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Altair RapidMiner vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Altair RapidMiner
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (3rd), Data Science Platforms (7th)
Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Altair RapidMiner is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 15.3%, down 19.2% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 21.4% mindshare, down 22.2% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Laurence Moseley - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good tutorials that make it easy to learn and use, with a powerful feature to compare machine learning algorithms
When I started using RapidMiner, I found it difficult to get it to read the metadata. I wanted to use, for example, a pivot table, and it did not have the variable or the attribute names in it. There were no values. It took a long while to figure out how to do that, although it tends to do it automatically nowadays. RapidMiner is not utterly intuitive for beginners. Sometimes people have trouble distinguishing between a file in their own file system and a repository entry, and they cannot find their data. This is an area where this solution could be improved. It would be helpful to have some tutorials on communicating with Python. I found it a bit difficult at times to figure out which particular variable, or attribute, is going where in Python. It is probably a simple thing to do but I haven't mastered it yet. I'd like them to do a video on that. There are a large number of videos that are usually well-produced, but I don't think that they have one on that. Essentially, I would like to see how to communicate from RapidMiner to Python and from Python to RapidMiner. One of the things I do a lot of is looking at questionnaires where people have used Likert-type scales. I don't recommend Likert-type scales, but if they're properly produced, which is a lot of hard work and it's not usually done, they're really powerful and you can do things like normalizing holes on the Likert scale. That's not the same as normalizing your data in RapidMiner. So, I would want to get results with these Likert scales, pass it through RapidMiner, do a normalization and pass back both the raw scores and the normalized scores and put in some rules, which will say if it's high on the raw score and on the normalized score and low on the standard deviation, then you can trust it.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Altair RapidMiner is easy to use and intuitive with no coding required, making it a low code tool."
"The documentation for this solution is very good, where each operator is explained with how to use it."
"The most valuable feature of RapidMiner is that it can read a large number of file formats including CSV, Excel, and in particular, SPSS."
"One of the most valuable features is the built-in data tuning feature. Once the model is built, we often struggle to increase its accuracy, but RapidMiner allows us to fine-tune variables. For Example, when working on a project, we can adjust the number of nodes or the depth of trees to see how accuracy changes. This flexibility lets us achieve higher accuracy compared to traditional automated machine-learning models"
"The most valuable feature of RapidMiner is that it is code free. It is similar to playing with Lego pieces and executing after you are finished to see the results. Additionally, it is easy to use and has interesting utilities when preparing the data. It has a utility to automatically launch a series of models and show the comparisons. When finished with the comparisons you can select the best one, and deploy it automatically."
"The GUI capabilities of the solution are excellent. Their Auto ML model provides for even non-coder data scientists to deploy a model."
"Altair RapidMiner is appreciated for its ease of use and the CRISP data mining model it supports, covering steps like data preparation, data understanding, and business understanding."
"The solution is very intuitive and powerful."
"The product is user-friendly."
"Power BI is more powerful than other tools because it is new for us. Each new version has more capabilities, and we're expecting AI and ML features in the next version."
"The stability is good."
"One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Power BI is its easy way of sharing data within the organization or outside."
"Considering that it's Microsoft, it can be integrated with the Power Platform, which is also Microsoft-based, like SharePoint, Power apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, which is the most user-friendly."
"PowerBI – Self-service BI."
"Technical support has been great."
"We have found the product to be scalable."
 

Cons

"The server product has been getting updated and continues to be better each release. When I started using RapidMiner, it was solid but not easy to set up and upgrade."
"It would be helpful to have some tutorials on communicating with Python."
"Many things in the interface look nice, but they aren't of much use to the operator. It already has lots of variables in there."
"I would like to see all users have access to all of the deep learning models, and that they can be used easily."
"One challenge I encountered while implementing RapidMiner was the lack of documentation. Since there aren't as many users, finding resources to learn the tool was initially difficult. To overcome this hurdle, I believe RapidMiner could improve by providing more tutorials tailored for new users."
"In terms of the UI and SaaS, the user interface with KNIME is more appealing than RapidMiner."
"In the Mexican or Latin American market, it's kind of pricey."
"The price of this solution should be improved."
"It is not the right tool to do deeper analysis or predictions. When you have some data and you want to do some deep analysis, there is no feature to help you with this."
"They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features."
"The solution should increase the API functionality so that we can use Microsoft Power BI for other purposes and aggregate things."
"Most of the dashboarding tools have prebuilt graphs. So, you have to stick with them, unless you are going to use a third-party tool to create them, and then you are going to upload them to the BI tool. In Power BI, they started supporting this functionality and created a tool for that, but it isn't yet complete and mature. It is still exceeding the expectations and is better than most of the BI tools when it comes to creating custom graphs, but it needs more enhancement and simplification. It would be good to have a design tool provided by Power BI to design the graphs that we want and set the figures that we want on them."
"Real-time refreshing for SAP BW would be nice. We know its on the radar for the development team at MS. ​"
"The upgrade process could be improved."
"In Microsoft Excel, you are able to have tabs. However, in Microsoft BI you do not have this flexibility."
"They can improve the user interface a little bit to make it more user-friendly. When creating a dashboard, it is not very user-friendly. You have to click on a certain style and use your keyboard keys to move it. You cannot drag and drop it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The client only has to pay the licensing costs. There are not any maintenance or hidden costs in addition to the license."
"For the university, the cost of the solution is free for the students and teachers."
"Although we don't pay licensing fees because it is being used within the university, my understanding is that the cost is between $5,000 and $10,000 USD per year."
"I used an educational license for this solution, which is available free of charge."
"I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment."
"In the beginning, the solution cost approximately $1,000 per month, we have a Microsoft startup subscription. There is a subscription pack for startups company which we are able to have for one year."
"Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions."
"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."
"I would rate them 4 out of 5 for their current pricing. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"Microsoft BI is considered to be competitively priced when compared to other similar solutions in the market."
"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"I used the tool's free version."
"We pay on a monthly basis which is approximately $10 per user on the Microsoft Power BI Pro license. At the moment we are still down at 400 users, but once we reach 500 users, we will move to the premium edition. The premium is $5,000 for unlimited users. Currently, with the 40 users, the cost is roughly $500."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
40%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about RapidMiner?
RapidMiner is a no-code machine learning tool. I can install it on my local machine and work with smaller datasets. It can also connect to databases, allowing me to build models directly on the dat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RapidMiner?
I started with a trial version. We are likely to purchase a license, which may offer additional features.
What needs improvement with RapidMiner?
Currently, I am unsure of all the AI features available in Altair RapidMiner, particularly advanced AI capabilities like neural networks and deep learning. It would be beneficial if the platform co...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, Deloitte, eBay, Cisco, Miele, Volkswagen
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
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