Belk Selects DSS Agent as Relational OLAP Tool For Accessing Multi-Hundred Gigabyte Data Warehouse.

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 1995--MicroStrategy, the largest relational on-line analytical processing (ROLAP) vendor, today announced that Belk and Leggett Stores has selected and is implementing a multi-hundred gigabyte data warehouse using DSS Agent, the industry s most powerful relational OLAP tool.

Belk and Leggett stores is one of the nation's largest retailers with approximately 280 stores in the Southeast. Belk is using DSS Agent as the Decision Support and Merchandising Analysis tool within its Inventory Management System. The Inventory Management System will improve and standardize item-level detail tracking.

DSS Agent's unique feature set provides Belk with sophisticated analysis functionality including support for OLAP calculations directly from its relational databases, intelligent agents, workflow triggers, data mining, and custom grouping. Belk anticipates that the application will provide considerable paybacks in decreased inventory costs and increased sales.

Allen Williams, Vice President at Belk said, "We chose DSS Agent because it has the most powerful OLAP functionality available on the market. With features like data surfing, alerts, complex filtering criteria, and its ability to calculate key metrics such as contribution, market share, and period-to-period comparisons, we felt it was the best tool for our analysts."

Williams continued, "With DSS Agent, we were able to deliver more analytical functionality to our users than we could with any tool currently on the market. The power that DSS Agent places in the hands of knowledge workers is tremendous. DSS Agent provides our analysts with a better understanding of information and the value of the data when they see how they can use it to impact the business."

"Belk Stores Service's selection of DSS Agent's open architecture and the product's ability to scale to hundreds of gigabytes will provide the functionality they need to meet their DSS objectives," said Sanju K. Bansal, executive vice president at MicroStrategy. "We are pleased that a retail leader like Belk has selected DSS Agent for its decision support needs. DSS Agent's ability to standardize data collection and analysis will allow Belk to perform meaningful cross-store comparisons and provide a better foundation for measuring profit margins and performance relative to the company as a whole."

About MicroStrategy, Inc.

MicroStrategy is the leading provider of relational OLAP products and services for developing and accessing enterprise data warehouses. 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 data views and relational tables, and to deliver an off-the-shelf three-tier decision support environment. MicroStrategy has the most experience in developing decision support systems on data warehouses exceeding 500 gigabytes. MicroStrategy's 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, Atlanta, Chicago, London and Barcelona. Corporate headquarters is located at 8000 Towers Crescent Drive, Vienna, VA 22182; Phone: [phone]; Fax: [phone]; Internet: [e-mail]; World Wide Web: http://www.strategy.com/.

-0- DSS Agent is a registered trademark 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; [e-mail]