MicroStrategy vs Microsoft Power BI vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI, MicroStrategy, and Pentaho Business Analytics based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.
To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools 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
"Technical support is quite responsive.""I like the downloadable visualizations a lot. I think that they give the user a very nice starting point in creating awesome dashboards, with the right way to tell their data story.""It is a little easier at buildings charts and graphs than Tableau.""It is a pretty straightforward and flexible solution for data integration and modeling. It is a low-code solution. When you are doing data integration, you can use the GUI, which is very simple and straightforward. You can also do very intricate custom queries and model it at different levels. It is very easy to use and scalable.""There is also a chart store where we can download charts, which is extremely useful.""It's quite flexible, and it's easy to create reports using this system. It is very graphic and very user friendly.""Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use.""With Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it. So we actually saved a ton of money not needing to load the data into databases, which is a big prerequisite for many other reporting tools."

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"We have been using it mostly for grid reports and its exporting features.""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 technical support of MicroStrategy can be helpful through implementation.""​Technical support is knowledgeable. The right person gets back to us whenever we email them.""The subscription model is excellent. About half of our reporting comes out of the subscription, and from there, the ease of use in dragging and dropping reporting objects.""It has had a direct impact on bottomline improvements.""Dossiers are going to change the name of the game for us. We want to be able to have the executive committee go into a meeting and tell a story. We want them to tell us a story, not us.""The most valuable features of MicroStrategy are user-friendliness and integration with the different data warehouse systems."

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"The initial setup is pretty straightforward.""We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support.""Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it.""I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced.""Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud.""Easy to use components to create the job.""The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."

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Cons
"In Microsoft Excel, you are able to have tabs. However, in Microsoft BI you do not have this flexibility.""There is no specific area that I have a problem with. It's just that, with whatever feature you come across, every visual has its own formatting and behavior. What you get in one visual for a feature, you don't seem to get in another.""I would like to be able to use more predicting data science features without having to use R.""Real-time refreshing for SAP BW would be nice. We know its on the radar for the development team at MS. ​""When you go to the cloud, its licensing is not intuitive. It is a little bit complex. When you have to purchase a new license, it is difficult to understand on their website what exactly you need to pay and how you can group. It is something that is applicable to all Microsoft products. They're not always so simple and clear when it comes to licensing. Their support can also be better in terms of explaining how they resolved an issue and what steps they took to resolve it. They are able to resolve the issue, but they can be better at explaining the approach they took to resolve the issue. It could have something in the direction of machine learning. It can have some kind of integration with machine learning where you can ask for some reports with natural language.""The way you navigate the product, compared to other products in this industry, that could be improved a bit.""Needs single sign-on.""It should be easier to use when there are multiple system sources."

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"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.""MicroStrategy needs to do some more development to make the platform easier to use. It's a complicated platform that requires a lot of skill to effectively utilize. So they could work on reducing the complexity to make it more accessible for a broader community of people.""Needs ​tighter mapping integration.""I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version.""The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets.""Getting our data to work with the tool is where we are having issues.​""Something I would be interested in is more visualizations, because right now we use SDK to create some. If there were more out-of-the-box options, we would be happy with that.""We have not invested nor are we planning to invest in MicroStrategy's mobile platform.​​"

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"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive.""Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process.""Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention.""The repository should be improved.""Logging capability is needed.""Version control would be a good addition.""We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost.""Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price."
  • "MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."
  • "All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
  • "I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."
  • "Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? ​"
  • "Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
  • "Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
  • "Paid for itself in the first month."
  • More Microsoft Power BI 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 →

  • "Free and commercial versions are available."
  • "Pentaho is expensive ."
  • "We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
  • More Pentaho Business Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
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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… more »
    Top Answer:Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize… more »
    Top Answer:Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are… more »
    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… more »
    Top Answer:For everything we do in our company, we consider MicroStrategy to be a workaround solution. For better customization in… more »
    Top Answer:The organization has both options based on their needs and budget constraints. The Enterprise Edition is expensive with… more »
    Top Answer:The product to me is not as user-friendly as other players in the market. It also still needs improvement in the… more »
    Top Answer:Pentaho is a BIS(business intelligence system) that is designed to help customers make decisions based on their data… more »
    Ranking
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    7.5
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    7.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
    Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

    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.

    Pentaho is an open source business intelligence company that provides a wide range of tools to help their customers better manage their businesses. These tools include data integration software, mining tools, dashboard applications, online analytical processing options, and more.

    Pentaho has two product categories: There is the standard enterprise version. This is the product that comes directly from Pentaho itself with all of the benefits, features, and programs that come along with a paid application such us analysis services, dashboard design, and interactive reporting.

    The alternative is an open source version, which the public is permitted to add to and tweak the product. This solution has its advantages, aside from the fact that it is free, in that there are many more people working on the project to improve its quality and breadth of functionality.

    Sample Customers
    Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
    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.
    Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Government5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Healthcare Company13%
    Retailer11%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Retailer10%
    Insurance Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    University13%
    Educational Organization6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Government12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Educational Organization9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise62%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise71%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Tableau, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.