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AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) vs MicroStrategy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
AtScale Adaptive Analytics ...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
38th
Average Rating
5.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (4th), Data Governance (34th), BI on Hadoop (3rd)
MicroStrategy
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AtScale Adaptive Analytics (A3) is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.5%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
it_user822762 - PeerSpot reviewer
The GUI interface is nice and easy to use, but the organization of the icons is not saved across users
Connecting to a Hadoop database to create a cube to connect to Tableau. We want to be able to easily create cubes which can be connected to Tableau for visualization The product had many issues. We had great collaboration with the product development team, but the product was not able to meet our…
Pietro Saglietti - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust solution for powerful data analytics
I need some reliable references or resources because it's proven quite challenging to obtain information about MicroStrategy in Italy. It's frustrating not to have access to pricing details because, when discussing analytics tools in general and specifically mentioning MicroStrategy to potential customers, I can't provide them with essential information about pricing, licensing, cloud options, on-premises solutions, and more. Overall, it is a good product and I would rate it nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"The comprehensiveness or broadness of the software functions or business intelligence functions that it provides is valuable. It is also quite easy to use and user-friendly."
"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."
"Cognos' most valuable features are the bundled studios, simple UI, and advanced features like the ability to create data modules."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"The GUI interface is nice and easy to use."
"The simplicity of MicroStrategy is what I like the most."
"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."
"​Mobile brings reports/dashboards closer to the business user."
"This solution has allowed us to become a top-class competitor among other consulting companies."
"The platform can be easily monitored. You have quite a good overview of tasks which are being run."
"The whole repository side of things is beneficial because you develop it once, and you can use it anywhere, in the Enterprise grade."
"It is always nice to have one solution in a single platform. You can do pretty much everything, instead of having to get a little bit here or a little bit there."
"We have ramped up user adoption."
 

Cons

"I would like to have predictive and forecasting capabilities in Cognos. It's one thing to do reporting, and another thing to easily predict or forecast certain data points, which is very important for all the clients."
"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."
"The solution's support could be better."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."
"The charts and graphics are weak."
"The organization of the icons is not saved across users."
"The product was not able to meet our 10 second refresh requirements."
"There was an issue with the incremental aggregation not working as indicated."
"With Cube partition (v10.1 and above) scalability has not been an issue, but the Cube publish time, and temporary space consumption while the Cube is being published, has almost doubled during implementation of Cube partition."
"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."
"They need to improve on distribution services. There are lack of features which were there earlier with Narrowcast, but they are not there in the distribution services."
"The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets."
"We would really like to see MicroStrategy have some support teams based more in Europe, because for now it seems that there is one person for the whole CE region. That is not exactly what we would like to see. We do know that MicroStrategy supports most places, either in the US or India, but those are different time zones, people, and cultures."
"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."
"It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts."
"The graphs available for the new dashboard of version 10 are weak."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"The solution is affordable."
"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"There is some additional licensing that we needed to purchase because we were touching data outside of our core data platform. The cost was approximately $25,000 for the additional licenses, which were approximate 45 licenses. For the application itself, updates, and the core platform it was approximately $50,000. Giving a total cost of $75,000 annually for our usage of IBM Cognos."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
Information not available
"There is no subscription, I am using the free version."
"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."
"​The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable.​"
"The licensing is a bit high per user."
"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."
"We have one of the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information."
"It is expensive. We would like to extend it to many users, but we are currently restricting that because the cost is a constraint. If we are given a chance, we would love to expand it."
"The pricing is fair."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
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What do you like most about MicroStrategy?
The stability of the product is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
AtScale, AtScale Intelligence Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Rakuten, TD Bank, Aetna, Glaxo-Smith Kline, Biogen, Toyota, Tyson
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.
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