Microsoft BI vs SAS Visual Analytics comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft BI and SAS Visual Analytics 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 Microsoft BI vs. SAS Visual Analytics Report (Updated: January 2022).
735,432 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I've seen no issues with BI's stability.""The solution is stable with reasonable performance.""It's a very easy-to-use solution.""Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly.""The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are the variety of possibilities to connect to various data sources. The visualizations are easily done, have useful rollover functions, and there are continuous updates being made to the system. You can benefit from the various improvements.""Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially.""Microsoft BI's initial setup is very straightforward.""The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an easy-to-use tool."

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"It's a stable, reliable product.""It provided the capability to visualize a bunch of data in an organized way.""The product is stable, reliable, and scalable.""We've found the product to be stable and reliable.""Data handling is one of the best features of SAS Visual Analytics.""Visual Analytics is very easy to use. I use Visual Analytics for all the typical use cases except text mining. I used it to analyze data and monitor statistics, not text mining. I also use it for data visualization as well as creating interactive dashboards and infographics.""I use Visual Analytics for enterprise reporting.""It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective."

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Cons
"One area for improvement in Microsoft Power BI is serviceability. Compared to one of its competitors: Tableau, there are a lot of things which you cannot do in this tool, that can be done in Tableau.""I have found using Microsoft BI is not easy. For example, trying to use the auto-refresh feature is not simple.""The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on.""One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel.""My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack.""You need to purchase upgraded support separately.""The cost of the solution can get high.""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."

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"In Brazil, there are few documents, courses, and other resources for studying and implementing the tool.""The installation process can be a bit complex.""The visualization should be better in SAS Visual Analytics. It is easy to use but when compared to other solutions it is lacking and the support is not very good.""There is room for improvement in anti-money laundering prevention and operation monitoring, as well as operation monitoring surveillance.""The solution is a little weak at the front end.""The licensing ends up being more expensive than other options.""The reason we haven't rolled it out across the board is due to the fact that the licensing is so expensive.""The deployment isn't smooth. Deploying Visual Analytics on the cloud takes a lot of work, or you can use some providers that give you SAS as a service. For example, there is a provider called SaasNow. They host SAS Visual Analytics and the license. You can buy the license and deploy it there without the hassle of installation because deploying the software isn't easy."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay."
  • "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."
  • "The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly."
  • "Compared to others, I think it is reasonable."
  • "If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database."
  • "Its price is very low. It is like $10 per user, per month. The clients pay for their own licenses. It is not on us. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. That's the beauty. With other systems, you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars just to get started, and then you need to spend $500 per year for the license, which becomes much more costly. You have a system here where for $120 to $140 a year, you can start with two people and start developing and deploying. You can see why the cost difference is huge, especially when you are on a low scale, like us, and you're not building something very huge."
  • "You don't need a license for development, but if you want to publish to external users, you need a license. The licensing is very costly, but I think that since the advantages and benefits of Power BI are so high, people are willing to pay. I can't blame them."
  • "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."
  • More Microsoft BI Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The cost of the solution can be expensive. There is an additional cost for users."
  • "Visual Analytics is expensive for a small company like mine. You also need to deploy it on a server or cloud, so you pay for the license as well as the cost of the cloud or the server that you will deploy on."
  • "SAS Visual Analytics is expensive, as is the rest of the platform."
  • "It's approximately $114,000 US dollars per year."
  • "It was licensed for corporate use, and its licensing was on a yearly basis."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • More SAS Visual Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The flexibility of the configuration is valuable to me.
    Top Answer:I don't directly deal with licensing. I can't speak to the exact price of the product.
    Top Answer:The solution should improve its graphics. It uses more 3D graphics. It will be better if the solution adds more 2D graphics.
    Ranking
    Views
    36,177
    Comparisons
    30,274
    Reviews
    104
    Average Words per Review
    518
    Rating
    8.0
    3rd
    out of 67 in Data Visualization
    Views
    3,643
    Comparisons
    2,883
    Reviews
    13
    Average Words per Review
    520
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Power BI, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
    SAS BI
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft BI is a business intelligence solution that connects to all your data sources and turns your data into insightful and useful business information that is relevant to all levels of the business, ensuring data accuracy, consistency, and security.

    Microsoft BI combines familiar Microsoft tools - Office, SharePoint, and SQL server - with extra features for end-users, such as Power View and Power Pivot. This powerful product gives businesses a competitive advantage by allowing end users to better analyze their data, collaborate, and better present their data.

    The BI platform empowers members of your organization to make data-driven decisions that drive strategic actions quickly by allowing them to work together easily on the same data, share insights, and collaborate on reports using other Microsoft Office applications.

