We performed a comparison between Microsoft BI and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft BI comes out on top in this comparison. It is reliable and easy to use. In addition, when compared with SAP BusinessObjects, it is easier to set up, less expensive, and has better customer support.
"It's the analytic engine in terms of the interface on the Power BI environment, as opposed to pivot tables, and it's a mobile solution."
"What I like most is that I can do everything in Power BI that I can do in Excel."
"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 solution is not that difficult to install, although this will vary with the experience of the person responsible for its installation."
"Good reporting and data analysis tool that's user-friendly, easy to deploy, stable, and scalable."
"ou can pull reports, visualize them in real-time, and connect them to a variety of other data sources."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an easy-to-use tool."
"Microsoft BI's initial setup is very straightforward."
"The solution is stable."
"BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting."
"The scheduling and publication features are very useful."
"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."
"The web intelligence reporting tool and universe designer are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement."
"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."
"The initial setup of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform was easy since the solution is user-friendly."
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"Power BI's administration could use some work, and the user experience needs to improve because it is a client-based tool. If you want to generate a model or report, you need to use client tools, but client tools are limited for end-users who don't have enough hardware. For example, maybe a client lacks enough memory or CPU power for report generators. If you use a model that requires a massive amount of data, your client will face several problems."
"One opportunity for improvement would be on the Power Query side. As a consultant, I know Power Query is not the main strength of Power BI. It is not where Power BI shines, but many customers use Power Query to do full ETL workloads for deliverable cookies."
"There's always room for improvement for Microsoft Power BI, especially for the UX and the menus to make it more accessible to business users."
"The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on."
"I'm missing collaborations functionality to operate or to work connected with multiple people on a data source or on virtualization. There should be more collaborations functions, such as in Confluence. We haven't explored the solution sufficiently in this area, but at this time it doesn't look sufficient."
"I believe the price should be degressive, and we should have a lower, or better unit price if we have more users."
"Sometimes while developing, the front end is not easily customizable and it has limitations. We cannot go and do any UI we want. We have to stick to the limitations of the product."
"If you look at the new tool, even though they promised that you could do data modeling, that you could do everything from the Power BI side, if your data is really large in volume, sometimes it doesn't work on the Power BI. More feature testing from their side would certainly help users."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."
"The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers. There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies. We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money."
"It is not simple to use."
"The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."
"Factoring in total implementation and maintenance costs, SAP BusinessObjects is too expensive. If you deal with a huge amount of data, you can go with BusinessObjects. However, if you are a medium-sized company with a modest amount of data, you can opt for another solution."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform should be made easier for the end-users and the performance could be improved."
"We would like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
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Microsoft BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 83 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 25 reviews. Microsoft BI is rated 8.0, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Microsoft BI writes "User friendly, easy to set up and great for analyzing data". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform writes "Integrates very well with SAP ERP, allows you to scale up or down anytime, and is absolutely trustworthy". Microsoft BI is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, KNIME, Domo and Databricks, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy and Looker. See our Microsoft BI vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report.
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All the traditional BI platforms including Business Objects and Microsoft Reporting services and Analysis services require IT involvement almost at every step in preparing the data and report.
Self serve BI is the promise to these business analysts without technology background. However following characteristics are a must to meet the self serve BI dream.
- BI tool should be capable of reading data from its source without a dependency on ETL or a warehouse.
- While a dimensional model gives most flexibility for ad hoc data analysis, it brings a overhead of consistent modeling mindset requiring very technical background.
- Ability to convert grid data into visualization and vice versa with few clicks
- Ability to mashup multiple analysis from multiple sources on to a single screen.
- Finally a framework that let's end users seamlessly build their analysis while IT can throttle, govern, audit and scale end user data needs with a great amount of automation behind the scenes as a continuous process as opposed to be a pre process.
Two such platforms I have come across are
1) Tableau
2) CarbonBI
These solutions seem good for Visualizations. I like Pentaho personally. Wondering why the this suggestion hasn't been made??
Sap business objects can provide a sophisticated self service solution that is very easy for the end users to engage with for both ad hoc analysis and report writing and distribution. However as with all Bi solutions the back end data warehouse must be designed intelligently and business objects universes configured correctly. The same thing really applies no matter what toolset you select. If you already have business objects then it makes sense to ask IT to set it up as a self service solution rather than look for another technology. If IT do not have the skills then look for a good consultant to perform a review of your BI solution and make recommendations.
Nick,
Good comments similar to the points I was making. I think that it is still
important to consider how much data you expect to be dealing with, the
tool's analytical architecture (ROLAP or MOLAP), the sophistication of your
analyst end users, and how complex your reports are likely to be. If you
or the analysts expect that solution development is going to be in the
hands of the analyst, then the tool needs to be relatively easy to learn.
On the last point, if you expect a lot of slicing-and-dicing you need an
architecture that will support the high indexing load. Anyway, success and
use acceptance is not just a question of apparent simplicity and seemingly
low cost.
regards,
Keith Breedlove
Polyglot Analytics, LLC
Groveland, FL
I suggest Power Data, the new Microsoft develop.
Try Tableau.
I would suggest looking at Tableau for requirements of self-service nature. The success factor for a self service tool depends on the ease-of-use for the end-user who is less proficient in IT skills and the range of tasks it allows the end user to accomplish. Tableau scores highly on both these parameters. Backed by a well designed data mart, Tableau can be the solution that pretty much allows the end user to replace the need for IT. It has excellent training materials available in one-click and many forums where people are ready share their cool experiences. Developing a report in Tableau for me was more like playing a video game, a throughly enjoyable experience to get to a cool end-product. You want the end-users to cherish the process of creation and Tableau does that with ease.
I would focus on Tableau and MicroStrategy (we went with MSTR several years ago to supplant BO), although QlickView has its proponents for ease of use...