MicroStrategy Previous Solutions

Pietro Saglietti

Management Consultant at STG

I have prior experience with tools like Cognos and Microsoft Analysis Services, which are proprietary solutions. I am exploring a range of open-source alternatives such as Pentaho, Power BI, and to some extent, Tableau.

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Azhagupandi Parthiban

Vice President Of Technology at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were mainly using Excel, but then I did evaluate Clickview, MicroStrategy, and Oracle's BI tool. This was around 2015-2016, so we weren't using Microsoft's BI solution yet.

Clickview was actually pretty good back then, and Oracle was a natural choice since we were already an Oracle shop.

But MicroStrategy won us over with its real-time data replication and data sharing capabilities. So, for the past 15-20 years, I've been working with Oracle solutions, including implementing data security policies and the like.

And then, for the past few years, I've been managing our MicroStrategy deployment, which basically uses Microsoft's BI platform behind the scenes.

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it_user156600

Systems Analyst at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

No previous solution, we do have business objects within our environment but it was not selected as the platform moving forward.

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Anuja Dhakshinamoorthy

Deputy Manager at InfoCepts

I have some limited exposure when it comes to Power BI.

For users to be able to use MicroStrategy, they need to have a clear understanding of the application part of the product. When it comes to Power BI, it is easier for users to create dashboards with the tool's self-service capabilities, but it won't be an easy process when it comes to MicroStrategy because they might need to rely on developers to help with the schema part, that user can develop a dashboard with the help of the schema that has been set up. With Power BI, it is easy to pull the data and directly consume it while using the dashboards without the help of any developers. The self-service part is more convenient in Power BI. In MicroStrategy, only if the scheme is built properly can the end users consume the data from the schema. Then, users have to be completely dependent on the developers in MicroStrategy. Power BI is very easy to configure, and you just can do fancy customizations, but in MicroStrategy, one requires skills to do the same, considering that it has a few limitations. The calculations of even complex or huge data can be easily dealt with when it comes to MicroStrategy. If a user has to deal with simple data sources with limited size, then Power BI is good, but MicroStrategy is better at dealing with large amounts of data.

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Ahmed El Banna

Fintech Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

We are also using Qlik, and Progress on another project.

We use many solutions. We generate a large number of reports from the data warehouse and populate them into tables. In addition, I'm creating some reports and views, as well as self-service BI reports in some cases, for the end-user.

Aside from the enterprise, we have two projects with Oracle and SQL databases for inventory and asset management.

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RicardoPedro

Northern Europe IT Business Intelligence Manager at Adecco

The companies that I worked previously were using Power BI and Tableau and Sapio as business intelligence tools. Currently, I'm largely focused on MicroStrategy.

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it_user69156

BI Expert at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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KéziTibor

Sr Project Manager and Consultant at IBT

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.

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KRISTINA SELYUGINA

Data Engineer at Solution BI

We evaluated Oracle BI and Power BI.

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Evgeny Gryazov

Data Analysis and Visualization BI Team Leader at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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

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Ahmed Yousri

System Engineer at Roads & Transport Authority

We used SAS prior to MicroStrategy and I preferred SAS.

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it_user514302

Sr. MicroStrategy Consultant at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution; this was my first business intelligence tool.

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it_user111504

VP of Customer Experience at a consumer goods company with 501-1,000 employees

We previously used several different solutions. :) I’ve been in business for a while. I actually for this business never switched, as Lottoland was a new business. The reason I didn’t use the technologies that I used in the past such as Oracle, SQL Server with Crystal Reports, Jaspersoft, Cognos, QlikView, SAP BO and so on..., is that I had looked at MSTR’s potential, but their pricing structure was far too complicated and convoluted. When that changed, it tipped the scales to choose them as our provider.

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Brad Cutler

Enterprise Analytics Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were actually giving people SQL access to the database and certain people had it, but not everybody. While we had bottlenecks before, the bottleneck just got wider and the need to consume data got bigger. We really needed a more holistic solution that was governed and defined by a team to get the one single truth.

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reviewer2169057

Co-Founder at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

I currently use other tools like Business Objects, Power BI, SQL Server Reporting Services, and others.

