MicroStrategy Reviews

Primarily, as a developer, I am administering user privileges and creating reports for analysts and clients. 

The product is performing great.

It has greatly benefited our organization. We have a lot of products based on it. We license products from MicroStrategy to clients, therefore it is pretty important.

We started with Self-Service and now we are actually restricting Self-Service. What we do is give access to prompted reports for clients and we control ACLs on those objects. It feels like Self-Service because they are picking what they are using in the report, but they are not actually getting to the semantic layer.

The option to use various administrative tools, like Command Manager, System Manager, and Integrity Manager.

I prefer having the analytic capabilities all in one place, such as a single platform.

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.

Stability is great, especially with package deployments. It is very consistent and stable.

We have not had any issues with it. Usually, a client selects only a couple of users, so we are not up to the thousands.

I have not personally used technical support, but people on my team have.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I have implemented upgrades.

Upgrades seem like they are straightforward now. A couple years ago, they were a bit more complicated. There were unknown changes and they would do version releases, then sometimes things would break and they would have hotfixes. However, when we were less mature, it was harder because we did not have the right Integrity Manager tests and automated tests that we really rely on, so it was very manual back then.

We will not be investing in mobile analytics. We work in healthcare, and the data is sensitive. We do not want people on the move with healthcare data.

Do not give clients access to Self-Service or the entirety of everything, such as the semantic layering and creating reportings. It is a headache if you do it. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The ability to have multiple roles within the organization use it and being able to restrict it. For instance, there is consumer level access that business users can use, but then IT can use its tools and keep it separate but all within the same technology.

Reporting on some daily sales activities. It works well in this task.

It is convenient having it right there on the phone. They do not have to login. They can get it from anywhere they are.

The convenience of it. Having it on the mobile, therefore someone has it right there in their pocket most of the time.

It is a pretty simple solution so far, so we have not really gone beyond where it is.

It is actually pretty complicated to use. It is complicated enough that user adaptation is sometimes difficult. We developed more experts rather than people using it.

If there was a server down, we are not allowed to use it offline. Therefore, if there is a server down, then it’s down.

They are pretty good most of the time. There have been a few times that I have left a message and not been called back for at least a day or two.

Previously, we did not know we could have a mobile app. We looked at having a mobile app with MicroStrategy when we found out that we could, then we tried it out.

The mobile setup was not too bad.

We set it up in-house.

Most important criteria that I want to see when selecting a vendor: One that provides good, stable software. MicroStrategy does this.

• Dashboards
• Documents
• Reports
• Filters

Working as a BI Consultant, I have to develop different analyses, reports and dashboard documents to analyze the status of different business measures. We are using OBIEE and MicroStrategy for the purpose of enterprise performance management by defining and describing different business perspectives and objectives, initiatives and results are analyzed on the basis of these defined attributes.

There are limited features available for the overall enterprise performance management and analysis. There isn't a proper mechanism to define proper KPIs, collaboration or analysis of numeric data separately.

I've been using it for six months to a year.

Sometimes there is an issue of font size, spacing and other related formatting document issues.

We've experienced no issues with performance. However, the larger amount of number of selectors, filters etc. you have, the longer it will take to display an analysis.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

7/10

8/10

I started with OBIEE, and I am still using it for References.

It was straightforward.

We implemented it in-house.

We're also using MicroStrategy.

If you are looking for purely Performance Management of whole enterprise, then you should choose OBIEEE, otherwise choose MicroStrategy.

The best feature is R integration. This uses predictions for medicine consumption.

I really appreciate Visual Insight because it is easy for end users and it breaks IT dependencies.

We have a small technical staff. If we give opportunities to our clients to develop their own reports and graphics, we can concentrate our efforts on increasing the quality of other reports that demand a little bit more knowledge and expertise.

We need to act in advance of situations. I would like to be able to:

• Gather information about how long the partner will take to bring us a product.
• Find out what our real consumption average will be against our supply for that item

This information would help us decide if we should wait until we reach the resupply point or if we should start the process immediately.

