MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4 CTO Newsletter

Dear MicroStrategy Customer,

2021 has very nearly come and gone, and we are in full swing getting ready for our annual global customer conference, MicroStrategy World 2022. Once again, the event will be fully virtual and free of charge — and this year we are packing the agenda with incredible customer success stories from every industry, demonstrations and workshops for all the latest functionality, and expert 3rd party perspectives on how top companies have used analytics in 2021. We really hope to see everyone there — you can get more information and register over at microstrategy.com.

If you have not upgraded to our most current software release, now is the right time. Not only will you get access to the latest capabilities, but you’ll be well positioned to take advantage of a faster and more seamless upgrade experience moving forward. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of deploying the latest version of the MicroStrategy platform. With the appearance of the Apache Log4j vulnerabilities, we were reminded of how potentially devastating threats can quickly appear.

I’m incredibly proud of the MicroStrategy team’s response to this threat. Upon being informed, the development and security teams immediately sprang into action to deliver and deploy mitigation actions for all customers on the MicroStrategy Cloud. We also quickly communicated to our on-premises customers the steps they could take to protect themselves and their analytics infrastructure. Please follow along here to stay up to date with our response.

On Friday, December 17th we released MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, with comprehensive fixes for the critical vulnerabilities found in Log4j (CVE-2021–44228) on December 9th and (CVE-2021–45046) on December 14th. In MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4 all our products have been successfully upgraded to version 2.16.0 of Log4j that was released on 12/13, mitigating by default the capability to exploit this library.

MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4 is now available on MicroStrategy Cloud, as well as for download to on-prem deployments. In addition to the Log4j security fix, this release contains enhancements to the latest version of our platform. Let me share some of my favorite features from this update and the past year:

Library and Applications

With this release, we have completely reimagined and revamped the viewing experience. MicroStrategy Library has new features that will change the way you view data and discover insights across your organization:

• Administrators can now design and deploy fully customized Library applications from Workstation, with no coding required. Define available options, set user permission, and enable secure, unique experience based on user requirements.
• Analysts can now edit or create new Dossiers with the Edit Mode option in Library and in the MicroStrategy Application, and seamlessly return to View Mode with the click of a button.
• All users can now easily undo or redo actions while interacting with Dossiers in MicroStrategy Library.

With MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, end users can now create and manage subscriptions,
making it easier than ever to keep track of scheduled content. All users can now subscribe to Dossier content in PDF or Excel format and schedule automatic deliveries for timely insights.

Administrators and Architects Workflows in Workstation

With the latest release of Workstation, we have added more capabilities for the architects to allow them to take advantage of the schema layer and reusability between objects to enable them to implement their analytics solutions efficiently. We also added more features for the administrators, so they are on top of everything that happens in their environment and act on it.

• Architects can model their schema from the same interface. They can import the tables or define the query to pull the data into the schema, define the attributes and facts that will be the basis for other objects, and establish relationships and cardinality between attributes by creating hierarchies.
• Architects can also create multiple objects to tailor the content for the end-users. They can generate filtering criteria using filters and prompts that will be reusable across the platform. They can also create new objects using the existing attributes based on derived elements or consolidations.
• Administrators can monitor their environments and compare settings or use the monitors to ensure that everything is working as expected. With the new job monitor, administrators will understand the running jobs and identify the long-running or troubleshoot failed jobs.
• To distribute content, administrators can rely on subscriptions. They can trigger a schedule-based or an event-based subscription and decide what content and format will be attached to the email. If the content is meant to be consumed in Library, they can schedule the execution beforehand, so the end-user does not have to wait for it to execute.
• Security is a massive part of administrative tasks. An administrator can configure enterprise security in Workstation by configuring the LDAP directory services, OIDC, or SAML. They can also manage the users and define their roles, row-level security by using security filters, defining user groups to inherit privileges, and more.
• Finally, we have integrated a Python Script Editor in Workstation to empower administrators to leverage our mstrio packages and sample outlines that will ensure they can automate their administrative tasks.

Dossier Authoring

• New for MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, notice an automatic pin drop after searching for a location on a Geospatial Service visualization so you can easily interact with the selectors to discover what points of interest are within range.
• New in MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, build information windows to create contextual popups right from the authoring experience in Library. Watch the video below to see some creative use cases and learn how to build!
• 5 new visualizations unlock meaningful ways to explore your data including Modern Grid, Sankey, Time Series, Multi-Metric KPI, and Comparison KPI.
• Panel stacks offer multiple views for the user to interact with their data.
• Flexible formatting with a modern, intuitive format panel and new options like nested labels and bar chart label positioning.