I didn't choose MicroStrategy. It was already in place at my previous company, and I inherited it.

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reviewer1178424

Vice President & CIO at a logistics company with 201-500 employees

Previously, the main solutions that we used were Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and Amazon Quick Site.

We were using Oracle OBIEE, which is a Business Intelligence Enterprise. We moved from OBIEE to MicroStrategy.

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it_user514329

Managing Partner and Sr. MicroStrategy Enterprise Solution SME at a tech company

I started my career with MicroStrategy and have not worked with a different solution before. On the other hand, I was involved in a project where we switched from another BI solution, Cognos, to MicroStrategy, while contracting for a government entity.

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it_user513906

Manager at a marketing services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution.

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it_user5598

Senior Director, BI Architecture at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

We used Cognos before. The main reason for switching is that at the time when we made a decision to switch, Cognos was unable to handle the data volumes that we required. Latest versions of Cognos have improved in this respect. View full review »

it_user238434

Senior Manager at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

This depends on the client's needs and existing IT systems.

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it_user512088

MicroStrategy Product Manager at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Up until a year ago, I used ProDiver. We switched because our company merged with another and they were using MicroStrategy.

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it_user511203

Engineering Senior at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have always used MicroStrategy.

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it_user123129

Data Visalization Architect at MSD

We switched because MicroStrategy is the most-advanced and feature-rich tool.

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it_user807420

BI Analyst Manager at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

We prefer having the analytic capabilities in a single platform like MicroStrategy, rather than many solutions. That is one of the main reasons why, in 2012, we switched to MicroStrategy.

Prior to that we had Cognos. To do report design we used to go to Report Studio, for analysis, Analysis Studio, for cubes different front-end applications. And it was so confusing. Now with MicroStrategy as a single-source software and single platform, we can do anything. Not only reporting and analysis; everyone can go to one single location and get what they want. So that is one of the primary reasons we have moved to MicroStrategy.

In the past, I'm talking about 2012, during that time period, we spent a lot of money and a lot of our budget - we allocated something like 20% or 30% for new users to be trained on Cognos and other applications, because there was no single platform. But when we saw MicroStrategy it was a single platform. So we quickly decided, a major decision: Going forward, for any strategy projects, we'll use MicroStrategy.

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reviewer993717

Director Departamento Data Analitics at a wellness & fitness company with 1,001-5,000 employees

No, I didn't.

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it_user807339

Senior Applications Developer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

No. We were producing Excel spreadsheets and putting them out in order for people to consume, then we produced those. Now, they are just in reports that we can access over a website instead of pulling it down from our file server.

I think that trying to get into all the analytics and all of the visualizations is what turned everybody on: the colors, the pretty charts, etc. I do not think they really know how to use it yet, but we will get there eventually.

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it_user413238

Technical Specialist at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

I’ve used Qlikview and Tableau – which is good in self service than enterprise delivery. I love MicroStrategy as it has full depth BI functionality inside right from Admin to End Users scalability. Hence, MicroStrategy is the best solution I have used to date.

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Alexandra Misios

Data Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Our clients use Tableau, QuickView and PowerBI, but we use MicroStrategy at our company.

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it_user807357

Director Of Healthcare Economics at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We are currently using a combination of Excel, SQL, and ad hoc queries.

I am new to this position. I have been there a year. I got a glimpse of some of the things we were using it for initially and realized that the tool is a lot more powerful than what we were using it for. I do not believe we were leveraging it to its full capabilities. Being able to get the right data to the right people in a timely manner is really important, and I saw a lot of opportunity to use that tool to solve some problems that I currently had. I do not know where it is going to end, but we are trying to leverage it as much as possible and build out the capabilities.

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it_user262917

Retail Solutions Manager at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

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it_user198780

Associate at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Prior to switching to MicroStrategy’s Business Intelligence tool, we were using Excel and SQL queries to track business metrics. These solutions required more technical knowledge. There is no centralized ecosystem which can integrate and troubleshoot if there are issues.

We purchased MicroStrategy licenses, expecting our business users to like the seamless experience. MicroStrategy has a mobile component which helps our sales team track and showcase insights to stakeholders without any problems.

