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Microsoft Power BI vs ibi WebFOCUS 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

ibi WebFOCUS
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (7th), Embedded BI (10th)
Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
319
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. ibi WebFOCUS is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, down 1.8% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 21.4% mindshare, down 22.6% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Twanette Jurd - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence, reporting, data integration, ETL, data migration - everything is handled within one unified platform and highly scalable solution.
WebFOCUS goes beyond just dashboards. It's also used for operational reporting, making it crucial for mission-critical systems. In fact, a core strength is that it's not "just" a BI tool; it can be used to build complete applications. It is the best tool because of its all-in-one nature. Data integration, ETL, data migration, everything is handled within the same platform. Then, on the front end, it offers portals, reporting, distributed analysis, and more. For customers who have data in the right structure and right format, the WebFOCUS Designer tool is very powerful. It allows them to create self-service reporting applications.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It stands out for its ability to work across different platforms, support mainframe data, offer cloud integration, automate report scheduling, and provide a robust scripting language."
"The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's highly scalable and can handle significant data volumes."
"The most valuable feature is building ad hoc reports."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The solution's initial setup isn't too complicated."
"Its visualization capabilities are pretty good. It is very easy to use. You can easily make your dashboard."
"I liked that Microsoft Power BI handles a large amount of data. I can handle hundreds of rows from Postgres in a few minutes. I also like how it detects the relationship between the tables without explicitly saying that. It just detects the relationship automatically. That made it easier to work with the data."
"I've seen no issues with BI's stability."
"The product is scalable."
"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."
"We have plans to use the AI mechanisms and algorithms that Power BI uses to publish more easy-to-understand reports for our customers."
 

Cons

"When it comes to customer support, we don't always reach the right person. Sometimes, we get junior-level reps who aren't as knowledgeable as we are."
"If there were to be any improvements right now, their documentation needs to get in sync with their product."
"The solution can be improved by adding more automated options for reporting."
"The challenge lies not in what the tool can do but in how you use it and understand the data."
"The report server feature is quite limited."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"Power BI could have better metadata management. It's easy to use for a single person. However, it lacks an enterprise-grade metadata management system, which can be a problem if you're doing an enterprise deployment with multiple users."
"It needs a wizard that covers all its options."
"Most clients have MacBooks. Therefore, they use Tableau as Power BI Desktop is not available for the MacBook right now."
"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."
"I find the solution to be 70 percent stable."
"It should be more user-friendly. There are very small or tiny icons that you need to move very carefully. If you go a little bit up and down, some of the values change. Its user interface should be improved. It should be like Tableau. Its performance is also slow and should be improved. I definitely feel some sort of speed issues with Power BI. The integration of Excel with Power BI would also be good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"Price is the best feature of Power BI! You get a lot of value for the price. If you know how to use it, it's a great BI solution for your money."
"It is reasonably priced."
"It is free."
"It is a cheap solution for our needs."
"Its pricing is reasonable for the desktop stuff, but for enterprise-level, it is a little expensive."
"We have a premium Power BI license in-house that's quite an expensive license. It's $10 a month for four users and then I think 35,000 at the premium rate."
"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"I am satisfied with its price. Its price is very less as compared to Tableau and QlikView."
report
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Information Builders WebFOCUS?
I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive.
What is your primary use case for Information Builders WebFOCUS?
I use it for supplying and developing business intelligence (BI) solutions, data management and reporting applications, and for the development of complete web-based applications. It's a versatile ...
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...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
 

Also Known As

WebFOCUS
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ace Hardware, AutoZone, Fred Hutch, MasterCard, OFS Brands, PostFinance, Real D, Yellow Pages, ABC Financial, AcuSport, BBVA, Babcock
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. ibi WebFOCUS and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.