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Databricks vs MicroStrategy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
MicroStrategy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
159
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th), Embedded BI (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Parag Bhosale - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrating engineering and learning, but cost challenges arise with cluster management
We often use a single cluster to ingest Databricks, which Databricks doesn't recommend. They suggest using a no-cluster solution like job clusters. This can be overwhelming for us because we started smaller. We prefer using a small to mid-sized cluster for many jobs to keep costs low, but this sometimes doesn't support our operations properly. We need to stay in sync with the DVR versions, and migrations can pose challenges. For example, issues arose when we moved a cluster from a previous version to the latest one. We could use their job clusters, however, that increases costs, which is challenging for us as a startup. Maintaining this infrastructure can be a headache.
Harjinder-Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a simplified attribute and maze-creation process but lacks a thriving community
The solution provider should take some initiatives to grow the MicroStrategy community because, presently, it's quite small, and I wasn't able to find a solution to my problem by searching in the community. MicroStrategy can offer user-friendly training through platforms such as YouTube. Recently, at our company, the features we were able to utilize in the developer tool were not there in the workstation; such issues can be resolved through training videos or learning content distribution from MicroStrategy. The solution provider is presently promoting the workstation on the cloud instead of the developer tool, so there should be relevant resources for learning about the product. MicroStrategy is also working on integrating AI technology into its product. The object migration process from one environment to another using the solution is somewhat complex. It involves package creation, dependency, and transportation. But the migration process is rather simpler in OBIEE, where reports need to be archived in one system and unarchived in another, for example, from Dev to SID.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The time travel feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"The setup is quite easy."
"Databricks has helped us have a good presence in data."
"Databricks is a robust solution for big data processing, offering flexibility and powerful features."
"Databricks is based on a Spark cluster and it is fast. Performance-wise, it is great."
"Databricks is hosted on the cloud. It is very easy to collaborate with other team members who are working on it. It is production-ready code, and scheduling the jobs is easy."
"Databricks allows me to automate the creation of a cluster, optimized for machine learning and construct AI machine learning models for the client."
"Project Schema/metadata- Very flexible, connects to a variety of different data sources and is very flexible for many specific tasks. Attributes/metrics/filters created once used by everyone."
"We are using it for operations analysis and sales data analysis."
"It's an open platform. That's also important. You can create your own data connectors. There's everything you can do with APIs. It's not closed like, perhaps, an SAP system might be."
"It scales well. It used to have only a max of four I-servers, but I think recently, somewhere in version 10, they doubled that, so you can have eight I-servers now."
"The ability to integrate with PPT is another plus. The platform's ability to write back data directly to the database is also good."
"We have ramped up user adoption."
"Speed for high level aggregation by using Intelligent Cubes."
"I like the user interface and the experience has been great."
 

Cons

"I believe that this product could be improved by becoming more user-friendly."
"Databricks can improve by making the documentation better."
"The solution could be improved by integrating it with data packets. Right now, the load tables provide a function, like team collaboration. Still, it's unclear as to if there's a function to create different branches and/or more branches. Our team had used data packets before, however, I feel it's difficult to integrate the current with the previous data packets."
"It's not easy to use, and they need a better UI."
"Databricks would benefit from enhanced metrics and tighter integration with Azure's diagnostics."
"I would like it if Databricks adopted an interface more like R Studio. When I create a data frame or a table, R Studio provides a preview of the data. In R Studio, I can see that it created a table with so many columns or rows. Then I can click on it and open a preview of that data."
"The product could be improved by offering an expansion of their visualization capabilities, which currently assists in development in their notebook environment."
"I have seen better user interfaces, so that is something that can be improved."
"The analytic speed would probably be what I would look for in terms of improvement because we have super huge data, and if I do not build views on top of data, then reports render really slowly.​"
"The solution lacks good visualization. They should work on the user interface to make it more slick and modern."
"If they can make it more stable, in terms of the connectivity, that would help."
"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."
"MicroStrategy's mobile dashboard is still not a RESTful design."
"The solution's reports are not very flexible."
"Data writeback, and on-the-fly predictive analysis results from R and Python could be improved."
"Sometimes, it has become too complex to upgrade and adjust to the ecosystem.​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."
"Databricks uses a price-per-use model, where you can use as much compute as you need."
"My smallest project is around a hundred euros, and my most expensive is just under a thousand euros a week. That is based on terabytes of data processed each month."
"The licensing costs of Databricks is a tiered licensing regime, so it is flexible."
"I would rate the tool’s pricing an eight out of ten."
"I would rate Databricks' pricing seven out of ten."
"I am based in South Africa, where it is expensive adapting to the cloud, and then there is the price for the tool itself."
"The price of Databricks is reasonable compared to other solutions."
"​The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable.​"
"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."
"They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."
"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."
"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us.​"
"Now, the price is high."
"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."
"It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think."
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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
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
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 manually. Additionally, the hierarchy creation process in MicroStrategy could b...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
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Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
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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