warehouses exceeding 500 gigabytes. Its DSS Agent product line is widely used by Fortune 1000 corporations worldwide, and in alliances and partnerships with a variety of industry-leading companies.

MicroStrategy has offices in Washington, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, London and Barcelona. Corporate headquarters is located at 8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Vienna, VA 22182; Phone: 703-848-8600; Fax: 703-848-8610; Internet: info@strategy.com; World Wide Web: http://www.strategy.com/. -0-

NOTE: DSS Partners, DSS Server and DSS Web are registered trademarks of MicroStrategy Inc. All other product names are trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

CONTACT: MicroStrategy Inc.

Lisa Houde, 703/848-8692

houde@strategy.com

or

Sun Microsystems Inc.

Brigitte Mouchet, 415/786-8181