    Microsoft BI Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Microsoft BI include: 

    • Scalability: Easily scale the Microsoft BI platform to help reduce costs and minimize the security risks and complexities that arise as a result of maintaining multiple systems.
    • Secure analytics: Protect your data with sophisticated data security features, including sensitivity labeling, end-to-end encryption, and real-time access monitoring. View and share meaningful AI-based insights enriched by data visualizations.
    • Regular user-driven innovative updates: Get weekly and monthly updates that improve the capabilities of Power BI based on thousands of ideas submitted each year from a community of over 500,000 members worldwide.
    • Seamless integration with Microsoft products: Microsoft BI connects with Microsoft 365, allowing you to create Excel queries, data models, and reports for the Power BI dashboards. These integrations make it easy to collect, analyze, publish, and share Excel business data.
    • Access Microsoft BI from any location: BI can be accessed at any time from anywhere using its mobile app, allowing ease of access to distributed teams or businesses across many locations. The business intelligence platform also enables teams to work on any file at the same time.
    • User-friendly dashboard: View and manage your data in a user-friendly and intuitive customized dashboard. The Microsoft BI platform enables teams to work independently while exchanging analytics between different departments and users. With Microsoft BI, you can easily create personalized dashboards that combine on-premises and cloud data into a single view, allowing you to monitor enterprise data from multiple business applications.
    • Easy installation: Install the platform in minutes just by creating an API key and inputting it into the software.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Microsoft BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its integration options and its data analytics capabilities.

    Tariq R., an operations & BI analyst at American Hospital Dubai, writes, “Power BI is a complete ecosystem. It has an integrated ETL tool and good connectivity with applications such as Office 365 and SQL. Power BI supports the DAX and Power Query M languages. These languages are making Power BI very strong in data analytics, and you can do many types of analysis. ”

    SAS Visual Analytics is a data visualization tool that is used for reporting, data exploration, and analytics. The solution enables users - even those without advanced analytical skills - to understand and examine patterns, trends, and relationships in data. SAS Visual Analytics makes it easy to create and share reports and dashboards that monitor business performance. By using the solution, users can handle, understand, and analyze their data in both past and present fields, as well as influence vital factors for future changes. SAS Visual Analytics is most suitable for larger companies with complex needs.

    SAS Visual Analytics Features

    SAS Visual Analytics has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Data
    • Interactive data discovery
    • Augmented analytics
    • Chat-enabled analytics
    • Sharing and collaboration
    • Visual analytics apps
    • Embedded insights
    • Location analytics
    • Security and administration
    • In-memory engine

    SAS Visual Analytics Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing SAS Visual Analytics. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Machine learning and natural language: SAS Visual Analytics uses machine learning and natural language explanations to find, visualize, and narrate stories and insights that are easy to understand and explain. This enables you to find out why something happened, examine all options, and uncover opportunities hidden deep in your data.
    • Easy and efficient reporting: With SAS Visual Analytics, you can create interactive reports and dashboards so you can quickly summarize key performance metrics and share them via the web and mobile devices.
    • Easy to use: SAS Visual Analytics was designed to be easy to use. Its easy-to-use predictive analytics enables even business analysts to assess possible outcomes, which also helps organizations make smarter, data-driven decisions.
    • Self-service data: Self-service data preparation gives users the ability to import their own data, join tables, create calculated columns, apply data quality functions, and more. In turn, the solution empowers users to access, combine, clean, and prepare their own data in an agile way, which helps facilitate faster, broader adoption of analytics for your entire organization.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SAS Visual Analytics solution.

    A Senior Manager at a consultancy says, “The solution is very stable. The scalability is good. The usability is quite good. It's quite easy to learn and to progress with SAS from an end-user perspective.

    PeerSpot user Robert H., Co-owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH, comments, “What I really love about the software is that I have never struggled in implementing it for complex business requirements. It is good for highly sophisticated and specialized statistics in the areas that some people tend to call artificial intelligence. It is used for everything that involves visual presentation and analysis of highly sophisticated statistics for forecasting and other purposes.

    Andrea D., Chief Technical Officer at Value Partners, explains, “The best feature is that SAS is not a single BI tool. Rather, it is part of an ecosystem of tools, such as tools that help a user to develop artificial intelligence, algorithms, and so on. SAS is an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem of products. We've found the product to be stable and reliable. The scalability is good.”

    Offer
    Learn more about Microsoft BI
    Learn more about SAS Visual Analytics
    Sample Customers
    Konica Minolta, Klout, Mahindra Satyam, The Weather Channel, Argus, Credit Suisse, NCR, and Sysmex.
    Staples, Ausgrid, Scotiabank, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, Oklahoma Gas & Electric, Xcel Energy, and Triad Analytics Solutions.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization34%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Insurance Company16%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Government16%
    Retailer5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Government13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Insurance Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise40%
    Large Enterprise46%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise72%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft BI vs. SAS Visual Analytics
    January 2022
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft BI vs. SAS Visual Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2022.
    735,432 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 100 reviews while SAS Visual Analytics is ranked 3rd in Data Visualization with 14 reviews. Microsoft BI is rated 8.0, while SAS Visual Analytics is rated 8.4. 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 SAS Visual Analytics writes "Easy to learn and use with good scalability potential". Microsoft BI is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, KNIME, Domo and Salesforce Einstein Analytics, whereas SAS Visual Analytics is most compared with Tableau, Databricks, SAS Enterprise Miner, Dataiku Data Science Studio and Qlik Sense. See our Microsoft BI vs. SAS Visual Analytics report.

    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.