Los Angeles, CaliforniaApril 22 - 23, 2008 This event has already passed. View Upcoming Symposia |
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Track 1: Reporting, Analysis & Monitoring
In these introductory sessions, end users and BI project managers will learn how to leverage MicroStrategy to satisfy the unique requirements of different end user communities and business intelligence applications. Through business-focused case studies, attendees will learn how to use MicroStrategy to report, analyze, and monitor their data. Session 1 – Business Intelligence for the Mobile Workforce — MicroStrategy Mobile Do your executives and mobile workers demand immediate access to and interaction with relevant, timely, personalized, and secure business intelligence information on their BlackBerry® devices? Do they need disconnected access to their data? Is your IT organization struggling to reformat reports from your enterprise BI systems, especially for the small form factors presented by mobile devices? In this session, learn how MicroStrategy’s latest product offering, MicroStrategy Mobile, delivers critical BI information from your enterprise BI applications directly to mobile devices, reusing existing MicroStrategy reports. Session 2 – Monitoring Business Performance with Proactive Report Delivery and Alerts – MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server Learn how MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server can greatly extend the reach and value of your enterprise reporting application. MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server securely and efficiently distributes personalized and formatted alerts and reports in HTML, Microsoft® Excel, or PDF, through your users’ medium of choice: e-mail, networked printer, shared file server, or portal. End users or administrators can easily schedule report distributions. Session 3 – Easy Intelligence for Every Excel®, PowerPoint®, and Word® User — MicroStrategy Office Would you like to “have it all” without leaving your favorite Microsoft Office application? Now every Microsoft Office user can run, edit, and format any MicroStrategy report directly from within Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Microsoft files can become live repositories of corporate data, continually linked back to the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform. See how easy it is – with one click – to refresh data across all reports from the simple MicroStrategy Office toolbar via your favorite Microsoft application. We will review and demonstrate a variety of usage scenarios, including customizing presentations and performing offline analysis with MicroStrategy Office. Session 4 – Popular Extensions and Customizations to the MicroStrategy BI Platform — MicroStrategy SDK MicroStrategy customers and partners have extended MicroStrategy BI functionality and integrated it with other IT systems. This session delivers a comprehensive look at a wide range of examples of customizations and extensions possible using the MicroStrategy SDK. Common examples include straight forward look-and-feel changes, advanced visualization, and incorporating write-back workflows. Session 5 – Creating Advanced Information Delivery Applications Using MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server offers customers a robust architecture to build applications that proactively send information to end users via e-mail, printers, and file servers. In this session, you will learn techniques for building such sophisticated applications, including dynamic recipient personalization, automatic slicing of data based on user profiles, and output device configuration. Session 6 – BI Solutions for Cube Databases — SAP® BI, Microsoft Analysis Services™, and Hyperion® Essbase™ Learn how to build MicroStrategy business intelligence applications that use SAP BI, Microsoft Analysis Services, and Hyperion Essbase as data sources. See and experience how business users can use MicroStrategy’s functionality for reporting and analysis against multidimensional data sources. Learn how users can join data from multiple data sources and create reports against these sources over the Web. Session 7 – Data Mining and Advanced Analysis for Your BI Applications As more organizations leverage their enterprise data to optimize decision making, the ability to use advanced analytics has become a requirement in order to remain competitive. MicroStrategy includes a rich set of out-of-the-box analytical capabilities that companies use to improve business performance. Everyone from "analytical amateurs" to "rocket scientists" can take advantage of techniques that turn sophisticated analysis into competitive advantage. Come and learn more about how you use MicroStrategy analytics in your BI applications. Session 8 – Taking Advantage of 64-bit Business Intelligence Discover the performance of 64-bit business intelligence. This session will answer all the important questions: What are the benefits? Where (on which hardware platform) is it supported? Why do I need it? When should I consider upgrading? How does it perform? Where can I find out more? In short, you will learn everything you need to determine whether MicroStrategy Universal Edition is for you.
