Birst and Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) are competing products in the business intelligence arena. Birst provides an edge in pricing and support, while SSRS stands out due to its comprehensive features that justify its cost.
Features: Birst includes dashboard customization, data modeling, and predictive analytics. It focuses on seamless data integration across various platforms. SSRS offers robust reporting capabilities, dedicated support for SQL-based databases, and advanced visualization tools.
Room for Improvement: Birst could enhance its visualization tools, expand built-in application connectors, and improve on-premise support. SSRS can work on ease of integration with non-Microsoft products, reduce complexity in setup, and enhance mobile report publishing features.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Birst provides a cloud-based deployment model, generally quicker and more flexible, with dedicated support for integration. SSRS requires more setup effort due to on-premise requirements, but benefits from Microsoft's extensive resources and community-driven support.
Pricing and ROI: Birst is characterized by lower upfront costs and scalability advantages, leading to quicker ROI in dynamic environments. SSRS involves higher initial costs but aligns well with enterprises leveraging existing Microsoft investments.
Any tool which obviates the need for a lot of coding will definitely save at least 60-70% of effort.
Reaching out to Microsoft took a prolonged time to the extent that we were wondering why Microsoft was unable to get its own logs to us.
I have not reached out to tech support at Microsoft for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services because it is my job to know how to get this tool to work.
The initial setup for Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is not an issue for me; however, I find it challenging when we want to secure the endpoint, such as using bindings and so forth.
I am thinking that with all the Copilot integration within the Microsoft environment, that could be integrated as well, so that you could issue a prompt and it generates designs.
Otherwise, you need to write a lot of code or API calls to generate reports if using some other tool outside of the ecosystem, which definitely requires additional effort and therefore additional cost and time.
I had been trying to develop a solution using SSRS to view some data while allowing me to modify data and update the table in the back end, but it seems SSRS isn't the tool for that.
The best features of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services are that it is easy to get the reports out because it is integrated with SQL and we have many of these tables.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services | 2.7% |
| Birst | 0.7% |
| Other | 96.6% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 3 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 12 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 5 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
| Large Enterprise | 15 |
Birst Networked BI and Analytics eliminates information silos. Decentralized users can augment the enterprise data model virtually, as opposed to physically, without compromising data governance.
A unified semantic layer maintains common definitions and key metrics.
Birst’s two-tier architecture aligns back-end sources with line-of-business or local data. Birst’s Automated Data Refinement extracts data from any source into a unified semantic layer. Users are enabled with self-service analytics through executive dashboards, reporting, visual discovery, mobile tools, and predictive analytics. Birst Open Client Interface also offers integration with Tableau, Excel and R.
Birst goes to market in two primary ways: as a direct sale, for enterprises using Birst on internal data to manage their business; and embedded, for companies who offer analytic products, by embedding and white-labeling Birst capabilities into their products.
Birst’s is packaged in 3 available formats: Platform and per-user fee; by Department or Business Unit; by end-customer (for embedded scenarios).
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