64-Bit Business Intelligence

64-bit BI is Cost-Effective

“64-bit has made our life considerably easier on the maintenance side.” –AARP, American Association of Retired Persons

The vastly improved stability inherent in 64-bit BI pays for itself in reduced staffing expenses, and the ability to consolidate servers. In fact, cost savings is the number one reason mentioned by MicroStrategy customers for their move to 64-bit. Specifically, customers found that 64-bit systems enable them to significantly reduce staffing costs due to less required maintenance as compared with the outdated 32-bit systems. In addition, the ability to consolidate multiple 32-bit servers onto a single 64-bit server reduced operating expenses.

MicroStrategy Universal efficiently manages the much larger memory space to improve overall performance through multi-level shared caches.

64-bit BI Delivers Highest Performance

“It will be faster. There's no mystery.” –FAMIQ, Argentina’s Leading Stainless Steel Manufacturer

The expanded computing resources of a 64-bit system, particularly memory, make BI run faster.

• More addressable memory allows MicroStrategy Universal to cache far more information for quick access: database connections, application information, prompt answers, and report results.
• More addressable memory enables BI Performance accelerators. The expanded memory space in 64-bit systems can allow query processing to occur in server memory rather than on disk. Running in-memory is far faster.

MicroStrategy Universal extends the benefits of key functionality. Increased memory means more BI functionality for more users.

64-bit BI Improves Self-Service

“Upgrading to 64-bit was a no-brainer. It’s allowed us to add more users, more scorecards, more dashboards.” –Republic National Distributing Company, the second largest distributor of premium wine and spirits in the United States

Self-service empowers business people to conduct analysis quicker, take advantage of more BI functionality, and create their own reports and analysis without IT help. MicroStrategy customers state that 64-bit BI is instrumental in executing a self-service BI strategy. MicroStrategy Universal provides the ability to open up more investigative analyses, expand BI functionality, and enhance report and dashboard design capabilities to many more business users without assistance from IT.

MicroStrategy software installations are increasingly moving to 64-bit BI.

64-bit BI is Mainstream

“64-bit BI is here to stay.” –FAMIQ

Once considered an architecture reserved for high-end computing, 64-bit systems are widely in use, from supercomputers to servers to laptops. Today, the 64-bit computing market is mature, with the cost, availability, and operability of 64-bit systems obsolescing 32-bit computing.

• All hardware is now 64-bit by default
• Server operating systems are standardizing on 64-bit

MicroStrategy Universal has a field-proven track record, having been fully compiled to 64-bit since 2004. Today, the mainstream of MicroStrategy Customers is moving to 64-bit. Customer research found that 41% of installations are already using MicroStrategy Universal and the pace of the move is accelerating, growing from just a 5% share in 2005 to a 41% share as of Oct 1, 2009.

Moving to 64-bit BI is Straightforward

“We would prepare our new [MicroStrategy Universal] servers during the week and perform the upgrades over the weekend. Business users arriving on Monday noted faster performance, and that was it.” –Lowe’s, on their move to MicroStrategy Universal

MicroStrategy Universal was designed organically to ensure a seamless migration to 64-bit BI. Once MicroStrategy Universal is installed, it simply needs to be pointed to the existing metadata and all reports and dashboards are immediately ready for use. MicroStrategy also includes a regression testing product, MicroStrategy Integrity Manager, which can automate the testing process to ensure a smooth and quick upgrade to 64-bit BI.

MicroStrategy Universal can tap into the virtually unlimited address space available to 64-bit systems, for unparalleled performance and greater stability

64-bit Computing is Here for the Long Term

“The future holds a lot more opportunity for us now.” –Jatin Shah, AutoTrader.com

64-bit computing is transforming unstable and increasingly expensive to maintain 32-bit computing applications into robust, cost effective, high performance applications. For MicroStrategy customers, 64-bit is now a valuable, mature technology that allows them to react more quickly to changes in the business and market conditions.

Considering the fact that current 64-bit systems can access less than 1% of the theoretical memory maximum, it is reasonable to conclude that 64-bit systems represent a safe computing investment well into the future.