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- 1 MicroStrategy, a leader in business intelligence, cloud, and data mining is the brainchild of Michael J Saylor.
- 2 Since its beginning, the company remained focused on its technological innovation and kept achieving new feats year after year.
MicroStrategy is one of the technology companies that made business intelligence (BI) truly rewarding for several organizations. Besides being a pioneer in BI, the company also provides spectacular cloud-based solutions and mobile software. In 1989, Michael J. Saylor, Sanju Bansal, and Thomas Spahr laid the foundation of MicroStrategy. It’s a public company based in Washington and Virginia with a notable clientele.
How it All Started
Michael J Saylor conceived MicroStrategy. Sanju Bansal joined him soon after its start and since then, they have been part of the company. In 1989, the idea of starting a company hit Saylor when he was working as a software consultant at DuPont. Back then, he was working on computer models that helped evaluate the future movements of the markets.
DuPont gave $250,000 startup capital along with office space in Wilmington, Delaware to kick off the enterprise. Saylor said that he got the idea of making software for data mining and business intelligence during his studies at MIT. That’s when he thought of using nonlinear mathematics and systems-dynamics theory for solving some problems in businesses.
Small Steps Towards Success
It didn’t take him plenty of time or effort to work on the practical aspects of the application. After 3 years of its launch, MicroStrategy acquired its first big client – McDonald’s. The contract was worth $10 Million which pushed the revenue by 100% between 1990 and 1996. In 1998, the company went public and is now a valuable stock for investors.
In 2000, MicroStrategy launched its research and development division which was named Alarm(dot)com which was a splendid success. However, the company has seen its share of bad days. When the dot-com bubble busted, its share prices plummeted to the tune of 62%. From $333/share, it fell down to $120/share. The same year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dragged it to court for the charges of fraud.
The stakeholders of the company along with some officers settled the case with the SEC by paying fines individually. They exonerated the company without admitting any wrongdoing and got it back on track. In 2009, MicroStrategy made a staggering $27.7 Million by selling Alarm(dot)com to a venture capital firm ABS Capital Partners. On the operational front, it kept achieving new feats one after another.
In 2010, it began developing and providing BI applications for iPhone and iPad. To facilitate the ad hoc queries and reports quickly, it introduced Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) soon afterward. In 2011, the company added a cloud-based service, MicroStrategy Cloud to its offering. In 2014, it added a new feature to its business intelligence ecosystem which was called Parallel RElational In-Memory Engine (PRIME).
Claiming New Frontiers
In 2015, MicroStrategy upgraded its services and rolled them out as MicroStrategy 10. It released another update in 2018, MicroStrategy 11. In 2019, the company started naming its updated versions after years. It released the latest version in 2020 which included the HyperIntelligence analytics tool. Recently, the company drew attention when it bought Bitcoins. It purchased Bitcoin worth $225 Million and plans to invest more in other coins and commodities. With a progressive roadmap and innovative profile, the company continues to climb new heights.
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