MicroStrategy Reviews

From an end-user perspective, the VI (Visual Insight) component is valuable, as it provides self-exploration to users, along with data wrangling and simple integration with D3 data visualization and numerous data source exploration. Also, mobile BI deployment is easy and valuable.

In earlier versions, MSTR always required some technical person to set up the schema and the report/documents/dashboards for the end user. There were very few capabilities/features the end user could start doing on their own. With newer MSTR versions, there are easy ways for even end users to start importing data, wrangle data, if needed, and visualize using VI. And VI has additional features I have mentioned, which are like icing on the cake.

This product certainly has helped in various ways in all my past client implementations, be it simple on-schedule, automatic report delivery or self-service data exploration using Visual Insight.

MSTR is already well structured when it comes to overall product architecture. Starting with version 10.x, MSTR has improved significantly in the self-service space in comparison to BI tools in the market. However, the Visual Insight tool can be further improved, especially in the areas of presentation and export features:

• They need to add more default visualizations, which are already available in RSD; for instance, histogram is a basic one that must exist in VI.
• Currently, export from VI is not working as expected. (Most visuals get converted to bar chart when exporting.)
• Though presentation mode is available, it would be nice to have an option for a more storytelling-like feature for better presentation of MSTR dashboards (similar to what is available in other BI tools).
• Pure design mode for VI: This would help troubleshoot abrupt errors VI sometimes throws as a result of underlying data/dataset changes.

These are some of key areas I feel need to be improved; however, there are many more suggestion on the community’s idea exchange.

I have been using MSTR and related solutions for over eight years now.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

MSTR is one of most scalable BI tools around at the moment.

Depending on the type of customer you are (by that, I mean on-premise or cloud), tech support is usually knowledgeable and does escalate issues to a more-experienced expert when required. Response time on issues is average and sometimes, you need to be on top of it to get things moving or escalate to your MSTR account rep.

I have used different solutions at different client assignments and, as part of the BI practice group in my past experience, also provided a recommendation for MSTR in comparison to other BI tools, depending on the client infrastructure or use cases.

Initial setup complexity depends:

• If you are going on-premise with MSTR, then - depending on your knowledge on setting up the tool - some might call the setup complex. However, in my view, it’s straightforward, with tons of support and knowledge available.

• If you choose to go cloud with MSTR, its even simpler, as MSTR technical support takes care of all the setup for you.

MSTR can be costly and difficult to digest to begin with, but is certainly one of most structured and scalable solutions out there available in market. I think companies should look at the tool from the scalability and stability perspectives, along with weighing it against the most important use cases and to not just go by how easy it is to create or visualize data. Most tools only present a pretty picture of the tool by showing how easy it is for users to visualize data on their own and hiding the data preparation realities.

I have evaluated multiple tools in the past such as Tableau, SAP BusinesObjects, SSRS, Crystal Reports, QlikView, SAS VA, Looker, etc. Each evaluation you perform depends on the use case you are focusing upon, and most of these leading tools have evolved recently. Therefore, analysis performed by me at that point could be obsolete by now. However, as far as overall architecture level, MSTR still holds the leading spot in the market.

Most companies just starting to look around should try the MSTR cloud AWS offering, as that would take away most implementation hurdles or need for technical experts for setting up the environment, along with low cost of ownership compared to the on-premise offering. Also, focus on your use cases and the vision you have about taking reporting and decisions on data to that next level, which is scalable and strong as your business grows.

We use MicroStrategy for reporting on retail analytics, platform analytics, and tracking user usage.

Since it's an enterprise tool, MicroStrategy gives an end-to-end understanding of the system. The solution's platform analytics gives us real-time analysis of how a particular user uses the report and how the systems behave. At times, MicroStrategy comes in very handy to invoice the overall infrastructure. On the user adoption side, our business users find it very easy to use. The solution's dossier functionality comes in very handy.

