Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy comparison

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon QuickSight and MicroStrategy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon QuickSight vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: July 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon QuickSight vs. MicroStrategy

July 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon QuickSight is 8.2%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Unique Categories:

Reporting

3.1%

No other categories found

Embedded BI

28.6%

Featured Reviews

it_user123936

Sr Programmer Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 27, 2016

You get KPIs out of the box about the usage of your environment. The metadata tool needs to go cloud-based.

At the moment ,the metadata tool (Framework Manager) is client based, meaning, you have to install the tool itself in a workstation. You will also need any ODBC/OLDB and database drivers installed on that computer to access data and start modeling. This tool design and the way it works is already outdated. Your models can get corrupted for numerous reasons; that's why it is always good to back up and save your work. The tool does NOT support multi-user development, meaning only one developer per model is allow at any given time. You also rely on the file system all the time. A cloud-based / multi-user solution would be more than welcome. IBM Cognos and the entire suite does NOT come with any source/version control capabilities out of the box. If you made a change to a report and, for whatever reason, you want to go back to the previous iteration, you will need to restore a backup or an export; if you didn't make a backup, you will be out of luck. Same with every single object in the environment (packages, queries, security, administration, settings, etc). They also need to take more advantage of new in-memory technology, and have better integration with other visualization tools. It would be nice if we could use standard XML as a data source.

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reviewer2123349

Founder at a agriculture with 201-500 employees

Feb 12, 2024

Has efficient integration capabilities, but the stability needs improvement

The platform has a lot of limitations. We used it for two months and decided to change to another product They could provide more options for graphics and other features. It has a lot of limitations compared to other database platforms. We have used Amazon QuickSight for two months. We…

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it_user262917

Retail Solutions Manager at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 30, 2016

Delivers POS transaction analysis in grids, dashboards, and documents.

There are a number of different applications bundled together and delivered under an umbrella product. It needs to be easier to determine which application controls which features and functionality. I need to point out is that our company is a MicroStrategy OEM partner. We use the MicroStrategy products to build a BI solution for our own retail clients. With our EPM solution, we offer different user tiers to our customers, allowing them to acquire minimal functionality for Store Managers. Each tier includes a particular set of MSTR applications. The Store Manager tier was created so that a single report could be run, but the output for each Store Manager would be limited to that store’s data. This worked great on grid reports, but when our customer wanted to run dashboards and post them on a server instead of emailing them, it didn’t work. After casting about, we learned that we had to add a Report Services license for each Store Manager in order to support the posting of docs and dashboards to a server folder and distribute emails with links. That was a financial hit and it was not what we understood our clients would be able to do with the licensing they were getting. This particular example actually got resolved when MSTR repackaged their solutions. This included many services in the server umbrella.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."

"It is a stable product."

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"The main difference that I like about Cognos compared to other solutions is its data splitting functionality. We have all our company data inside the Cognos environment and so we prefer to split the information Cognos itself. It's more efficient this way."

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."

More IBM Cognos pros

"It is fine for basic reporting."

"I like that with Amazon QuickSight, you don't need to install an app to use its services. With other BI tools, you need to install the app, so Amazon QuickSight is better for me in this area."

"The solution is very quick to turn around and integrate."

"A valuable feature of Amazon QuickSight is that it's a cloud-native service provided by AWS. As all platforms within my company run on AWS, that's the leverage of Amazon QuickSight. Amazon QuickSight is also easy to use, and I find the native connectors from AWS valuable as well."

"The ease with which it integrates with different data sources is most valuable. Especially when everything is on AWS, it is easy to connect to the data source and organize different dashboards."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its flexibility to visualize certain logs."

"One of the most valuable features of Amazon QuickSight has been the speed at which visualizations can be created."

"The most valuable feature I have found is the low-level securities are very easy to use."

More Amazon QuickSight pros

"MicroStrategy has powerful data security features, which are crucial these days. For example, when users view data in MicroStrategy, they're only allowed to see a portion based on the permissions. When we evaluated other solutions like Power BI or Tableau, we found the security is very poor. They can't help us secure access to the data."

"We have ramped up user adoption."

"I like that they're trying to incorporate Developer into Workstation and Desktop into Workstation, so you get the all-in-one encompassing, highly technical Developer Workstation where you can do the VI, you can do the Dossier."

"It keeps BI in the hands of everyone, rather than a developer or an analyst."

