Looker Studio vs MicroStrategy comparison

The compared Google and MicroStrategy solutions aren't in the same category. Google is ranked #12 in RT , with an average rating of 7.2, and holds a 2.3% mindshare in the category. MicroStrategy is ranked #8 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.5, and holds a 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of MicroStrategy users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Looker Studio and MicroStrategy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy Report (Updated: February 2023).

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy

February 2023

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

Reporting

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

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.

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Srini-Dhanaraj

Founder & CEO at imfine.club

Available for free and can help businesses resolve their data migration problems

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten. Google Data Studio is a cloud-based tool. With cloud-based tools, there can be two challenges, the first one being associated with the bandwidth of your data strength. If I run a report from my home because of the wi-fi connection, it may give an excellent response. When I run the reports, Google Data Studio develops reports from my home, and because of wi-fi, it works in an excellent manner. When I am on the road or at the wheel, if I use the internet data from my mobile to browse my reports, the performance may not be good, and this issue is not because of the product but because of the bandwidth. The second issue arises when you connect Google Data Studio to a source system to extract the data to do the visualization. If the source system is not responding as quickly as expected, it could be the reason why the report may be printed slowly. Considering the aforementioned aspects, the problem may not be because of Google Data Studio but because of the source system.

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Pietro Saglietti

Management Consultant at STG

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."

"Report Studio: This is the most powerful and sophisticated tool for professional reporting."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."

"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."

"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."

More IBM Cognos pros

"Valuable features include advanced integrated analysis and easy implementation."

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

"I find it favorable regarding speed of development, ease of building, and flexibility."

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

"The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, allowing us to compare revenues."

"I am impressed with the tool's scheduling mechanism, refresh mechanism, and different types of charts."

More Looker Studio pros

"It helps all the store managers and supply chain people to obtain a view of the data and plan the next week, the next month, quarters, and so on."

"The simplicity of MicroStrategy is what I like the most."

"Simplifies and accelerates the attribute and maze creation process"

"Semi-automatic support of implementing date dimensions, including delta to prior year implementation."

"It is a reliable solution for our needs."

"MicroStrategy's solution for mobile is very good."

"It's a stand-alone mobile development app that you don't even have to do business intelligence on. You can just use it to build apps."

"The mobile for MicroStrategy is the best of all the BI platforms. As a separate product for the mobile device, MicroStrategy is the entire BI platform. It is an enterprise solution, a separate unit, etc."

More MicroStrategy pros

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."

"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."

"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."

"The tool needs to improve the connectivity since I see that, at times, there is a need to increase the memory in the database."

"Data modeling needs to be improved. We use the ETL process, and when we get errors, we then need to identify which structural change is required. The error messaging should be better. They should be descriptive rather than semantic."

"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 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."

"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."

More IBM Cognos cons

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"The challenges with Google Data Studio are associated with the security part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Panels are not as easy to use as other data extraction UIs."

"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"There are issues with integration and I encountered limits and warnings, especially with my pivot table size."

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

More Looker Studio cons

"I did not see any additional value of providing one button for installation on the whole platform if it was going to be installed for different servers. You would have to make customization every time. There was no additional value in an installer."

"There are a lot of offerings, and we are not fully using everything to its advantage."

"If they can make it more stable, in terms of the connectivity, that would help."

"From a stability standpoint, from MicroStrategy, I would say it's fairly consistent. I would give it a "B" because there are times where we have issues that are just inexplicable. They go away and then we have no resolution. To me, that's not acceptable. There are just times where our users can't access things and we're not sure why, and that's a problem to me."

"It is actually pretty complicated to use. It is complicated enough that user adaptation is sometimes difficult. We developed more experts rather than people using it."

"I would like to see a feature where migrations are easier. When you migrate from certain environments, it could probably be a little cleaner. Sometimes it seems to be somewhat clunky when you migrate from one environment, say a development to a test or production environment."

"There needs to be better visualization."

"I would like to see a single standalone application to control everything from the administration perspective, and also to develop new applications."

More MicroStrategy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing policies are comparatively cheaper than other products in the market ."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

"Pricing should be improved."

"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."

"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."

"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."

"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

"The product is available for free."

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"The tool is free."

"The pricing is fair."

"We have one of the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information."

"While initial cost of MicroStrategy is still on the higher side, the long-term benefits brings down overall cost of ownership significantly as compared to other tools like Tableau/Cognos."

"The price of MicroStrategy is reasonable."

"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."

"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."

"We are waiting to switch to Microsoft Power BI because MicroStrategy is too costly."

"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. W...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicati...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

The solution is a visualization tool that helps to make dashboards.

See all answers

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs IBM Cognos

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Looker Studio

Compared 44% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Looker Studio

Compared 22% of the time

Tableau vs Looker Studio

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs Looker Studio

Compared 4% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Looker Studio

Compared 1% of the time

More Looker Studio Competitors

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 20% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 5% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

November 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio

November 2024

Download Looker Studio product report

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

November 2024

Download MicroStrategy product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

Data Studio

No data available

Learn More

IBM

Google

MicroStrategy

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

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.

Genesys, Shueisha

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.

Buyer's Guide

Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy

February 2023

Free Report: Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy

Find out what your peers are saying about Looker Studio vs. MicroStrategy and other solutions. Updated: February 2023.

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