Free MicroStrategy – Clarifications Anyone?
Had an interesting question via email:
I’m a MSTR professional almost for 7 years. I’d wonder if you know the details regarding the new free reporting suite of microstrategy for the ninth version, or if you’ve been involved in some implementation.
I have some questions but I’ve found some resilience trying to receive answers. Local distributors really don’t say much. I think because it’s free, and they have already customers with purchased mstr licenses.
Do you any experience installing the free suite in new clients or old clients? Are hotfix upgrade included?
I’m a little worried for offering something free when It really has many restrictions, like 1 CPU, hotfix, the support.
The installation was a pain, but then again I was on Vista. Otherwise, it seems pretty functional, and is a great tool to play in…but I’ve only done so as just “me”…I don’t know organizationally what the rules are restrictions are. As far as the “free” offerings, I assume that you’ll be able to upgrade yourself…however, no support outside of these sites or the forums. I don’t see you be able to call into Tech support and get someone on the phone…that’s for payin’ customers.
My assumption is they’re trying to get a shoe-in on the smaller businesses that can’t afford the full offerings of MSTR…with the supposition that when the company grows, they’ll turn to MicroStrategy to support a system they already have.
There are definitely some issues I’ve faced. For instance…say you’ve got it installed on a DualCore laptop…does that violate the terms?
Hotfix upgrades are available to MicroStrategy customers who are paying for Technical Support; please see http://www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware/learnmore/addons.asp for more information.
Reporting Suite license holders have 60 days of free access to email MicroStrategy Technical Support; please see http://www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware/learnmore/ for more information. This helps supplement the MicroStrategy Forum (https://resource.microstrategy.com/forum/) and MicroStrategy’s 24/7 Online Support.
This Information Management article helps put the Reporting Suite in a larger market context: http://www.information-management.com/blogs/MicroStrategy_free_BI_reporting-10015586-1.html
Have a look at MicroStrategy website. In particular the section about the free reporting suite (http://www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware/) will help you answer most of your questions.
You can see from the architecture that the basic stuff is free but if you want to add OLAP services or some other more advanced feature you’ll have to pay on a per user basis. That’s also true if you want to contact MicroStrategy technical support.
Regarding the “dual core question” I don’t think it violates the license agreement but I don’t think it will take advantage of it. If you add the support option to your reporting suite then you can add 2 CPUs.
The MicroStrategy licensing can be pretty complicated so maybe it’s better if you contact their sales department directly.
Hope this helps a bit.
Best Regards!
To clarify on the dual-core question…
MicroStrategy Reporting Suite can be installed on a server with multiple processors and multiple cores. But unless you have upgraded by purchasing MicroStrategy Technical Support, your MicroStrategy Reporting Suite software has an affinity to a single core. For more details, please see http://www.microstrategy.com/freereportingsoftware/learnmore/addons.asp