Track 2: Dashboarding and Advanced Visualizations
Power users and report developers learn tips and techniques in this track for creating Pixel Perfect™ enterprise reports, dashboards, and scorecards with MicroStrategy. Through demonstrations and examples, attendees will learn how to build dynamic dashboards, banded enterprise reports, and composite real-time BI applications using MicroStrategy. Session 1 – State-of-the-Art Dashboards for Managing and Monitoring Business Performance – MicroStrategy Report Services As the business environment becomes more competitive, executives are looking to business dashboards to focus the company on key metrics and analyze performance against important business goals. This presentation demonstrates how significant new enhancements to MicroStrategy’s dashboarding capabilities enable the creation of dashboards that are highly interactive, visually appealing, easy to use, and seamlessly integrated with all styles of business intelligence. Session 2 – Building Interactive Scorecards and Dashboards – MicroStrategy Report Services: Part 1 MicroStrategy provides business users a highly intuitive interface for creating all types of scorecards and dashboards. See how easy it is to build effective and visually appealing dashboards through a Web browser interface, while advanced dashboard developers will learn best practices for building dashboards and dashboard templates for deployment across the enterprise. This session will demonstrate scorecard and dashboard creation, focusing on MicroStrategy Report Services’ dynamic HTML capabilities. Session 3 – Building Interactive Enterprise Reports – MicroStrategy Report Services Learn best practices and advanced techniques for designing highly formatted enterprise reports that may span hundreds of printed pages. This session will devote time to both the end user and the report developer roles, and will include demonstrations of operational workflows via document drilling, dynamic images, and advanced usage of multiple data sets. Session 4 – Building Interactive Scorecards and Dashboards – MicroStrategy Report Services: Part 2 One of the major innovations that bring MicroStrategy’s Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards to life is the use of Adobe® Flash® for quick interactivity and advanced visualizations. This session focuses on MicroStrategy Report Services’ new Flash controls for building scorecards and dashboards. You will learn how the use of Flash allows intuitive interactions and advanced visualizations in dynamic dashboards, for online, or offline analysis. You will learn how to use advanced visualizations installed with MicroStrategy 8 Release 11 (v8.1.1), such as Interactive Stacked Area Charts, Bubble Chart, and Heatmaps to visualize data in ways beyond the standard grids and graphs. Session 5 – Building Composite Applications Using MicroStrategy and Adobe® Flex™ Builder™ Organizations often have a need to build applications spanning multiple organizational areas and departments. These applications typically integrate BI analysis and visualizations with operational components, such as order processing and real-time updates. With the popularity of Adobe Flex as well as portal technologies, customers are starting to build sophisticated composite applications that incorporate BI into their operational systems to add intelligence to the decision making process. In this session, you will learn how to create composite applications using the MicroStrategy Visualization SDK. You will also learn the different aspects of the features that typically go into a composite application. Session 6 – Building Advanced Visualizations with the MicroStrategy SDK Visualization Framework Customers and partners are starting to build Rich Internet Applications, as well as extending MicroStrategy visualizations even further using Adobe Flash/Flex Builder technology. MicroStrategy Visualization SDK in its third version provides deep integration with Adobe Flex Builder to build any type of visualizations and Rich Internet Applications possible using Flash. This allows MicroStrategy, its customers, and its partners to create new visualizations, dashboards, and even entire applications with MicroStrategy and Flash technology. Come and see for yourself how the Integrated MicroStrategy Visualization Plug-in for Flex Builder works using out-of-the-box Flex controls. The interactive behavior of these controls and the ability to easily bind data to these controls allow developers to quickly and easily build these applications. You will see a custom visualization being built live and deployed across multiple projects in MicroStrategy Web. Session 7 – Building Interactive Scorecards and Dashboards – MicroStrategy Report Services: Part 3 Building on the earlier session, Building Interactive Scorecards and Dashboards – MicroStrategy Report Services: Part 2, this session focuses on advanced visualizations such as Microcharts, Weighted List Viewer, Graph Matrices, and Media widget. These visualizations showcase the extensibility of the advanced visualization library. Learn how these widgets can be used to incorporate highly compact views of large volumes of data, media, and RSS feeds into dashboards. You will also see examples of custom widgets, and learn how such visualizations can be added to the advanced visualization library. Session 8 – Tips and Techniques for Optimizing Dashboard Development Optimal report design minimizes the number of dashboards needed to support user requirements. This session will focus on optimizing Report Services dashboard development to address this need. Learn how to follow efficient design processes that leverage reusable objects and formats, such as document templates, grid and graph styles, and default formatting properties. Learn how to avoid some common mistakes and use features which further streamline the report development process.
