Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We are using Microsoft BI to do analytics for tax and customs administration at the centralized level, in order to fight fiscal fraud and detect tax evasion

Microsoft BI has helped the creation of a powerful analytical tool able to detect inconsistencies in different customs and tax declarations/returns and thus allow the Tax Administration to have a full taxpayer view from the fiscal point of view. It finally leads to increasing the collected revenues by cross-checking data coming from different governmental sources.

Microsoft BI was choosen among different proposed solution due to the fact that there was a local knowledge by the staff. Its integration with other Microsoft products used by the administration was also taken into account as being easy. The "already seen" effect was ensuring the staff trust; precious when making a big organisational change : we have observed that staff was more confident to stick to something they have already seen in the past rather that a totally revolutionary approach. The self-service tool is much appreciated.

Not yet assessed. A final assessement will be realized once the system has achieved 1 year of operational results.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately six months

The solution is stable. we did not yet had any issue.

We have not scaled the solution much. However, we will extend next year the number of users we currently have to 300. At the moment we're only working with a restricted number of users. We will also extend the number of sources of data.

I have not needed to contact technical support.

The initial IT setup was easy, It took two months for the full deployment to complete. It was fairly quick. From the business point of view, of course, the deployment as envisaged with the different data sources and capabilities will take around 18 months.

We used an integrator for the implementation and they were great. They did a good job. We have approximately three people for the maintenance and support of the solution at the IT level and 20 people using it from Business point of view, with potential increase up to 150.

We expect a dramatic increase of collected revenues once the full solution is in place. The ROI should be at break even in less than two - three years of full exploiting the solution.

We have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft concerning the license which decreased the cost of the licenses for Microsoft BI. I have found it to be cheaper than other solutions. It is always difficult to compare the Total Cost of Ownership, mainly because most of the big companies do have a very blur licensing system. The most open one seems to be Tableau.

We have evaluated and completed a market analysis of Oracle and Tableau before choosing Microsoft BI. Oracle because already being used for the internal databases; Tableau because its facility of development and deployment.

My advice to those wanting to implement this solution is to have the use cases well prepared in advance. Additionally, it is important to know exactly what type of analytics, dashboards, and reports they want, we spend a lot of time with this. I rate Microsoft BI a nine out of ten

On-premises

The stability is good.

It's pretty easy to set up the product.

For the most part, users can scale the solution.

Technical support is okay.

It's a great option if a business is already heavily involved with other Microsoft tools. 

I can't speak to any missing features. We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed. 

I've just started with the solution. I've used it for under a year so far. 

The solution is stable and the performance is pretty good, From what I have experienced. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

That said, we haven't used it for a full year yet, and it's hard to gauge its stability for the long term. Right now, based on the information I have, I'd rate it at 70% stable. 

While, for the most part, it is scalable, it still has its own limitations. 

We have three customers that currently use the product.

We've dealt with technical support in the past. They are okay. I'd describe them as average. We haven't necessarily had a bad experience. 

I wasn't directly involved in the implementation process. From the feedback from the engineers working on it, in terms of if it is an easy installation, t's not that difficult. The difficulty level depends on the experience of whoever is installing. It depends on the experience of the guy behind the installation or the software guy. My understanding is that there is no difficulty region to region. 

We have about five people who can handle deployment and maintenance duties on our team. We have a mix of managers and admins. 

We are able to handle the implementation process for our clients. 

The client does need to pay for a license in order to use the product, however, I can't speak to the exact lengths of license agreements on offer or how much they cost. 

Beyond the standard licensing fees, the only other extra cost would be support. 

There are other options, however, it depends on the client's services. If clients have already made up their minds and they know what they want to go for, we simply help implement. We can give them more options of solutions to choose from. However, many prefer Microsoft as most of their other applications are already Microsoft. It makes sense to stay within the brand. 

I'm an integrator and reseller. 

I'm not the one in charge of the installation or the technicality of the product. I'm more on the business side.

I always let clients have options and guide them to go for the one that best fits what they want to achieve. Other solutions have areas of strengths and weaknesses. You need to look at everything and examine everything before making a decision. 

Currently, I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. We haven't yet used it a year, and we're still learning about it and seeing what works well for clients. Over the next few months, we'll likely have a fuller picture of the product.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We use Power BI for a variety of applications, including retail analytics, sales, and process digitization. Except for time series data, we use it for everything. 

We have both deployment options open, so we have the requirements for both on-prem as well as on the cloud. 

