Encompassing Financial & Sales Analysis, Reporting & Information Delivery

McLean, Va., (August 12, 2003) –

MicroStrategy® Incorporated (NASDAQ: MSTR), a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence software, today announced that Charming Shoppes, Inc. has deployed the MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(tm) enterprise-wide, deploying it in a wide range of its operations. Charming Shoppes is the largest plus-size specialty women’s apparel retailer in America, with over 2,240 stores nationwide.

Charming Shoppes extensive use of the MicroStrategy platform generates daily and weekly reports on an array of company activity. These highly detailed reports encompass merchandise sales and inventory analysis; assessments of the history of customer traffic in and out of stores; analysis of point-of-sales transaction details and promotion history; evaluations of transaction and promotion history for identified customers; HR/payroll reviews of store payroll hours and budget data; and analysis of accounts payable, the general ledger and fixed asset information.

These applications, run against a 1.5 terabyte Teradata data warehouse, involve each division headquarters and store operations’ field office and over 800 Charming Shoppes employees, a number that is expected to grow.

“We’ve made MicroStrategy our business-wide standard because it has fully met our wish list requirements,” said Charming Shoppes’ project manager Jack Dougherty. “MicroStrategy provides a true enterprise reporting solution, it’s easy to use and flexible, 100-percent Web-based, highly scalable for large databases and offers powerful analytics and robust security. With MicroStrategy’s superior technology, we’re obtaining more valuable insight into nearly all aspects of our business, making more proactive decisions and being a more customer-responsive company.”

About Charming Shoppes, Inc.

Charming Shoppes, Inc. is a family of retail apparel companies serving the fashion needs of women in her many roles and lifestyles. Charming Shoppes is the largest plus-size specialty women’s apparel retailer in America, with 2,240 stores nationwide. The company offers a variety of fashion choices by expanding its family of brands that cater to this diverse customer group. Charming Shoppes serves the plus-size woman through three distinct brands: Lane Bryant®, Fashion Bug® (including Fashion Bug Plus®) and Catherine’s Plus Sizes®. Through varied fashion concepts, the company offers budget to moderate price points, classic to trendy fashion tastes and mall, strip center and e-commerce shopping venues for a wide range of ethnically diverse women. The company also serves the fashion apparel needs of the misses and junior customer through its Fashion Bug brand. In addition to providing apparel, Charming Shoppes, Inc. is committed to women and their communities, addressing their issues through education and awareness. Charming Shoppes, Inc. is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol CHRS. For more information about Charming Shoppes, Inc., please visit www.charmingshoppes.com.

About MicroStrategy Incorporated

Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy is a worldwide leader in the increasingly critical business intelligence software market. Leading Fortune 2000 companies are integrating MicroStrategy’s industrial-strength software into virtually all facets of their businesses. The MicroStrategy Business Intelligence Platform(TM) distills vast amounts of data into vital, probing insight to help drive cost-efficiency, productivity, customer relations and revenue-generation. MicroStrategy offers exceptional capabilities — excellent scalability, powerful analytics, user-friendly query and reporting features and an outstanding, easy-to-use Web interface. Top companies are using MicroStrategy to cost-effectively harness large, multi-terabyte databases; empower thousands of employees at all operational levels; and extend the benefits of business intelligence enterprise-wide and beyond to customers, partners and suppliers.

MicroStrategy has over 2,200 enterprise-class customers, including General Motors, Best Buy, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, Yahoo!, Visa International, Wells Fargo, Telecom Italia, AT&T Wireless Group and Aventis. MicroStrategy also has relationships with over 500 systems integrators and application development and platform partners, including IBM, PeopleSoft, Sun, and JD Edwards. MicroStrategy is listed on Nasdaq under the symbol MSTR. For more information or to purchase or demo MicroStrategy’s software, visit MicroStrategy’s Web site at www.microstrategy.com.

This press release may include statements that may constitute “forward-looking statements,” including its estimates of future business prospects or financial results and statements containing the words “believe,” “estimate,” “project,” “expect” or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results of MicroStrategy Incorporated and its subsidiaries (collectively, the “Company”) to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that could contribute to such differences include: the Company’s ability to secure financing for its current operations and long-term plans on acceptable terms; the ability of the Company to implement and achieve widespread customer acceptance of its MicroStrategy 7i software on a timely basis; the Company’s ability to recognize deferred revenue through delivery of products or satisfactory performance of services; continued acceptance of the Company’s products in the marketplace; the timing of significant orders; delays in the Company’s ability to develop or ship new products; market acceptance of new products; competitive factors; general economic conditions; currency fluctuations; and other risks detailed in the Company’s registration statements and periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward-looking statements, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release.

MicroStrategy is a registered trademark of MicroStrategy Incorporated in the United States and certain other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Marc Brailov
MicroStrategy Incorporated
(703) 770-1670
mbrailov@microstrategy.com

Source: MicroStrategy