Track 3: Optimization and Administration
BI applications are increasingly becoming mission-critical and require data integrity, high uptime, and fast response times. MicroStrategy administrators will learn how to integrate MicroStrategy into existing IT environments, optimize performance, and enable enterprise-scope administration. Session 1 – Advanced Techniques in Using Aggregate Tables Aggregate tables are summary tables that store data at higher levels than it was stored when the data was initially captured and saved. It provides quick access to frequently requested information, while retaining the traditional power of ROLAP to directly query the database to answer any questions. This presentation discusses the purpose of an aggregate table, how MicroStrategy Architect calculates logical table sizes, and how the MicroStrategy SQL Engine uses logical table size to select the optimal table for a query. Using real world examples, this session will highlight techniques to determine the need for aggregate tables, appropriate methods to create them, and several factors to consider while building them. Session 2 – Using MicroStrategy in Corporate Portals Enterprise Portals have become a key IT initiative for organizations to build and deploy critical BI information as well as for building composite portal applications. Learn how MicroStrategy BI Portlets work through corporate portals such as IBM WebSphere, Microsoft SharePoint, BEA WebLogic, or SAP Portal. See and experience how all the MicroStrategy functionality, including interactive drag-and-drop and right-click menus, seamlessly carries through and expresses itself in these widely adopted corporate portals and how we leverage the collaborative and personalization capabilities of the portal. Session 3 – Customer Segmentation and Cohort Analysis Using Data Marts and Advanced Metrics Cohort analysis is an advanced analysis technique wherein a group of customers are evaluated over time. This style of analysis is commonly used in customer retention and promotion/response studies. Cohort analysis differs from normal trend analysis in that the same set of customers is represented across time periods. This presentation demonstrates how to use a combination of data marts and advanced metrics in MicroStrategy to achieve cohort analysis efficiently and effectively. Several real business examples will also be discussed. Session 4 – Ensuring Data and Report Integrity in Your BI Environment — MicroStrategy Integrity Manager Verify data and report integrity after making changes that impact your data warehouse and BI environment. Automated report integrity checking provides confirmation that warehouse data integrity is not breached by ETL or functions run against warehouse tables. In addition, automated comparison of report data, SQL, and graphs allows administrators to efficiently verify object migration and software upgrade success, further verifying data and report integrity after any change to the environment. Session 5 – Comprehensive Administration for Enterprise BI Environments MicroStrategy Administrator consists of three tools that help BI administrators optimize their environment. In this session, discover how MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager allows administrators to monitor their system and fully analyze statistics collected about objects, reports, and user sessions. Also in this session, learn how to control and manage change between development, testing, and production environments using MicroStrategy Object Manager. In addition, find out how to perform bulk administration and automatic tuning using command lines and scripts with MicroStrategy Command Manager. Session 6 – Designing Reports and Queries Using Freeform SQL and a Graphical Query Builder MicroStrategy Desktop includes two ad hoc query tools that allow users to report against data that does not exist in the data warehouse, data from non-optimized operational schema, or any other data source that has not necessarily been modeled through MicroStrategy Architect. This session will explore the capabilities of these two tools, Query Builder and Freeform SQL Editor, including joining, mapping of attributes and metrics, and other features. Session 7 – Create Automated Data Integrity Alerts Using MicroStrategy Integrity Manager and MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server Regular changes to the BI ecosystem can impact the business users’ report data in deliberate and yet unforeseen ways. Integrity Manager automates the comparison of the latest report data verses comparative BI application data, providing users with assurance in the data’s integrity. Learn how to design Integrity Manager tests to be run periodically (e.g., after WH changes such as WH Loads, ETL Scripts, Aggregation, Degradation, etc.) and discover how to incorporate MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server functionality to send the test results via e-mail, alerting the administrator only when errors or mismatched data are discovered. Session 8 – Taming Complex Data Modeling Challenges Using Logical Views As every BI developer knows, the database schema for BI applications is not always well-suited for every type of reporting. The "Logical Views" functionality in MicroStrategy 8 allows application architects to create any desired view using MicroStrategy, without DBA involvement. This allows developers to model attributes and facts whose expressions span multiple tables, flatten non-optimal ragged and recursive hierarchies, and solve other complex data modeling challenges.