The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets. MicroStrategy's visualization is a little on the lower side as compared to Power BI and Tableau.

I have been using MicroStrategy for nine years.

MicroStrategy is a very stable solution. Even if there are any bugs, the support team is quite knowledgeable in resolving those usual product bugs.

The client that I'm working with has around 3,000 users for MicroStrategy.

The technical support team resolves all our queries, but they don't provide 24/7 support. I'm working from India, and my customer is in the US. Whenever I raise a ticket, I get the response one day later. The only area of improvement for the technical support team is they should provide 24/7 support.

Positive

MicroStrategy's installation is easier for the developer or the administrator but not for the IT person from the infrastructure team. If anyone knows MicroStrategy, they can install it. For someone who doesn't know about the solution, it's not a ready-to-be-installed tool, just like Power BI or Tableau. For MicroStrategy, you need an understanding of the product it comes with.

Organizations using MicroStrategy are seeing a return on their investment.

The solution’s licensing cost is expensive.

MicroStrategy is deployed on the cloud in our organization.

The client I'm working for already had MicroStrategy as a license. Secondly, MicroStrategy provides enterprise-level support. If I have a big enterprise, my choice of tool will always be something that is very stable.

Many analyses can be easily done on MicroStrategy, which is currently not possible in either Power BI or Tableau. Also, users are not ready to shift from one tool to another.

I would recommend that users analyze their requirements before choosing the solution. I would not suggest MicroStrategy to someone with just a visualization need. I would recommend MicroStrategy to users who want reporting and some analysis done on the fly. MicroStrategy is not just a visualization tool. It's a very powerful data analytic tool as well. Users with both data analysis and visualization needs should go for MicroStrategy.

The support team addresses all the problems that arise from MicroStrategy, including product bugs. The only downside is that it is heavier on the licensing cost part. Recently, MicroStrategy has brought AI features, which are also very costly on the licensing side. MicroStrategy is trying its best to match the current trend that we see in the market.

Overall, I rate MicroStrategy an eight out of ten

We used the solution for reporting and data visualization. We used Google BigQuery to collect data and build dashboards and reports about production, manufacturing data, HR, people, positions, and headcounts. MicroStrategy was the platform where we built visualizations on dashboards, created standard reports in table format, and allowed some users to analyze the data.

The solution is a very good enterprise tool with excellent enterprise functionality for security and user access. It also works perfectly in distribution, with everyone getting their own reports. It is very complex, so you can do whatever you want. If you want to make some data limitations, you can do it. I also like the internal in-memory engine with the Symantec layer. This makes the solution pretty powerful.

The solution has a very non-logical user usage part. It has a library mode where users can access all the data, reports, and dashboards, but they also can be accessed from a platform. They have to log into the platform. The user experience is confusing for the users. MicroStrategy needs to define which one they will use. Some functionality isn’t available in library mode but is available in the portal. 

There should be Office integration. For example, if I do a presentation, then I should be able to add a chart to my presentation.

I have been using MicroStrategy for two years actively. Our company is using the latest version of this solution.

The solution is stable. We haven’t got into any trouble.
 

The solution is scalable. We have used the solution with 100s of users, and it has been good. We never saw any logging or problems.

We connected and wrote a question to them, which was answered in a few days. We checked the problem together and finally figured out it was something misunderstood.

I previously used SAP BusinessObjects BI, and it was not as fast as MicroStrategy with the same data set size. The solution moved smoothly and quickly based on the in-built engine and some queries. SAP BusinessObjects BI can be used if you have an SAP environment because they have the connectors. However, SAP BusinessObjects BI is not up to date today. SAP is using Elastic Cloud. Both tools are very similar, but SAP BusinessObjects BI has some limitations and graphical queries. It's not as beautiful as Tableau or Power BI, but it is good. In some cases, SAP BusinessObjects BI is slower than MicroStrategy, but it has more features and tools. MicroStrategy is better for SAP environments.

