March 4, 2016

Six Degrees at MicroStrategy World

By

Theta

MicroStrategy users gather annually for a global user conference, this year in Miami Beach in early February. Theta attended as an exhibitor, to showcase Six Degrees and VeraciData to the 1,600 delegates who attended the event.

Gary and I had the opportunity to experience Air New Zealand's new nonstop service between Auckland and Houston, which placed us just a short 2 hour flight from Miami. If you are heading for the eastern seaboard of the US, this is definitely the way to go!


The Miami Convention Centre is huge, easily able to accommodate the 2000 seat theatre for the general keynote sessions, and the 15 tracks of sessions that followed on each day. The exhibitors area was well situated close to the theatre, and our stand (or booth in US parlance) was close by the MicroStrategy stand.

We had a steady flow of visitors throughout the event, both from delegates and our current and prospective partners. The latest release of Six Degrees was well received, in some cases with a few “Can you really do that?” and “This is what we need” thrown in during the demonstrations.

The reaction to the new functionality delivering predictive analytics and intelligent forecasting was even more enthusiastic than I had expected. We have a very definite and specific edge on most if not all of our competitors, and our implementation seems to be exactly what is required given the reactions and responses from the delegates.

We left Miami after 2½ full days of time and interaction with a lot of people, 5 or 6 strong sales opportunities in our back pocket which are being pursued in conjunction with our US partners, and a couple of possible new partners which will broaden our penetration. We also gained agreement from MicroStrategy to give us the opportunity to promote Six Degrees to the US pre sales engineers as part of their ongoing education program, which will help a great deal in driving new opportunities for us and our partners.

And of course it was great to hear about all the latest MicroStrategy news and developments – including what’s coming up in MicroStrategy 10.3, due to be released later this month.


Peter Hanley is Head of Six Degrees, Theta's own enterprise financial planning software built on the MicroStrategy platform. He is an evangelist for the improved management and real business benefits that can be gained through the use of business intelligence with integrated enterprise planning and forecasting.