"In the past, when we had so many legacy systems, with Cognos and others, it was took multiple steps to get what we wanted. Now, it's a seamless integration. We can connect directly, in the form of In-Memory Cubes or live-publish cubes, to the data warehouse, and blend in the data with big data. Not only relational databases, but we can also integrate other third-party files, and create a single-source software."

"There are people who are using MicroStrategy as transaction services."

"The simplicity of MicroStrategy is what I like the most."

"Visual Insight gives you the capability of doing self-service analytics. This has been the most powerful and valuable feature."

More MicroStrategy pros

Cons

"The solution seems to slow down the servers."

"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."

"Need improvement towards Visualization."

"IBM Support can be slow at times, but they can usually deliver in a timely manner."

"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."

"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."

"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Amazon QuickSight's visualization could be improved."

"It can be made more user-friendly as some users might find this solution hard to implement. Qlik Sense, for example, is very user-friendly."

"I would like to see a feature that allows us to save a draft version before making it public and publishing it."

"The product is quite expensive because the price is too close to QlikView's prices but it does not ring as well as QlikView."

"Lacked connectivity with other third-party tools and data sources."

"The number of features in the product is limited in comparison with the other tools in the market, like Power BI."

"The solution must be more user-friendly."

"I just want a few more features to be added."

More Amazon QuickSight cons

"Sometimes you can do something in reports, but you cannot do the same thing in documents."

"Something I would be interested in is more visualizations, because right now we use SDK to create some. If there were more out-of-the-box options, we would be happy with that."

"MicroStrategy lacks that community support. You're either stuck figuring things out yourself or paying expensive fees to MicroStrategy consultants for help."

"We have not invested nor are we planning to invest in MicroStrategy's mobile platform."

"The In-Memory Capability (cubes) needs a lot of improvement."

"This solution is missing enhanced features in the dashboards."

"Scalability is something which will need to be improved when it goes to a bigger audience."

"I don't think that they will, but I'd like to see parallel processing, scalable parallel processing."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."

"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."

"It is averagely priced."

"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"Pricing should be improved."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is cost-effective with a good plan."

"It's affordable compared to other long-term contractor business tools available in the market."

"The solution is not affordable."

"I wouldn't say that it is an expensive product, but to stay competitive they would need to bring down the prices."

"The solution's pricing is cheaper than the other products in the market."

"The Amazon QuickSight licensing model my company's on is pay-as-you-go, but I wouldn't be able to give the figures because that's handled by the finance department."

"The product pricing is better than other vendors."

"I'm using a paid version of Amazon QuickSight, paying about $22 monthly. As I have yet to learn about the pricing for other tools, such as Power BI, I won't be able to compare."

More Amazon QuickSight pricing and cost advice

"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us."

"We have one of the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information."

"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."

"All BI software vendors' list prices are high. It's about a price that fits the customer's needs. And I think MicroStrategy has some flexibility in its pricing model where we can easily demonstrate a total cost of ownership comparison against any of the other players."

"It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think."

"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."

"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."

"Pricing, in general, is high. With Power BI, you get mobile with the license, whereas with MicroStrategy, you have to purchase mobile for extra."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

60%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

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What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

The tool does not have much documentation on the internet. It is not easy to resolve issues by finding the reason for...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon QuickSight?

The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon QuickSight?

My company had a corporate discount and other arrangements, so I'm not familiar with the standard pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon QuickSight?

Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area...

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What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?

For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.

See all answers

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

There is room for improvement in data visualization. Compared to other BI tools like Power BI, MicroStrategy is stron...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 12% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 29% of the time

Tableau vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 22% of the time

Looker vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 9% of the time

Looker Studio vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Amazon QuickSight

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon QuickSight Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 23% of the time

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 22% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

Qlik Sense vs MicroStrategy

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs MicroStrategy

Compared 4% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

July 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon QuickSight

July 2024

Download Amazon QuickSight product report

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

July 2024

Download MicroStrategy product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

QuickSight

No data available

Learn More

IBM

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

MicroStrategy

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business analytics service that makes it easy to build visualizations, perform ad-hoc analysis, and quickly get business insights from your data. Using our cloud-based service you can easily connect to your data, perform advanced analysis, and create stunning visualizations and rich dashboards that can be accessed from any browser or mobile device.

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com

Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon QuickSight vs. MicroStrategy

July 2024

Free Report: Amazon QuickSight vs. MicroStrategy

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon QuickSight vs. MicroStrategy and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.

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