Microstrategy in consumer mood

A bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young entrepreneur claimed last week he would topple the data warehouse edifice as he moved it into the consumer arena.

Mike Saylor, president and CEO of data warehousing company Microstrategy, said that conventional database firms could not diversify their data warehousing businesses fast enough to keep pace with the Web.

The firm is set to release a product allowing credit card companies, banks, building societies and police to patrol the mass of demographic data they already hold using a u33,000 Web front-end.

Saylor said: 'Politicians can use this product to give them a complete demographic breakdown. Decision support and data warehousing is changing because of the Web.'

The product gives a six-second access to data warehousing which, Saylor said, would be attractive to major companies such as Visa and Mastercard which could use the information to create leaner businesses.

Stewart Holness, country manager in the UK, said his division alone was set to grow 150 per cent this year.

Microstrategy already has a spate of corporate customers including Bank of America, Elizabeth Arden, Glaxo/Wellcome, Walt Disney and Spring.

Every major RDB vendor, bar Microsoft, partners with it.

Saylor said: 'We've modelled the company on Microsoft. Our company is similar, we have a tight team and this will be a multibillion area. There are only two hot spots: the Web and data warehousing.'

Saylor compared his own strategy and that of his company to that of a beaver. 'Beavers build dams,' he said. 'A beaver is easy prey for a cougar.

It looks at a stream and builds a pond. It has to engineer its own environment.'

'A beaver creates an environment for other creature like ducks, otters and fish,' he said. 'It creates a better life for a lot of other people.

If a storm comes along, all those creatures would be dead.'