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 quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly."
"It has greatly improved our reporting capabilities."
"The product is intuitive and user-friendly."
"It integrates with all of the Microsoft tools."
"My favorite feature is the power query editor, where it can do the data transformations."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable feature is flexibility."
"The report development tool called SAP Web Intelligence under the BI Launch Pad portal has been the most valuable feature."
"The ability to merge dimensions in a report is great."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
"The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries."
"It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. So, it allows you to do server-side joins instead of pulling all the data into Crystal Report to aggregate that data. It has great visualization. For the most part, it operates quite efficiently."
"This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems."
"Through the use of Business Intelligence reporting and scheduling features, reports are generated and automatically sent according to a schedule. This has freed up countless hours spent performing the same tasks, month over month."
"It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly-complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."
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"The maps in Power BI could be improved. You deal with many maps over the years, like maps of America and Saudi Arabia. The maps aren't detailed enough, and there aren't enough visualization tools. Whenever I want to use a map, I struggle with choosing the right visualization."
"The integration with third-party products could be more stable."
"I would like to see the product offer more graphics to impact different audiences."
"There needs to be improved guidance and documentation for the initial setup of Power BI as it currently remains complex."
"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for the solution."
"Microsoft should offer additional features for visualization and have additional features for slicing and dicing that data."
"Microsoft BI lacks some of the scheme features. It would be beneficial if there were a way to show how we move values in a different way."
"Integrating it with the physics build model or the engineering model should be included."
"The calculation engine requires some improvement."
"It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"The admin features for disk space management need work. It's very difficult to manage the disk space by the application; good admin features and not included to allow you to do that. I don't believe that is in the latest version of the product either."
"More thorough testing of Service Packs before release."
"There is room for improvement in providing more user-friendly and versatile reporting options."
"There should be more integration with other platforms."
"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."
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Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 297 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 102 reviews. Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform writes "Web intelligence will work with any amount of data even if you have 10 million rows". Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and Salesforce Einstein Analytics, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos, MicroStrategy and Looker. See our Microsoft Power 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...