1996 Brings Breakthroughs in Technology and Continued Success for MicroStrategy.

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 1997--

Most Exciting and Rewarding Year Yet as Company Continues Phenomenal Growth and Expansion

MicroStrategy, the largest relational on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor, today announced that 1996 represented the most successful year yet in the company's seven year history, as it continued its tradition of year over year profitability, growth, and achievement.

For MicroStrategy, 1996 was marked by breakthroughs in technology, advancement into new and exciting markets, tremendous growth, and its continued recognition throughout the industry as the technological and thought leader in the ROLAP market.

DSS Web: The Future of Decision Support Technology In February, MicroStrategy introduced DSS Web, the industry's first web-enabled decision support tool that provides advanced multidimensional analysis from any World Wide Web browser. DSS Web represents a new era in data warehousing, as it drastically reduces the deployment, maintenance, hardware, and software costs normally associated with data warehouse access.

By providing direct access to a data warehouse via the WWW, corporate executives, employees, suppliers, distributors, and customers are able to access critical, detailed information regardless of geographic, organization, political or technical boundaries. With DSS Web, MicroStrategy has opened the data warehouse to the corporate enterprise and beyond, providing new opportunities to generate revenue, increase growth, and improve profitability.

MicroStrategy's Scalable ROLAP Architecture

During 1996, MicroStrategy introduced the 4.0 version of its industry-leading ROLAP architecture. Through MicroStrategy's scalable architecture, employees, strategic business partners, outside vendors, corporate customers and individuals all now have the potential to access and analyze information from data warehouses at precisely the level of detail they require. The new 4.0 product line provides advanced decision-making; accelerates the speed, capabilities, and ease of creating a decision support system; has a complete range of reporting and analysis capabilities; and has administration tools for a no- maintenance warehouse environment.

Industry Recognition

MicroStrategy's advances in decision support technology coupled with its vision for leading the market into the 21st century were recognized by the industry's most prestigious publications and awards. For the second consecutive year, the editors of Database Programming & Design selected MicroStrategy as one of the "Database Dozen," the twelve companies that are defining the direction of the database industry. MicroStrategy was the only ROLAP vendor to be named to this list, confirming its role as the technology leader in the marketplace.

In addition, MicroStrategy received widespread recognition for the highly successful and innovative decision support solutions it provides for its clients. MicroStrategy's customers were Finalists in both the RealWare and Best Practices Awards, an honor which reflects MicroStrategy's ability to provide its customers with effective business solutions.

In addition, MicroStrategy was named to the National Technology Council's "Fast 500" list, which honors the strongest, fastest growing, and most dynamic companies in the entire technology marketplace. Upside Magazine also named MicroStrategy one of the "100 Hot Private Companies," a distinction bestowed upon the most promising privately-held companies in the technology industry. Lastly, Michael J. Saylor, MicroStrategy's president & CEO was named the KPMG Peat Marwick High Tech Entrepreneur of the Year for his exceptional leadership and key role in the advancement of technology. Mr. Saylor was also featured by many of today's leading business and computer publications including The Washington Post, PC Week, InformationWeek, and Database Programming & Design.

European Expansion

For MicroStrategy's European operation, 1996 was a year of astonishing growth. MicroStrategy extended its sales operations by opening new offices in France, Spain, and Germany. MicroStrategy Deutschalnd GmbH, opened in November in Cologne to conduct business in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A new office was also opened in Madrid to cover operations in Spain and Portugal. Plans for expansion include establishing new offices in Scandinavia, Benelux, Italy, Eastern Europe, Far East, Africa, and South America in the coming year. MicroStrategy Europe ended the year by winning the prestigious 1996 Information Age Product Award as the leading provider of relational OLAP products.

Launches Successful Seminar Series Programs

In November, MicroStrategy introduced its "Data Warehousing on the Web" seminar, a program designed to educate business executives on how the web can dramatically improve decision-making within an organization. MicroStrategy's consulting experts toured the nation to provide managers with valuable insight on how data warehousing on the web can have a significant impact on the future success of their company. The seminars proved to be extraordinarily successful, with record attendance at every session.

