OLAP vendors have spent the past decade figuring out better ways for companies to learn about their customers. The next stage may turn out to be building tools that help customers do a better job of using their suppliers. Pushing OLAP out to the customer is a key focus of the latest products announced by MicroStrategy, the Vienna, Virginia developer of the DSS range of data warehousing tools. Version 5.6 of DSS Agent, MicroStrategies Microsoft Windows interface tool, introduces new report wizards: metadata documentation that allows users to track progress of their queries; support for Japanese language; enhanced performance; and better integration with third party products.
The company claims that these enhancements should make the products a better fit with customer-facing, or at least end-user facing systems. They are billed as the first phase of DSS Agent’s evolution to become an e-busines development tool, and promises to deliver business intelligence via Windows, web and wireless interfaces.
In fact the wireless element of MicroStrategy’s OLAP for the masses approach will only really start to take shape with the delivery of version 5.5 of DSS Broadcaster. This query-answer push utility has so far been adapted to feeding information alerts to remote users via pagers and STML-based email vehicles. With the latest version it acquires XML and HTML support, which suggests MicroStrategy is eyeing the nascent market for wireless internet devices (WIDs) although, surprisingly, when questioned, the company appeared not to know what the wireless application protocol (WAP) is, or what it does.