It is important to have a good user security strategy. When building a model, take some time to consider how you want to secure it; limited or accessible. The goal is to build a Symantec career, but it may be in the early stages. It's a good effort. However, step by step, over time, it will pay off. It is a good investment.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

It's useful if you need to create dashboards that you check every day. Also, we can create a queue, but it will be updated every day with scheduled updates. We use MicroStrategy as an architect to call some tasks and procedures to update data or delete data. 

I am the user to check data in dashboards.

It's a good tool.

There is room for improvement in customer support. 

Another area of improvement is stability of this solution. 

I've been using MicroStrategy for one year.  

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. Sometimes Power BI is better than MicroStrategy.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We have a small team, so we have around two end users using this solution. We use the solution regularly. 

We had some problems. We have technical support for my clients because it's a big company. So, our technical service connected to the technical service of MicroStrategy, and they decided how to fix some problems. For example, we needed to add the time sort MicroStrategy to update the end date of the full time, top dates view from a specific time.

We evaluated Oracle BI and Power BI.

We saw a return on investment.

It is not an expensive solution. We need to pay for a license.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Create and share reports and dossiers, included mobile application

It is first full BI solution in our company, desighnted and administrated by BI department wo internal companyes 

I cannot say that MicroStrategy is a very good solution because it's not simple for the administrator. It is very simple for the users, though. In version 11, we had a lot of bugs and a lot of problems. But in 2020 we migrated to a new version, MicroStrategy 2020, and now we have no problem with this solution and it works very well.

In my opinion, Power BI and Microsoft servers are more powerful and cheaper than MicroStrategy. But only MicroStrategy has a solution for mobile phones. Actually, not only MicroStrategy, but MicroStrategy's solution for mobile is very good.

For example, all our top directors and board members only use the mobile version. Of course, we have some problems between iPhone and Android versions. It's not simple to build one report for two mobile decisions. Of course MicroStrategy works perfectly on an iPhone, but with Android we have some problems because there are different Android versions and mobile phones.

So now we don't want to migrate to something else, so we will stay with MicroStrategy, and our plan is to migrate to the cloud version or update to MSTR 2021 Enterprise solution.

In terms of what could be improved in MicroStrategy, it does not have enough variance of visualization for building dashboards, etc. and I need to buy a custom visualization from  different companies. It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts or if more visualization options will be added in future updates.

3 years totaly and 1 year on version 2020

We haven't had any bugs with the latest version of MicroStrategy.

We have limitations with MicroStrategy, but the limitations are from our servers because we have a lot of users, and a lot of reports, and of course we need the most ability from the system and from servers because we need to have a lot of memory and a lot of CPU. For example, every Monday at 9:00 in the morning, all our users, maybe 300 users, are running a lot of reports. It's not good for the system, but the system works. At the moment it is very hard for the servers, but MicroStrategy is a very stability system.

I don't have any down times. Of course, our decision to migrate to the cloud version is because I don't want to administrate the servers. It's not my problem. I want to administrate only MicroStrategy for users and reports.

I have not had any contact with tech support. We have our own team within our company for maintenance because we have one ticket to date that is open with the support team and we don't have answers for one week. I don't understand what's happening at times. But through this I can review the report or receive my problem. So of course I want to have an answer immediately.

Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?

MicroStrategy is comparable to Power BI, Tableau or Qlik. There is no big difference.

But there is a difference in price, in cost. With MicroStrategy I need to buy licenses for the users only once. Whereas for Power BI, I need to pay every year or every month.

I really recommend the Power BI, but if I were to go to another company, and change my work, today I would want to continue working with MicroStrategy. I really recommend it.

At the moment, we have received some cases to log in with MicroStrategy for education. It is a big plus of MicroStrategy's that we have this possibility. MicroStrategy sites have a great  education part, with a lot of meetings, a lot of video, etc...

On a scale of one to ten, I would give MicroStrategy a 10.