One of the most valuable features of Power BI is the ease of use. It is comfortable and there is not a steep learning curve for this solution. If you have some idea of the data and basic visualization ideas, you can use this solution comfortably. 

Power BI's drillthrough feature could be improved. I didn't like drillthrough and those options much, but I did like it in MicroStrategy. 

As for additional features, I think Power BI could have better interactive features for the end user and scalable drillthrough options. 

I have one year of experience with Microsoft BI. 

Power BI is stable. I have not used it extensively, but from what I understand from my colleagues, it's stable. 

Power BI is scalable. In my organization, there are probably 400 or 500 companies using this solution. We are probably going to increase our usage. 

I have no idea whether the installation process was straightforward or not, on the admin side. As for the technical team required for deployment and maintenance, I would say you need maybe one or two admins. The development is based on use cases, but on average, I would say you need some 10 to 15 BI developers. 

We pay for licensing for Power BI. 

We are also using MicroStrategy. I did not like the drillthrough feature in Power BI, but I liked it in MicroStrategy. The way visualization works, I found that the interactiveness of MicroStrategy was better than Power BI. Similarly to Power BI, you can comfortably use MicroStrategy if you have some idea of the data and basic visualization ideas. 

I rate Power BI an eight out of ten. 

I would recommend Power BI to those considering using it, but would also recommend that they explore it themselves and understand their requirements. Their requirements will be different, so it's all use case based. 

My primary use case of Power BI is to generate dashboards and reports based on past data. Especially for people who aren't engineers, like purely business people, Power BI is helpful because it allows them to analyze and assess their complete business solutions end to end. Power BI provides insights that can help company growth, in terms of revenue and ROI. This solution is cloud-based. 

The most valuable feature is that it's easy to use. It's very useful for non-engineers and it is the ultimate solution for providing information and insights. Power BI is the best visualization tool I have ever worked with. 

This solution's performance when handling big data could be improved. Right now, if you're handling big data, the application becomes slow and the performance is very low. 

Other than that, their licensing costs could be lowered. Microsoft handles everything. For example, if I want to publish a report order from Powerpay, Microsoft doesn't allow me to do this. It's a complete business, but the licensing is very costly. I don't think Microsoft will change their pricing system, though. 

I have been using Power BI for the past five years. 

Power BI can handle a maximum of one to four gigabytes of data, but the performance becomes very slow if you handle big data. Since this solution is cloud-based, it's always updated to the latest version. 

The development is very easy because it depends on each computer. Power BI is a desktop solution that you install on your computer. Once I complete my development, I publish through the internet, which the external users are using. The number of users doesn't matter. 

There is a Power BI community, which I'm very happy about. They're there for anything and they're very helpful. In the past, Microsoft has helped us with infrastructure problems. 

In the past, I worked with other Python data visualization tools like Dash and Panel. Compared to those tools, Power BI is very easy.  

The installation is very straightforward. I did it myself and it took barely ten minutes. 

I implemented this solution myself. 

You don't need a license for the 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. 

Another visualization tool I've heard of is Splunk, which helps to handle and visualize huge amounts of data. In the future, if Power BI is unable to handle this sort of streaming data, I may consider switching to Splunk. When I extract huge amounts of data with Denodo, Power BI becomes very slow—for example, it takes more time for the display to load. Right now, Power BI can handle a maximum of around one to four gigabytes, whereas Splunk can handle very large amounts of data. 

I rate Power BI an eight out of ten. I recommend this solution because it's the best visualization tool I have ever worked with, but the licensing is costly. 

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

We are using Microsoft BI to generate point of sale reports.

The solution overall is very useful. The reports that are generated and the reporting functionality management are beneficial.

We have used other solutions and the reporting functionality should be user-friendly and have a drag and drop feature should be available, but Microsoft BI doesn't have these features. When you are creating reports and you can't change as a user. Every time you need one developer or one technical person to make the changes.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately six years.

Microsoft BI is highly stable.

The performance depends on the requirement. You have to complete your requirement which is a priority. After that, you understand your requirement and the performance could be better. The performance is the second.

I have found Microsoft BI to be scalable.

The installation difficulty depends on the integration, once integrated properly you can receive results. Microsoft BI can be very helpful to your business.

The implementation took us 15 to 20 days.

We use two Microsoft consultants to do the implementation of the solution.

I have evaluated other solutions.

I rate Microsoft BI a five out of ten.