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it_user144300

Director of BI / Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

I have worked with many other solutions but keep choosing MicroStrategy whenever the requirements are complex. There are many niche players that may excel in certain specific areas but if you need to push the boundaries and have a complete BI solution that is not focused in a niche such as data visualization then MicroStrategy is a leader that should be considered.

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it_user531798

Consultant at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have used many BI solutions other than MicroStrategy.

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it_user69087

Head of Data Analytics at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Microsoft Excel (power pivots). Microsoft is the easiest and the more user friendly especially for beginners in the simple edition (pivot table). We don't use Microsoft BI products like report and analysis services - I can't estimate how they are easy to use and powerful.

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it_user807423

Director Analytics And Data Management at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees

We were using Excel. We use Hyperion for financial reporting but we got the point where we had to put on our "big boy pants" and get a real solution.

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it_user185844

Senior BI Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I am an external consultant and I know the Microsoft BI suite. I also worked a bit with QlikView. The company that uses MicroStrategy had no other tools before it.

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it_user162021

Business Development Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees

We did not switch from a previous solution. We use Tableau, Microsoft and MicroStrategy depending on the needs or requirements of the customer.

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it_user512919

Microstrategy Developer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution.

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it_user125418

Owner/Principal at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

One customer was using Cognos and I advised them that they may want to consider switching to MicroStrategy for the reasons I stated above. View full review »

Hetul Patel

Senior Data Analyst at Charutarhealth Org

I didn't use any other product before. I was just using a dashboard that I made through PHP programming.

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it_user807426

Senior Functional Front End at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees

Yes, we had Cognos TM1, we have Excel. These programs are still in use but they will be less in use in the future. We couldn't get rid of them yet but at some point in time we think we'll manage to.

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it_user519399

Freelance MicroStrategy Expert, MicroStrategy Master at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

I previously used Panorama on top of Microsoft SSAS cubes. I think that in today’s world, the cube is just a fragment of the performance tuning, rather than being the complete solution. Therefore, when people keep asking for the raw data, the cube simply does not contain it.
In today’s big data projects, nobody thinks about taking all the data out to a cube, with very limited capability to drill back to the actual live data.
Regarding SSAS cubes, today’s dashboards are complex, and only a small number of developers actually write MDX queries correctly. Therefore, each additional logic requires a very experienced developer and takes a lot of time.
Panorama had stability issues.
I also worked with Qlik, but I do not think it is meant for today’s big data projects. Nobody wants islands of data completely disconnected from the original data (no way to drill for further details, and no way the detailed level will be extracted from Hadoop/Vertica into an in-memory application).

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it_user72435

Solution Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did not previously use a different solution.

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Okay Akdeniz

Business Application Group Manager at OBASE

We also sell Microsoft BI. Commonly, enterprise-level or corporate-level companies use the MicroStrategy, however, SMB companies prefer Power BI.

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reviewer1552281

Ict Infrastructure Cluster Division Head at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We have used other products.

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Partha-DWBI Analytics Expert

Principal Co-founder at Enterprise BIDI Solutions

We worked with IBM Cognos and its business adaption due to its rich data visualization capabilities, widget creation, etc.

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SenApp3210

Senior Application Analyst at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have used CognitiveScale in the past.

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it_user807348

Software Development Management

No.

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it_user511212

Senior BI Developer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

MicroStrategy was the first tool I worked on in five years. But I would probably switch to Tableau if I needed to work on visual insights and utilize a variety of graphs.

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it_user514278

Program Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

I previously used SAP BO, but it was moving here and there between companies and becoming a bit too much to handle.

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it_user511446

Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We’ve always worked with MicroStrategy.

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it_user507996

MicroStrategy BI Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I used SAP BusinessObjects before, but MicroStrategy is more robust and has very professional support.

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ProjectMan37583

Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

We used SSRS reports, but the performance and visualization were always an issue.

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it_user538236

Sr Staff BI Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were previously using Crystal Reports. We switched because of the analytical solution offered with this product.

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it_user221904

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We had Excel and a tool called Excelcius, which was just a tool to create a better looking dashboard. But your intelligence was still in Excel. We wanted to remove the intelligence out of the Excel sheets and into a central database.

