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MicroStrategy Execs: HyperIntelligence Momentum Continued in Q3

MicroStrategy continued to see strong demand for its HyperIntelligence advanced “zero-click” analytics and MicroStrategy Cloud offerings in the third quarter (ended Sept. 30), according to company executives.

The company’s Q3 resultsreflect the positive impacts from our new product introductions and improvements in our go-to-market and demand generation efforts,” CFO and COO Phong Le said Oct. 29 on an earnings call. “In particular, we continue to be pleased with the results we have seen from MicroStrategy 2019 HyperIntelligence and our MicroStrategy Cloud offerings,” he told analysts.

In Q3, MicroStrategy “closed about 40 HyperIntelligence deals, which brings us to about 120 since the launch of the product 10 months ago,” he said, noting “major wins” on the customer front included Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, Freddie Mac and Skechers. “We believe this diverse list reflects the significant interest of organizations across industries and driving 100 percent adoption of analytics around enterprise using Zero-Click Intelligence with existing productivity tools and workflows,” he said.

The increased number of customer wins reflected the fact that the “combination of powerful analytics and ease of use offered by HyperIntelligence is resonating with prospective customers,” he told analysts. He also reminded them that for customers to take advantage of HyperIntelligence, the must first upgrade to the latest version of the firm’s platform, MicroStrategy 2019.

Through the end of Q3, “more than 500 customers have already upgraded to MicroStrategy 2019, and we have a targeted program in place to facilitate upgrading most remaining enterprise customers over the next few quarters,” he told analysts.

MicroStrategy is also “seeing increased customer interest in our cloud offerings,” he went on to say. Earlier this year, the company reintroduced its cloud platform, which is now available through Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, he said. The company also “revamped our marketing and sales approach for our cloud offering, which is helping to drive demand,” he said, adding: “We believe the analytics market is just beginning to embrace cloud solutions and that the growing adoption of next-generation cloud data warehouse solutions is a positive catalyst.”

Although MicroStrategy expects a “meaningful portion of the data analytics market is years away from embracing a cloud offering,” MicroStrategy was “increasingly optimistic that cloud adoption will become a significant growth driver for us,” he said.

Meanwhile, new regulations, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), are “leading to additional contract and complexity in approval cycles,” he said. “As we and the enterprises we serve gain great experience in handling the impact of these new regulations on the deal cycle, we expect these challenges to lessen,” he told analysts.

Le also noted that the company’s CFO search was completed and it selected EverFi CFO to join MicroStrategy in that role, effective Nov. 4. At that point, Le will focus on his COO, sales and services responsibilities, he said.

Shifting back to HyperIntelligence, Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy CEO, chairman and president, said that’s a “really a critical development for us as we go into 2020.” Despite releasing the product in 2019, “we couldn’t be quite sure how consequential it would be, because at the end of the day, everything is reflected in the eyes of the customer,” he conceded

But “we’re seeing extraordinary uptake on HyperIntelligence offering, and beyond the 120 deals we’ve seen this year, we’re seeing hundreds of projects initiated in our customer base to deploy HyperIntelligence,” he said, adding: “We’re going to be leading with HyperIntelligence in the coming year. It is the compelling differentiating message and it’s a differentiating technology offering that MicroStrategy has. Our competitors haven’t even attempted to copy it. They haven’t copied the message, they haven’t copied the underlying product, and so that gives us some open market running room for a while. What’s really exciting about HyperIntelligence, not just the theoretical benefits of the technology, [is] the idea you can do something 100 times faster on zero clicks.”

He went on to predict MicroStrategy 2020 “will be the leading modern open analytics platform” next year and “we’re offering the marketplace a choice between AWS and Azure, between on-premise and cloud, between Linux or Windows, between iOS or Android, between Oracle SAP or Salesforce ERP suites.”