Track 4: Industry Best Practices: Deployment Strategies and Solutions
Successful companies in every industry are improving their business operations with better business decisions when they use MicroStrategy for a variety of reporting, analysis, and business monitoring solutions. Learn how leading companies developed their BI strategies, successfully deployed multiple projects across their enterprises, and achieved return on their BI investment. Session 1 – Shopping.com: Leveraging MicroStrategy Web to Empower Office Excel Users Shopping.com, an eBay company, partnered with MicroStrategy to develop integration between MicroStrategy Web and MicroStrategy Office. Hear how Shopping.com leveraged this customization to successfully migrate from cube MOLAP technology to MicroStrategy’s ROLAP capabilities, and increased productivity across Shopping.com’s knowledge workers. Learn how Shopping.com’s BI solution allows its Excel users to execute, edit, and safely share Excel reports and dashboards. Shopping.com, an eBay company, pioneered online comparison shopping and today is one of the fastest growing shopping destinations for a comprehensive set of products from thousands of trusted stores from across the Web. Session 2 – GUESS?, Inc.: Building and Deploying a Real-World MicroStrategy Mobile Application Hear how GUESS?, Inc. built and deployed MicroStrategy Mobile to deliver data to its executives and field users via BlackBerry devices. Learn how the BI application has benefited GUESS?, Inc. business users and increased the role of BI throughout the company. This session will showcase a live demonstration of the mobile application and will include a “Mobile Action” plan, outlining 10 steps to quickly deploy a mobile application, as well as lessons learned and best practices for a BI mobile deployment. Founded in Los Angeles in 1981, GUESS?, Inc. designs, markets, distributes, and licenses a lifestyle collection of contemporary apparel, denim, handbags, watches, footwear, and other related consumer products. GUESS?, Inc. is a $1.7 billion global brand with 373 retail stores in North America and 579 freestanding stores worldwide, including 302 in Asia, 241 in Europe and the Middle East, and 36 in Latin America. Session 3 – Visual Crossing: Using Visual Crossing Map Services to Deliver Interactive Mapping Analysis Learn how Visual Crossing Map Services enables end users to gain greater insight into their MicroStrategy data by using geographical maps and other visualizations, time-based animations, and map-enabled interactive dashboards delivered through MicroStrategy Web and MicroStrategy Narrowcast Server. This presentation will include examples and demonstrations of common visualization use-cases. Visual Crossing’s industry-leading visualization product provides fully interactive maps, planograms, and other visualizations for MicroStrategy reports, dashboards, documents, and Narrowcast Server, including drilling, page-by, and OLAP Services. Session 4 – DataFactZ: Change Management Analytics – Managing BI Changes in a High-Paced MicroStrategy Environment Discover a product that offers an alternative to the challenges of managing BI changes in a large-scale MicroStrategy implementation. Learn how to maximize productivity by effectively managing business demands and resource workload. Realize IT BI with built-in best practices for MicroStrategy development and configuration management. Slice and dice your resource efforts to create a view into your BI investment dollars. DataFactZ is a professional services company that provides consulting and implementation expertise to solve the complex data issues facing many organizations in the modern business environment. Session 5 – Con-way Freight: Using MicroStrategy BI to Drive Revenues and Business Performance Con-way Freight is a FORTUNE 500 company, moving millions of pounds of less-than-truckload freight everyday. Hear how Con-way Freight implemented a MicroStrategy-based self-service application to gain important insights into its business to improve financial and service performance. Learn how MicroStrategy is being rapidly rolled out throughout all functions of the business. With direct BI insight, Con-way Freight has been able to employ more inspectors to identify and correct errors in freight classifications, resulting in increased revenues and additional business benefits for the company. Con-way Inc. is a $4.7 billion freight transportation and logistics services company headquartered in San Mateo, CA. Named FORTUNE magazine’s “Most Admired Company” in transportation and logistics for 2007, Con-way delivers industry-leading services through primary operating companies Con-way Freight, CFI, and Con-way Truckload and Menlo Logistics. Session 6 – Nygård International: Using MicroStrategy Mobile to Deliver BI to BlackBerry Smartphones Hear about Nygård’s beta experience with