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it_user139296

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using Tableau, but it had scalability issues and per-user licensing costs.

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it_user70134

Senior business Intelligence consultant at Asociación SevillaUP

We are still using multi vendors solutions. There are historical datawarehouses that need to be maintained (Oracle BI, Actuate, Microsoft BI), but all new development is done with MicroStrategy. Reason for that is mainly practical and economical. We prefer paying licenses to one signle vendor whenever posible. We are also testing the new free Desktop version for a reduced number of users.

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it_user278022

Microstrategy Project Manager & Microstrategy Lead Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Previously, I have used different solutions. However, I have found MicroStrategy better than any other tool.

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it_user505854

BI Manager at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We did not have a previous solution.

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it_user257493

Application Developer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used SSRS. We still use this sometimes but have been working to transition to MSTR. MSTR gives the end users more flexibility when looking at reports.

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it_user406914

Principal Architect at a tech consulting company with 501-1,000 employees

We did not have any previous solution.

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it_user250524

Development Director at a government with 10,001+ employees

We have always MicoStrategy.

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it_user807354

Senior BI Developer at a individual & family service with 501-1,000 employees

I was not involved.

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it_user132261

Sub-Manager of Development at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We used Oracle Discoverer but it was very poor.

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it_user510429

Business Intelligence Consultant at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

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it_user26829

Business Intelligence Manager at a aerospace/defense firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used a different solution. We switched because MicroStrategy was more robust.

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it_user164241

MicroStrategy Expert with 15 years exp. at Strategy BI Consulting

MS OLAP and SAP BW.

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reviewer1497201

Principal Partner at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

We are currently using Tableau. It's less expensive.

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it_user807372

Developer at a renewables & environment company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We are currently using Tableau. We recently signed a contract with MicroStrategy. We are going to move all our reports from Tableau to MicroStrategy. We are not going to connect Tableau to MicroStrategy, which we could. We are just going to let our Tableau license expire in March, then we are just going to go MicroStrategy all the way.

We do not want to pay Tableau and pay MicroStrategy. It is a business decision. We are going to do one, not both.

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it_user5331

Business Intelligence Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 10,001+ employees

Used Tableau, Cognos, SSIS, BO, and Pentaho.

Moved to MicroStrategy for a scalable and mobile solution.

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it_user295878

Senior BI Analyst at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees

The company I was working for chose that course of action. I'd rather we did a proof of concept with several vendors instead of choosing MicroStrategy up front.

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it_user193482

Information Publishing Portfolio Manager at a comms service provider

Previously, the company used SAP Business Objects. I made the decision to switch over to MicroStrategy because Business Objects was acquired by SAP at the time. Most ongoing development on BusinessObjects became SAP-focused. This didn’t help us because we are an Oracle-centered organization. MicroStrategy seemed to be the best fit due to its being major database agnostic.

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it_user476271

Tech Lead at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have used some other solutions simultaneously and also at previous work places but I have never switched from one tool to another.

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it_user174993

MicroStrategy Consultant at Interstate Batteries

MicroStrategy is my first BI tool.

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it_user807333

BI Developer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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it_user442254

Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

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

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it_user158172

GRM Spain - Tools and Risk Models with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were evaluating Tableau, which everybody found to be a better solution. However, MicroStrategy is the official reporting tool in my organization.

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it_user807396

BI Team Lead at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

I've been using MicroStrategy for 20 years but I've used Cognos, I've used Crystal, and there used to be another reporting tool called Eureka Suite. I've worked with Tableau too. It was a company decision to switch.

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it_user136422

Industry Analyst at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

None View full review »

it_user807402

BI Administrator at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using SSRS and we converted that, and SAS as well.

We switched because it is a stable platform and we know the good features in MicroStrategy. We have moved more and more of the reporting solutions to MicroStrategy. We still have some SSRS reports, but by the end of this year we are planning to move everything to MicroStrategy.

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it_user6837

Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have not previously used a different solution.

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Director3013

Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The choice was political: IBM Cognos against MicroStrategy, and due to IBM internal mechanisms.

My criteria for selecting a vendor are, first, that the application software works, and secondly, the support - and local support as well.

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it_user528906

Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees