In-Depth

MicroStrategy Embraces Unix

New offering extends MicroStrategy’s reach into the high-end

• By Stephen Swoyer
• 07/07/2004

In spite of its presence in many high-end accounts, MicroStrategy Inc.’s flagship BI software has traditionally been a Windows-only product—until now.

That changed last month when MicroStrategy released a Unix-based version of its MicroStrategy 7i BI platform.

For the record, MicroStrategy isn’t a complete stranger to non-Windows environments. In November 2002, for example, the company released Web Universal, a J2EE-compliant interface that runs on Windows, UNIX, and Linux. MicroStrategy says that the new offering, called MicroStrategy 7i Universal Edition, is compiled for both Windows and 64-bit Unix variants from the same code base. In addition to Windows, MicroStrategy 7i runs on the AIX (from IBM Corp.) and Solaris (from Sun Microsystems Inc.) operating environments.

All of the components of the base MicroStrategy 7i suite are available in the Universal Edition, including enterprise reporting (via MicroStrategy Report Services), cube analysis, ad hoc query and analysis, and data mining and statistical analysis. Each of the operating system-specific versions of 7i Universal are based on the same code base, so MicroStrategy can release new service packs and patches across all operating systems simultaneously.

Because many large databases are powered by Unix-based operating environments, MicroStrategy COO Sanju Bansal says the new 7i Universal release will extend MicroStrategy’s reach into the high end. “With MicroStrategy 7i Universal Edition, far more users will now be able to tap into the largest databases and obtain answers faster to their reporting and analysis inquiries,” Bansal said in a press release.

The Universal edition of MicroStrategy 7i boasts the same features as its Windows-specific brother, including an object-oriented metadata repository; highly efficient and tunable multi-pass SQL generation; four levels of shared caches; a full-featured library of analytical and BI functions; clustering and load-balancing capabilities, with failover and fault tolerance features; full parallel processing; and automatic resource reallocation and system tuning.