I have used this solution for five years.

I only encountered stability issues when using the enterprise manager.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

We enjoy a high level of expertise from technical support.

The initial setup was easy.

It is not worthwhile if you have a small budget, although it is worth every penny.

We evaluated Pentaho and OBIEE.

Look for a solution that covers all enterprise areas, from the IT department to end-users, that will help you build a robust, star schema model.

I think that MicroStrategy has a lot of well-designed features, and that if users know how to use them or are willing to learn, it maybe a very valuable tools for them. I can recall that most users love to use the MicroStrategy Visual Insight tool that allows users to see in-real time graphs that users design on-site, using the attributes and metrics that they are familiar with.

Another good example, is the intelligence cube and incremental refresh reports that allow developers to update or create a report with a great quantity of information and store it on memory. This only takes a few seconds to show users the full results instead of always querying the data warehouse for the same results over and over. In addition, developers can schedule an incremental refresh of data on days, weeks, months, or whatever filter they desire, without the user feeling such work being done.

Update: MicroStrategy Mobile application is considered to be one of the best, for almost 4 or 5 years. I have used multiple times and I have to say, it is a great tool. Easy to configure and easy to adapt the reports to Mobile users, specially if they have an Iphone, since in the 9.4 version it was well prepared for Iphone users. Aside from that, Documents can be made to take pixel % in account, so you can make a report in the Developer, that suits both mobile and web users in a unique report.

Using the intelligence cube, I’ve managed to increase the performance of the main load of my documents, giving users the full data access in less than five seconds, instead of spending 30 seconds or a minute waiting for the results.

Update: Using the mobile application, it gave insurer agents more flexibility and a great success in their daily roles, since they could insert new information directly from MicroStrategy Mobile (using Transaction Services) and the colleagues at the company could respond within minutes or hours, saving the problem that is the trip.

I think that there are some bugs regarding the design, and some features are a little hidden from the developer. Developers need to do a lot of research and consult a lot of manuals just to find that the solution for their problem was in a check-box within the configurations of the tool or project.

Update: Never tried the MicroStrategy 10, only installed it, so the improvement may already been answered in a lot of features.

Update: I’ve used this solution for about 1 - 1,5 years, but not constantly.

The installation was well explained in the manuals, and the deployment of hotfixes and patches are as easy as a normal computer program installation.

Update: MicroStrategy version 10 (and beta) is similar to version 9.4 in installation and configuration.

The only issue that I can think of, is that from time to time my web server stops and I have to restart the web server. I do not know why this happens, but we’ve created a process that every minute there are checks the status of the web server, and restarts it if necessary. It may be a problem with the tool or a problem with the infrastructure at the client's company.

Update: Turns out, the client infrastructure may be blocking the Web Server from running all the time. Comparing the installation done in a Virtual Machine and another one in another client, they haven't got any type of web server related problems and the first one has, which makes me think its a infrastructure configuration that from time to time, blocks the service.

No issues encountered.

I've never used it, but I only have good things to say about the users of the MicroStrategy Community. They always give good ideas, a lot of workarounds and 90% of the time, they respond within the day with a lot of links to technical notes and others posts among others.

Update: Initial setup was really straightforward, in my opinion.

I've done the installation, configuration and designed the entire project (Logical Architecture, Reporting/Dashboarding, Mobile application, among others)

The features I loved is the easy way the software allows you to design your own dashboard and the professional way it displays it. One would think that I was a graphic designer every time I create a dashboard (which I am not).

The import of excel files into Microstrategy and the ease of data manipulation is outstanding.

Good job Microstategy!

The results are not in yet as it is too early to tell.

Data dictionary import would be great.

I am a consultant and I use this solution to assist in delivering projects.

This solution has allowed us to become a top-class competitor among other consulting companies.

The most valuable features are the self-service and the pixel-perfect dashboards.

I would like to see a single standalone application to control everything from the administration perspective, and also to develop new applications.