MicroStrategy is helpful for all aspects of the company's operations, including accounting, marketing, and human resources. It's an on-premises solution, but we are looking into migrating to Azure, but it won't be this year. We are looking forward to it in the future, but not at this time.

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 would like to see more integration. 

We have been using MicroStrategy for 12 years. My company is French, so we use MicroStrategy for business intelligence because it's not an international solution. It's a French solution.

MicroStrategy is highly stable, and the security is okay. We have a few MicroStrategy servers, a dispatch log, and a load balancer, and we can add more on-premise solutions and servers to improve the performance. We are considering making a switch to an Azure solution eventually but not right now. We can tweak MicroStrategy's performance, and the load balancer works well.

MicroStrategy is scalable. We currently have 7,000 users, but we are changing the use case and plan to grow to 20,000 users over the next two years.

We have a regular call with MicroStrategy support once a week.

MicroStrategy is easy to set up.

MicroStrategy helped us with the migration. We didn't do that alone. The MicroStrategy team is 10 persons, including one leader and eight or nine engineers.

We pay annually for an annual subscription, and we renegotiate the price periodically. I don't know if it's cheaper than solutions like Tableau or Power BI. I don't remember comparing the cost. It's okay for us because we have a lot of users, and MicroStrategy gives us a reasonable price.

I rate MicroStrategy eight out of 10. We've tried other solutions and we're sticking to MicroStrategy. We started using MicroStrategy in 2010, and we've looked into switching to another solution twice, but both times our procurement department has found that MicroStrategy is better. It's a great tool.

Our company does business intelligence recording.

The hyperintelligence is the most valuable feature.

Preparation, data loading, and data management application are challenging with MicroStrategy. It lacks cube-based analytics as it is outdated, meaning there is no memory or fast processing analytics, or MMA deployment.

We have been using MicroStrategy for three years.

MicroStrategy is very stable.

This is a scalable solution. We have 55 business users.

MicroStrategy's technical support is fair.

We used SAS prior to MicroStrategy and I preferred SAS.

The initial setup of MicroStrategy is complex. Our organization's structure requires the handling of three environments of the platform, development and production with the corporate technology, production support and the other IT support making it very complicated to get the developed final product live. Deployment took two weeks. 

There is a ROI from MicroStrategy. The data management and visualization to start the business strategies creates new services. However, you do require an adjustment to policies in order to make a profit.

I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year.

I recommend other organizations focus on the data processing and data preparation for the platform because it is very challenging. 

I would rate MicroStrategy a 7 out of 10. 

I work for different clients. Its deployment depends on the clients. For the most recent project that I worked on, it is deployed on-premises.

The dashboard features and functionalities that come through the MicroStrategy Suite are the most valuable. 

It can be used by end users with minimum knowledge of the product. They can run a report or create a dashboard on their phones, which is kind of cool.

It crashes multiple times for even small changes that I make on the fly in the dashboard. After doing all the necessary changes, the MicroStrategy desktop or even the web version kicks the users out, and all the changes are lost. This functionality is buggy in MicroStrategy. It is hard to keep track of all the changes that I have done before. I don't want to make copies of each change that I have made because I would end up creating a hundred dashboards. It is not feasible in a real environment. 

I haven't worked on integrating MicroStrategy with the cloud. I am not sure how it behaves in the cloud, but I have heard from a few of my friends that there are some hiccups when you kind of sync to the cloud through MicroStrategy.

I have been using this solution for close to eight years.

It is stable to a certain extent, but after some time, it kicks the user out of the activity that the user was doing in MicroStrategy.

Their technical support is excellent. Technical support has been tremendous, especially for MicroStrategy. 

The user base for MicroStrategy is huge, and you have multiple platforms to post your question. I get a reply by the end of the day.

Being an admin, it was an easy task for me. If you are not an admin and you are just a user or an architect, the initial setup is not that easy as compared to other tools.

They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools.

I would rate MicroStrategy an eight out of ten.