MicroStrategy Mobile, and how it plans to use MicroStrategy’s latest technology offering for a large deployment all the way up to the CEO. Learn how its mobile business users will leverage MicroStrategy Mobile to run reports and dashboards directly on their BlackBerry smartphones, without reformatting or modifying the reports. Nygård will discuss its various mobile applications in development, present the timeline for its BlackBerry migration, showcase sample reports, and address the synergy between Nygård and MicroStrategy. Nygård International is a leading apparel manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer in North America. NYGÅRD has seven product lines and a retail division that consists of more than 200 stores in North America under the banners NYGÅRD, NYGÅRD Fashion Park, NYGÅRD Fashion World, ALIA, TanJay, and Jay Set. NYGÅRD employs approximately 2,600 employees worldwide. Session 7 – iOLAP: Executive Dashboards – Best Practices for Design and Rapid Development This session will discuss best practices for design and development of MicroStrategy 8.1 dynamic dashboards. Topics include performance considerations, team composition, interface design, deployment options, and the benefits of rapid prototyping. FORTUNE 1000, mid-cap, and high-growth technology organizations around the world use business intelligence solutions from iOLAP. Session 8 – Carpio Solutions: Planning Across the Enterprise - An Overview of Financial Planning Integrated with Business Intelligence Corporate Performance Management and Financial Planning are increasingly becoming mission-critical to the success of organizations as they leverage the full power of BI solutions. Carpio Solutions, a global MicroStrategy partner, will present its GesFin Panning Suite for MicroStrategy. The GesFin Planning application enables organizations to measure, analyze, and simulate the economic impact of events on financial performance. GesFin will optimize and centralize the complex processes associated with budgeting, planning, forecasting, consolidation, monitoring, and reporting. This presentation will demonstrate how the GesFin Planning Suite, integrated with the MicroStrategy BI Platform, can deliver better financial management of the business. Carpio Solutions is a Pan American IT solutions company focused on helping customers improve operational and financial efficiencies by offering superior technology solutions through proprietary software products and services.
Registration & Terms and Conditions Each Full Conference Registration Fee includes:
Conference Policies: Mutual Non-Dislosure Agreement (NDA) Policy MicroStrategy Symposium Series features information on upcoming product releases, product strategy and other proprietary information. You are required to have an executed Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) on file in order to be admitted to the event. Conference Payment Policy Please contact customer service at 703.848.8787 or email symposium@microstrategy.com with questions or if you need information regarding the MicroStrategy Symposium. Conference Confirmation Policy Registration will not be confirmed until full payment has been received. Please contact customer service at 703.848.8787 or via email at symposium@microstrategy.com with questions. Conference Cancellation Policy Conference cancellation requests must be submitted in writing on company letterhead and received by March 10, 2008. All cancellation requests will be subject to a $ 199 service charge. Cancellation requests received after March 10, 2008 or no-shows are subject to the full registration fee. All refunds will be issued after the conference. Please fax all written cancellation requests to 703.852.7157. Paying by Company Check If you wish to pay by check, please send check (payable to “MicroStrategy”) in USD funds drawn from an American bank to: MicroStrategy Services Corporation, PO Box 409671, Atlanta, GA 30384-9671. Please be sure to reference your name and confirmation number on the check. Paying by Invoice An invoice will be sent via mail. Once the invoice is received please send payment along with a copy of the invoice to MicroStrategy Services Corporation, PO Box 409671, Atlanta, GA 30384-9671. Paying by Credit Card The Web server will generate an interim acknowledgement, containing a Reference Number for your records. You will receive final confirmation once your credit card is processed and payment is complete. Conference Substitution Policy Substitutions for the conference will be allowed at any time. Substitutes must work for the same company as the original registrant and payment information must stay the same. Substitutions are not valid for existing conference registrations. Please contact customer service at 703.848.8787 or email symposium@microstrategy.com for more information. |
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