MicroStrategy Gives Nontechnical Workers Access To Business IntelligenceMicroStrategy Gives Nontechnical Workers Access To Business Intelligence

MicroStrategy Inc. on Monday debuted software that lets people with little or no technical expertise use Microsoft Office desktop applications to access business intelligence and reports generated by MicroStrategy's analysis software.

Most business-intelligence software is used by technically savvy business analysts or by IT workers who develop static reports. Efforts to bring business-intelligence capabilities to mainstream workers have been mostly unsuccessful, Forrester Research analyst Keith Gile says.

The new MicroStrategy Office software, which is immediately available, is an effort to accommodate "information consumers" who want to access reports using Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook applications. A user, for example, could pull analytical data from MicroStrategy Intelligence Server through PowerPoint to create charts for a presentation.

The software targets mainstream workers as well as financial analysts who rely heavily on Excel, says Sanju Bansal, MicroStrategy's chief operating officer. MicroStrategy also hopes the software will become popular for making reports and data analysis available through company extranets.

MicroStrategy Office uses .Net Web services to create a live connection between the desktop apps and Intelligence Server. That's different from Excel plug-in applications from other business-intelligence vendors that are more production-oriented, Gile says. Pricing starts at $595 per user.