We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI, MicroStrategy, and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, Oracle and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.
"The best feature for me is Power Query. I know that probably sounds strange, but you can't do too much with visuals and reports if the backend stuff is horribly dirty and just bad. But for me, that is absolutely fantastic. I can load the data and do the transformation and be able to load it in a useful way. There are tons of connections, which is absolutely fantastic as well. It's been fairly easy, and it's intuitive."
"Microsoft BI was very helpful for me because I had a huge variety of connections. It is very convenient to build reports, even if somebody has no experience using BI tools or data visualizations. Additionally, the performance is very good when generating reports."
"In the process of using data there is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). For extracting we are using another software, for transforming we are using our own coding in C#, and then we use Microsoft BI for loading the information. Microsoft BI displays information very well."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The user experience is easy. Users get familiar with it quickly."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."
"As it was my first time using Power BI, I can say that it was fairly easy to learn, especially if you already know BI-type tools."
"Ability to extract data from a variety of sources and systems."
"Speed for high level aggregation by using Intelligent Cubes."
"I really like the visualizations. I like how you can put large data sets in there, then the user can quickly go through the data and drill down at various levels to understand things."
"The mobile for MicroStrategy is the best of all the BI platforms. As a separate product for the mobile device, MicroStrategy is the entire BI platform. It is an enterprise solution, a separate unit, etc."
"The ability to integrate with PPT is another plus. The platform's ability to write back data directly to the database is also good."
"We prefer having our analytics capabilities in a single platform, which MicroStrategy's offers."
"Comprehensive security control and more."
"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."
"The implementation was fairly straightforward."
"Data handling, visualizations, and aesthetics of it are the most valuable features."
"Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly."
"Tableau's initial setup was straightforward."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"The initial setup is simple."
"It is easy to adapt visualizers to have interactive conversations among decision-makers."
"Tableau is good for routine dashboards, and it has integration with Slack, through which it can send you daily updates."
"While using this solution I have found the valuable features to be ease of use and the visualization. It is a complete solution."
"The solution's documentation needs improvement."
"The performance of Microsoft BI could improve for large datasets and it would be beneficial to have more visualization features."
"Power BI shows reports on actual data, not metadata."
"The mobile app is very poor."
"I would like to be able to use more predicting data science features without having to use R."
"I am taking a course to be able to use the solution better. Some aspects of the solution are not straightforward."
"It has limited performance capabilities in terms of connecting to large transactional databases, but it is fine for simple and quick queries from Excel spreadsheets or one table. The premium level is going to be more applicable for the higher transaction-level databases."
"The cost of the solution can get high."
"It needs row-level security, column-level security, on attributes. I want to be able to handle full-scale security model from the semantic layer, flat out."
"The In-Memory Capability (cubes) needs a lot of improvement."
"When we come to them with a problem, they might know more of a generalized solution, but not one targeted to our industry."
"MicroStrategy is not cloud native today and some of their APIs are a little limiting."
"We're starting to open it up to more and more people to give them the ability and start looking at these things themselves, but it's not the most intuitive system, Enterprise Manager that is, so it's tough. We're trying to bridge the gap between usability and who we let in the system, because you're not going to come in and just pick it up."
"The areas that have room for improvement in MicroStrategy are mainly related to building additional tools. Specifically, the embedding process has been a bit of a struggle."
"The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets."
"I would try to make it a little more basic, user-friendly. In terms of the UX, it's a bit sluggish there."
"The charts in Tableau are quite limited."
"The customization in the front end is a bit difficult."
"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."
"The price could be better."
"There are not enough language options. It needs to be offered in more than just English."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The charting is overly complex in comparison with Power BI's"
"Its price should be improved. Its price is much higher than Power BI and QlikView. Programming is not easy on Tableau. For programming, you have to have a separate model. They should include programming directly on the web portion of the Tableau desktop so that people can write Python or JavaScript code for customizations instead of using a different model. Currently, Tableau Data Prep is a separate application that you have to purchase. It would be helpful if they can include Tableau Data Prep and programming languages such as R, Python in the next version. Tableau Public, which is a community version, doesn't allow you to save your work on your desktop. They should allow it. Currently, you can only upload it in the community."