In October, MicroStrategy and Microsoft partnered to deliver the "1996 Fall Solutions Tour," a series of seminars addressing the various business challenges and decision support options faced by today's corporations. The seminar provided IT professionals with a knowledge of how to transform raw data into critical information that can have a tremendous impact on every company's business decisions.

Dynamic DSSPartners(tm) Program

In March, the DSSPartners program was created to enable leading technology companies to benefit from MicroStrategy's advanced decision support solutions. This unique, comprehensive program allows partners to leverage MicroStrategy's leading ROLAP technology and expertise in order to enhance their own service and product offerings. All partners receive extensive training in MicroStrategy's product line, consulting methodologies, product development insights, and marketing techniques.

Throughout the year, MicroStrategy formed successful partnerships with many leading technology systems integrators and resellers, including ACNielsen, Acxiom Corporation, Andersen Consulting, Archer Decision Sciences, Concepts Dynamic, Computer Sciences Corporation, Cornerstone Concepts, Deloitte & Touche, Emergent Corporation, Intrepid, IMS America, IBM Corporation (ISSC), NexGen SI, Perot Systems, Price Waterhouse, Pulse Technologies, Red Brick, Rijnhaave Information Systems, Source Informatics, Tailwind Technologies, Technology Investments, Virtual Solutions, and others.

Fortune 1000 Clients Drive MicroStrategy's Success Throughout 1996, MicroStrategy was the recognized leader in the marketplace with more Fortune 1000 clients than any other ROLAP vendor. MicroStrategy continued to lead the retail market, attracting new clients such as Wal-Mart, Kmart, CVS, Thrifty-Payless, Eddie Bauer, American Stores, Rite-Aid, Caldor, Victoria's Secret, Crown Books, Waldenbooks, Payless ShoeSource, Service Merchandise, Federated Department Stores, CompUSA, and Hallmark. MicroStrategy's dominance spread into the healthcare and pharmaceutical markets (Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Baxter Biotech Group, Merck Medco, and Allergen), as well as insurance (Nationwide, CNA Insurance, Commercial Union Insurance), and banking & finance (Merrill Lynch, American Express Financial Corporation, Visa and Discover).

In addition, MicroStrategy moved into many new and exciting markets including telecommunications (AT&T, MCI, Galaxy Hughes, Pacific Bell, Bell South Telecommunications, Sprint, and NYNEX), utilities (Pacific Gas & Electric), manufacturing & industrial (Monsanto Company, The Clorox Company, Shaw Industries, Philip Morris, Levi's Canada, Heublein, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Nissan, and Koch Industries), and entertainment & publishing (MCA Universal City Studios, MCA Production Studios, and McGraw-Hill). Other new clients include United Airlines, Budget Rent A Car, Seiko, Kraft, Dairyworld (Agrifoods), and Reynolds & Reynolds.

About MicroStrategy, Inc.

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. In addition, MicroStrategy has engineered many data warehousing breakthroughs: intelligent agents; VLDB drivers for terabyte-range scalability; a dynamic, multi-pass SQL generation engine; DSS metadata CASE tools; a VLDB-savvy OLAP report writer; a mission-critical ROLAP server; and most recently, OLAP over the World Wide Web.

MicroStrategy's contributions have been recognized by the data warehouse industry through several awards including the KPMG High Tech Entrepreneur of the Year and the Database Programming & Design Database Dozen, while MicroStrategy's clients have been recognized as finalists in the RealWare awards and Best Practices awards.

MicroStrategy's worldwide customer base includes industry leaders like Kmart, MCI, CVS, Glaxo Wellcome, Federated Department Stores, Bank of America, AT&T, USAA, Sara Lee Direct, Victoria's Secret, and Hallmark. The company has partnered with strategic value-added resellers and leading software and hardware companies including AC Nielsen, IMS America, NCR, Tandem, Oracle, Informix, Source Informatics, Sybase, Red Brick, Sun, and Software AG. More information about MicroStrategy can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.strategy.com/ or by calling 1-800-927-1868. -0-

DSS Agent, DSS Server, DSS Executive, DSS Architect, DSS Objects, DSS Web and DSS Partners are 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

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