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Amazon QuickSight vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon QuickSight
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
3rd
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Amazon QuickSight is 7.2%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mohd Farhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Has seamless data filtering and visualization for client satisfaction
One area for improvement is the cost, as it's a bit expensive. The caching mechanism also charges too much if I need to cache any data. Sometimes it takes time to display data, suggesting a need for enhancement in data visualization speed. Additionally, the role-level security is challenging to implement, and it could be improved to allow access control per department more easily.
Sumeet  Zalpuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Fully integrated enterprise-level tool
The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult. For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation. Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated. You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders. I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is simple to implement."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its flexibility to visualize certain logs."
"Amazon QuickSight can provide insights from the available data. It supports various rule types. We get the options of machine learning and insights, which are not available in other intelligence tools. It is easier to use, more stable, and cheaper than other solutions."
"Efficiency has definitely improved, and the speed of developing analytics and insights has increased by at least twenty percent."
"The most valuable feature I have found is the low-level securities are very easy to use."
"Amazon QuickSight has introduced a new functionality called Q bar, which allows the user to do natural language queries and get additional insights using some built-in generative capabilities."
"Compared to other reporting tools, it is very effective but does require an understanding of certain concepts in QuickSight. This understanding is crucial for creating dimensions, changing metrics, and visualizing reports."
"It helped the managers to visualize the data activities."
"The reporting features the solution offers are excellent."
"The web intelligence reporting tool and universe designer are the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
"Business analytics are the most valuable features of this solution; I don't have experience with the other functional features offered."
"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
"The setup is pretty easy. It's not hard at all."
"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."
"The common metadata environment means that the entire organisation has the same definition of core measures rather than these being derived in spreadsheets or specific reports."
 

Cons

"Amazon QuickSight's visualization could be improved."
"There should be better connectors for different data sets."
"The setup process falls somewhere in the middle. It is not straightforward, nor is it complex, but there is a significant amount of work needed on the back end to make it function."
"An area for improvement in Amazon QuickSight is storage. Data cleanup also needs improvement because I'm experiencing errors when cleaning the data. Amazon QuickSight needs video tutorials showing its different functions and purposes."
"It's not ideal for reports that are more complex."
"You can't tell a data story as well in QuickSight as you can on others, especially in TIBCO Spotfire."
"Right now, you can't use Amazon QuickSight on other cloud providers, so I'd like it to have availability on other cloud providers. This is an area for improvement in the product. What I'd like to see in Amazon QuickSight in the future is a distributed centralized system where I can manage all reports in one place, and for Amazon QuickSight to become reporting as a service."
"Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area where we found QuickSight lacking."
"The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."
"The interface could be slicker and more user-friendly."
"The solution is not good for self-services, they can improve in this area."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features."
"SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau. Currently, for data visualization, you need to spend more money to buy another solution such as Power BI or Tableau. It is also very hard to integrate it with other third-party solutions. Its integration with other solutions should be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The standard edition is free to use for exploration purposes while the enterprise edition needs to be paid for. The pricing for this solution is very reasonable."
"The solution is not affordable."
"I'm using a paid version of Amazon QuickSight, paying about $22 monthly. As I have yet to learn about the pricing for other tools, such as Power BI, I won't be able to compare."
"A highly affordable cost structure with fixed membership and timeframe basis options."
"I wouldn't say that it is an expensive product, but to stay competitive they would need to bring down the prices."
"Amazon QuickSight charges $250 per user, which becomes expensive when managing multiple departments."
"The product pricing is better than other vendors."
"It's affordable compared to other long-term contractor business tools available in the market."
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"Its price is fair."
"SAP is losing market to its competitors because of its costly user license and licensing model. They can do much better on the licensing side. That's what Microsoft has been doing, and that's why Power BI is gaining market share at the moment. SAP needs to relax a little bit on the licensing part. If Microsoft is giving people a solution that is half of the cost of SAP, people will definitely go with Power BI."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon QuickSight?
The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon QuickSight?
Amazon QuickSight charges $250 per user, which becomes expensive when managing multiple departments. However, this cost is offset by the advantages it provides.
What needs improvement with Amazon QuickSight?
One area for improvement is the cost, as it's a bit expensive. The caching mechanism also charges too much if I need to cache any data. Sometimes it takes time to display data, suggesting a need fo...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
 

Also Known As

QuickSight
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon QuickSight vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,646 professionals have used our research since 2012.