MicroStrategy, a provider of business intelligence (BI) software, is introducing Gateway for Facebook, a new cloud-based service that can interconnect enterprise IT environments and enterprise applications with the Facebook social graph. The company also announced the general availability of MicroStrategy Cloud, a cloud-based platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
Gateway for Facebook converts the Facebook social graph data structure into a relational data structure. This makes it instantly suitable for enterprise applications like CRM, marketing, service, sales, loyalty, and mobile applications, said the company.
The new service offers bidirectional data flow so that social intelligence from Facebook can be added to enterprise applications, and enterprise applications can interact back with the social network, added the company.
Companies can leverage the two-way communication to inject social intelligence into enterprise applications and transform them into "friendly" applications.
Among the key features of Gateway are: rich data query; high efficiency query algorithms; real-time data response; and scalability.
MicroStrategy chairman and CEO Michael J. Saylor said CEOs across many industries are committing their enterprises to establishing social media strategies, but very few have a clear idea of what to do, and even fewer have the technology to carry out their vision.
Saylor said, "We believe intelligent social applications, anchored by Gateway for Facebook, will be a revolutionary new class of apps that are inherently friendly."
"As we help companies leverage the rich and continuously refreshed data generated by Facebook, we will also provide the tools that enable them to effectively engage their customers and build brand loyalty with more meaningful, personalised communications," added Saylor.
"MicroStrategy’s Gateway for Facebook is a major milestone in our company’s history as we help companies grow and monetise their customer relationships."
MicroStrategy Cloud is a cloud-based service to enable rapid, cost-effective development of business intelligence, mobile and social apps.
The company said that the service leverages hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data and scaling to hundreds of thousands of users.
MicroStrategy Cloud is takes less than 48 hours to deploy and flexible enough to support the full range of cloud use cases, from fast, flexible tactical BI solutions, to the largest implementations, said the company.
MicroStrategy Cloud makes the complete MicroStrategy BI platform available as a cloud-based service.
Subscribers have unlimited access to the full suite of MicroStrategy technology for reporting and analysis, enabling users to tap into enterprise data from their desktop or mobile device, improving insight and business decision making, said the company.
MicroStrategy Cloud combines the latest in-memory, 64-bit business intelligence technology with massively parallel, high memory database architecture. It also includes optional database services in three pre-integrated and optimised configurations to meet a range of price and performance requirements.
The company said that the MicroStrategy Cloud architecture leverages secure virtualised BI environments, data encryption, hardened network infrastructure including secure customer VLANs, and multilayer authentication and access control to secure customer information.
MicroStrategy Cloud services will be hosted from data centre facilities worldwide, said the company.
"MicroStrategy Cloud will transform the way our customers build and deploy solutions and strategic information applications," said Saylor.
"MicroStrategy is building and deploying this infrastructure so that each customer can avoid investing millions of dollars on their own hardware and human resources."