If I compare Microsoft BI with other solutions, other solutions are much better, but because we have already invested in Microsoft BI. We are using this and maybe in one or two years, we will use something else. We will finalize the testing of other solutions and implement one of them.

Public Cloud

We use that solution to provide all the KPIs for the software development to manage the business, et cetera.

The solution is very helpful for managing the business. 

The initial setup is easy.

We have found the scalability to be quite good.

Stability is excellent overall.

Technical support is good.

For managing the business, it's okay, however, as a product management tool, it's lacking. I would like to use BI to provide services for the customers eventually. Microsoft's solution is not good for improving the product for the customers. It's just good for managing the business, and not supporting the customers.

The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools.

I'd like them to add to the knowledge base, or at least to offer more documentation about how to use the solution.

It would be helpful if more AI was integrated into the solution. 

I['ve used the solution since 2013.

I find the product to be quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The scalability of the product is quite good. If a company needs to expand it, it can.

We get technical support from a third party, however, they offer very good support and we have been quite happy with their level of service. They always have enough staff. 

The implementation process is straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult.

Deployment took less than a month.

I'm also aware of Power BI, which has better integration with third-party tools.

We do not sell Microsoft products. We just use them.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using.

We use both cloud and on-premises deployments. 

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I'd recommend the solution to others as the management portion of the solution is very easy.

We use it for taking data and turning it into intelligence.

I have been using the most recent version of it. It is deployed in a government cloud.

It saved time.

Its ease of use is most valuable.

The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team.

Its speed can also be improved. They should come up with a fix for the speed issue and give us some good parameters as to what would help with the speed. They should give us a good white paper that has a compatibility list, similar to what they provide with operating systems, and that describes what you should have before you use Microsoft BI.

There should also be a better way to possibly do things like geolocation, and where they do it, they should do it better. If you have a satellite, offices, and that sort of thing, it would be nice to see it in Tableau and different formats.

I have been using this solution since it came out. It was probably 2010. I'm a Microsoft engineer, so I'm on a lot of beta test teams. So, I would see these items a bit earlier than anybody else.

It is overall in mid-range. Sometimes, it works very well, and sometimes, it doesn't. If it is not working very well sometimes, that means it is not a hundred percent stable.

Its scalability is good. I've used it in very large major banks down to smaller entities, and it seems to not care about the scale.

Currently, we probably have 50 users. Its usage is moderate. We will increase its usage if they come up with a fix for the issues such as the speed.

There should be more timely support. I would rate them a two out of 10 because of the lack of availability. Sometimes, we can't fix what we don't know how to fix, and it causes us a lot of time and waiting and that sort of thing. We have to have a US citizen, and I'm sure that they're just not scaled up to that.

Negative

I have used other solutions but not in this cooperation.

Its initial setup is somewhere in the middle. Each deployment seems to be a little different. You have auto-updates all the time on PCs. When you image a PC, it doesn't always match. So, each deployment is different, and I'm not sure they can change that because most of the updates are for security, but it is very important to be sure that you test the environment first before you put it into production. I know a lot of people who just put it into production because of the ease of use, but sometimes, that can be problematic. In terms of maintenance, it is not terrible.

It was done in-house with the help of a Microsoft partner. Our experience with them was horrible. We ended up fixing it all ourselves. If five was the top, they were a zero.

I would advise others to just do their homework. You should check it out first, do the trial, get it into your test environment, and then make your decisions. Don't rush to production. Everybody is a bit different. If you have monster databases out there, the performance might be a little different.

I would rate it a six out of 10. If their support were better, it would get a higher rating. 

Microsoft Azure

We were using Microsoft BI but it could not do what we wanted it to do. Then we moved to an open-source platform, which was Apache Tika, Kafka, and third solution. We ended up moving back to Power BI only to display the information because displaying information with Power BI is better than open-source software. We are not using all aspects of the solution at the moment.

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 solution could improve the extraction and transformation of data. For example, you transform the data and then send it to Microsoft BI without having to use your own API. We are only providing the API to Power BI, and then Power BI is doing the job.

In an upcoming release, Microsoft BI should increase the functionality of the solution.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately six years.

We were satisfied with the stability of Microsoft BI.

We have 30 users using the solution in my organization.

We are in contact with the support of Microsoft but I have not been in contact directly.

I have used other solutions, such as Apache Tika and Kafka.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The solution only needs one person to do the maintenance.

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.

The solution has had a lot of changes over the years and it is very good. However, there is more work to be done on extract and transform functions for it to be done properly.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

On-premises