MicroStrategy vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Nov 23, 2022

We performed a comparison between MicroStrategy 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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Both solutions receive mixed reviews regarding their initial setup.
  • Features: Reviewers of both products are happy with their stability and scalability.

    MicroStrategy users say it is a mature solution that is robust and simple to use, but they would like more internal visualization options.

    SAP BusinessObjects users say it has good reporting tools and integration options. Several users note, however, that its UI needs enhancement.
  • Pricing: Some MicroStrategy reviewers feel that the price is fair while others feel it is too high. SAP BusinessObjects reviewers say it is an expensive product.
  • ROI: Reviewers of both products report seeing an ROI.
  • Service and Support: MicroStrategy reviewers report being satisfied with the level of support they receive. Some SAP BusinessObjects reviewers say the support is good, but others say that the response times can be slow.

Comparison Results: MicroStrategy is the winner in this comparison. It is a robust, mature solution that receives high marks for its ease of use. In contrast, some SAP BusinessObjects reviewers note that its interface is lacking.

To learn more, read our detailed MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 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
"The implementation was fairly straightforward.""The hyperintelligence is the most valuable feature.""The ability to integrate with PPT is another plus. The platform's ability to write back data directly to the database is also good.""It helps all the store managers and supply chain people to obtain a view of the data and plan the next week, the next month, quarters, and so on.""It is scalable and integration-friendly.""We've made it an open BI platform, so that all our business analysts can build their own dashboards and Dossiers.""We have ramped up user adoption.""I like the user interface and the experience has been great."

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"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider.""BusinessObjects can handle a lot of usage on the front end, and many users can view these reports. It's a relatively stable and secure tool.""It can process big volumes of data fast.""​Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports.​""The platform is a complete enterprise-level tool where everything is integrated to suffice your requirement.""Enables us to present data with Smart Objects that can be embedded within presentations and which automatically update when the presentations are run.""It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis.""SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is definitely scalable."

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Cons
"The pricing could be lower because it is costly.""We've found the scalability to be very good. However, it depends on the environment. In general, it could be much better.""Needs more visual essence and connectors for the ecosystems, which would be easy to use.""Data writeback, and on-the-fly predictive analysis results from R and Python could be improved.""Our users tend to say the interface is a pain.""The problem is the way that their metrics are designed. It can be difficult to understand what you're actually looking at. Then when you're comparing a document against the VI, you can't actually do that properly. So there are components, and there is a huge learning curve in the Enterprise Manager space. I think it would benefit them greatly if they were to exercise a significant amount of research and development in that space.""I would like to see more Writeback capabilities that would allow our IT department not to be worried about the wild, Wild West of Writeback.""The product could be improved by adding additional visualization."

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"Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau. Currently, for data visualization, you need to spend more money to buy another solution such as Power BI or Tableau. It is also very hard to integrate it with other third-party solutions. Its integration with other solutions should be improved.""This solution is complex to configure and administer.""​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration.""The solution is not good for self-services, they can improve in this area.""Most of the Apps right now are into dashboarding. This tool, for the Crystal Reports in the phase I'm primarily working on, does not have those dashboarding capabilities, like in the other advanced tools like Power BI or ClickView, and compared to them the dashboard generation is not that great.""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.""The solution can improve by having more analytical features.""SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is lacking dashboards and this would be the only reason we are looking for another solution."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."
  • "The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."
  • "While initial cost of MicroStrategy is still on the higher side, the long-term benefits brings down overall cost of ownership significantly as compared to other tools like Tableau/Cognos."
  • "The price was good. We have had great support along the way."
  • "We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.​"
  • "​They gave us a good deal.​"
  • "There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."
  • "They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."
  • More MicroStrategy Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
  • "​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
  • "It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
  • "Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
  • "There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
  • "Its price is fair."
  • "It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
  • "I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
  • More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts use to create and share insights. It is also the tool of choice for rapid prototyping of dashboards. Tableau is very flexible with its data import. Tableau's data blending capability is very intuitive. This capability is useful when you have data spread across several different sources that has not gone through ETL processes. This is a problem analysts deal with routinely. They are unable to wait for the data warehouse team to develop ETL processes to provide the physical models they need to build an analysis. The Tableau interface is Excel-like and has a low barrier to entry for analysts that are used to working in Excel. Building a dashboard by mashing up visualizations in a Tableau worksheet is extremely simple. Users are able to build good presentation-quality dashboards in a very short amount time. Tableau's annotations capabilities and its time and geographical intelligence are key differentiators. Tableau has overcome limitations in data sharing with the introduction of a Data Server in Tableau 7.0. The Data server allows Data sources and extracts to be shared securely and opens up interesting new possibilities. If your application can take advantage of the above… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The stability of the product is good.
    Top Answer:MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product. For beginners, there are trial accounts that are provided by the… more »
    Top Answer:For everything we do in our company, we consider MicroStrategy to be a workaround solution. For better customization in documents or dashboards, MicroStrategy can improve the features or settings… more »
    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:Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it… more »
    Top Answer:What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
    Ranking
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    7,571
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    Average Words per Review
    568
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    7.5
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    9,228
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    17
    Average Words per Review
    552
    Rating
    7.8
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
    Learn More
    Overview

    Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

    Product portfoilio:

    MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

    Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

    SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

    The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

    SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

    • Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.

    • Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.

    • Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

    • Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

    Reviews from Real Users

    SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

    A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

    An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "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."

    A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "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. It has great visualization. 

    Sample Customers
    Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.
    SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Retailer11%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Retailer10%
    Insurance Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Healthcare Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise62%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise71%
    Buyer's Guide
    MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    MicroStrategy is ranked 9th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 155 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 102 reviews. MicroStrategy is rated 8.2, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of MicroStrategy writes "A robust solution for powerful data analytics". 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". MicroStrategy is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, IBM Cognos, Qlik Sense and Oracle OBIEE, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos and Looker. See our MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report.

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    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.