Data Gateways

• New in MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, we have updated our OOTB Teradata drivers and certified Teradata 17.10.
• With a priority on supporting cloud data sources, we unveiled our brand-new Cloud Object Connector at the beginning of 2021 to provide optimized connectivity to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure ADLS2.
• We also added brand new connectors for Azure SQL Managed Instance (private Microsoft cloud), SAP BW, SAP ECC, FinancialForce, ServiceMax, Veeva, Google Cloud Spanner, and Databricks in 2021. We also worked closely with our SAP partners to ensure that we are SAP certified for both SAP on-prem and SAP cloud making us the first BI vendor to be certified on SAP cloud.
• With an emphasis on enabling users to bring their own credentials, we have expanded our authentication portfolio by supporting workflows such as Azure Active Directory SSO with SAML or OIDC tokens, Snowflake ADFS integrations to support OAuth workflows, and enabling users to upload their Oracle Cloud Wallet credential files, in order to connect to Oracle Cloud environments.
• In the last 4 quarters, we pushed down DateTime, Percentile, and Case/CaseV operations for all of our diamond and platinum gateways.

Embedded

As a leader in Embedded Analytics, we always strive to provide seamless integration with our customers’ portals. Our Embedding SDK provides full interactivity between the MicroStrategy content and the Embedding Portal:

• New in MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, and as part of our Dossier authoring experience through library, we added the flexibility to control this experience through our Embedding SDK. Customers are able to control which mode the Dossier renders in, either consumption or authoring mode, switch between modes programmatically, as well as controlling which buttons, toolbars, and panel are available to the users in authoring mode.
• Earlier this year, we added several features, including the ability to control attribute and metric selectors, in-canvas filter selectors as well as filter panel values from the embedding portal. With the introduction of panel stacks in Dossiers, we provided the capability to control panels and panel selectors through the embedding SDK. We also provided a way to embed specific visualizations in a maximized mode to highlight specific information to their users.
• Speaking of Embedded Analytics, I am also pleased to announce that this December, we are releasing a preview of our newly revamped MicroStrategy Embedding SDK Playground to our developer community, making easier than ever to embed MicroStrategy content into your custom applications and websites. The playground includes a whole host of examples for different workflows, and it will also allow you to directly manipulate your own Dossiers as well as generate the code needed for embedding. Check it out here, and let us know what you think!

Cloud

MicroStrategy Cloud gives you all of the powerful capabilities of our industry-leading business analytics tool without needing to worry about patching, maintaining, or scaling the underlying environment. Our proven migration process is optimized to bring you to the cloud seamlessly with ongoing improvements and automation enhancements to move on-premise customers into MicroStrategy Cloud. During 2021 we expanded our capabilities, including:

• We’ve extended our ability to automatically backup and restore on-premise environments by supporting the Windows operating system and multiple database systems including Oracle and SQL Server.
• We’ve reduced the time required for these automatic restorations by 33% to drive better time-to-value for customers adopting MicroStrategy Cloud.
• We continually offer new self-service administration capabilities and modernize our cloud infrastructure, so customers maintain all the flexibility, scalability, and upgradeability of moving to the cloud.
• Throughout the year, hundreds of customers have leveraged our One-Click Upgrade process to stay on the latest-and-greatest version of MicroStrategy with a single click.

And of course, the above are just highlights. You can find full documentation for each of our monthly releases this quarter, including functional, performance, and security updates, on our website.

In addition to the new MicroStrategy 2021 Update 4, I am pleased to announce that MicroStrategy 2020 Update 6 will be Generally Available on 12/19. We advise customers on the 2020 line who are unable to adopt the MicroStrategy 2021 platform to apply MicroStrategy 2020 Update 6 as it contains the latest security fixes, including the comprehensive fix for Apache Log4j. No matter what line you choose, we’re working hard to support your investment.

I would also like to inform you about an exciting improvement to our MicroStrategy Release and Support Strategy taking effect for 2022. We’ve made several advancements that make us less reliant on an annual cadence for delivering new features and optimizations to our customers. For this reason, we’re moving away from our practice of assigning a major platform release at the end of each year, in favor of continuous updates made available to customers on monthly and quarterly cycles. This allows the same functionality, security, and stability fixes to flow regularly for the entire platform, without the friction of a single major release each year.

Given these architectural improvements, instead of releasing a new 11.4 full platform version in 2022, we will continue to deliver updates on the platform release we first released one year ago, MicroStrategy 2021 (Version 11.3), beginning with our release of version 11.3.4 this December. Going forward, platform version 11.3 will serve as our long-term support line, with additional feature enhancements, security improvements, and performance optimizations delivered regularly through the end of 2024.

In closing, with 2021 coming to an end, from the whole MicroStrategy team, we wanted to send our best wishes to you and yours! I hope that 2022 holds success and brings new opportunities for us to collaborate and continue our partnership.

Best regards,

Tim Lang
Chief Technology Officer