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.
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.
"It keeps BI in the hands of everyone, rather than a developer or an analyst."
"The stability of the product is good."
"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."
"MicroStrategy has powerful data security features, which are crucial these days. For example, when users view data in MicroStrategy, they're only allowed to see a portion based on the permissions. When we evaluated other solutions like Power BI or Tableau, we found the security is very poor. They can't help us secure access to the data."
"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."
"MicroStrategy's solution for mobile is very good."
"It is always nice to have one solution in a single platform. You can do pretty much everything, instead of having to get a little bit here or a little bit there."
"We use MicroStrategy as an integrated solution with some of their other CRM type applications."
"What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process."
"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."
"It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis."
"It has been extremely valuable, to combine data from various data sources."
"The report development tool called SAP Web Intelligence under the BI Launch Pad portal has been the most valuable feature."
"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."
"There are two tools inside BusinessObjects' schematic layout called the Universal Design Tool and Information Design Tool. These are the most powerful tools that set BusinessObjects' reporting from other solutions. If my organization has 300 or 400 tables, I can combine all of them into one universe, and everyone can use that. It is just a schematic layout that does not hold any data but the table relationships."
"Business analytics are the most valuable features of this solution; I don't have experience with the other functional features offered."
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pros →
"Data writeback, and on-the-fly predictive analysis results from R and Python could be improved."
"We've found the scalability to be very good. However, it depends on the environment. In general, it could be much better."
"The analytic speed would probably be what I would look for in terms of improvement because we have super huge data, and if I do not build views on top of data, then reports render really slowly."
"We have seen some stability issues with MicroStrategy on cloud. We have a few unhappy customers."
"Lacks decent visualization and the process for creating new objects needs to be simplified."
"The pricing could be lower because it is costly."
"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."
"Native VI on mobile apps and better android support are lacking."
"Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts."
"I really want SAP to focus on the dashboarding side. Based on what I have seen in the past 10 years, dashboarding has captured a lot of markets. Executives at the top-level want data that is summarized, looks good, and tells you a story. That's where Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI have an upper edge. It doesn't mean SAP doesn't give you dashboarding. They do have a dashboarding solution, but Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are more intuitive and more attractive. I would like SAP to capture the dashboarding market as well, wherein they give at least some competition to other competitors. Presently, Tableau, Qlik, and Power BI are leading the market."
"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."
"The UI could be updated a bit."
"The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint."
"This solution is complex to configure and administer."
"It is not simple to use."
"When we implemented BusinessObjects, the setup was straightforward. After SAP bought BusinessObjects, it gradually became more and more stepwise. There are too many steps, and they take too much time."
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Cons →
More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →
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.
See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.
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.