Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared Microsoft and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 22.4% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #10 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management

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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Amol Rane

Solutions Architect M365 at Sogeti UK

Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics

The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.

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Prithwish Kumar Ghosh

Manager at Capgemini

Handles a huge amount of data at a time and offers good processing speed

You will definitely get bugs, for sure, with every version that comes. Oracle is active in creating fixes, and they release patches. If you are using Oracle Cloud and the infrastructure is owned by Oracle, you don't need to worry. They will push the bug fixes themselves. When we use PBCS or EPBCS applications on the cloud, they handle those things. It might be a downtime during the weekends for 30 minutes, but it's a very stable area. You don't actually use Essbase when you use PBCS or EPBCS. It is in the backend, and things are happening there as well, for sure, but you won't get to see the console. You'll just see the front end, the planning part.

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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

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."

"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."

"If they want dashboarding, storytelling, and analyzing why KPIs are met or not, then Cognos is a better candidate than Qlik Sense."

"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 basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."

"For planning, forecasting, in-boxing, modeling in general and for predicting numbers and doing work analysis, they are excellent."

"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."

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

More IBM Cognos pros

"It ingegrates nicely with Office 365."

"When we are introducing Microsoft BI to our clients, if they're familiar with Excel, the transition phase will be much easier for them. They can easily switch from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft BI. The core foundation or the base technology is the same in both tools. There are a few limitations in Microsoft Excel, and this is where Microsoft BI comes in."

"The uploading of information is very easy, as you just use an Excel sheet to start work right away and obtain the benefits of Power BI."

"Microsoft BI is scalable."

"The product is intuitive and user-friendly."

"It integrates with all of the Microsoft tools."

"We have plans to use the AI mechanisms and algorithms that Power BI uses to publish more easy-to-understand reports for our customers."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"The solution is scalable."

"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."

"The solution can handle a large volume of data."

"Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."

"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."

"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."

"There are many problems with the product's stability part, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."

"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."

"This product could use improvement in terms of usability for those with less technical know how."

"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."

"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."

More IBM Cognos cons

"The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team."

"I would like them to provide a license that just allows us to see dashboards. What I don't like about this solution is that in order to just watch a dashboard, you need a license. Currently, you need to purchase a full license of Power BI Pro just to see something, which is not attractive. If you have a license, you can see a shared dashboard, but you can also build a dashboard or you can collaborate with other people. However, if you only want to see a dashboard, there is no license for that. I only want to see the dashboard, and I don't want to do anything more than watching the information on the dashboard. There is no license that allows you to see a shared dashboard. This is one of the areas of opportunity because I would like a lot of people to be able to see a shared dashboard, not to interact with it or to collaborate online with it. I would like to see more compatibility with non-Microsoft data sources. Given the fact that everything is related to Microsoft Azure and all services available on Microsoft Azure, I see that they're building more connections to Microsoft Azure services instead of other non-Microsoft services. I understand the strategy, but it would be good to have more compatibility with non-Microsoft data sources."

"The DAX features need some improvement. It's not as easy as Excel. They need more DAX formulas."

"There are some limitations in Power BI; you have to work in the Power BI base. However, if you want something not out-of-the-box and you want something custom, you have to do a lot of work."

"The integration in Microsoft BI could improve for other solutions, such as Oracle DB and PostgresSQL. Additionally, the reporting from the databases to Microsoft BI should be in real-time and the overall performance could be better."

"I believe Power BI could improve by making data tables and databases easier to handle, especially for non-programmers who may not be familiar with languages like Python. Simplifying these aspects would enhance the usability and accessibility of Power BI for a broader range of users."

"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."

"The solution could be quicker at rendering data."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."

"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"It's an expensive product to use."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Pricing should be improved."

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

"It is pretty expensive."

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

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

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it."

"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."

"No comment."

"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."

"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"I have not had a customer suggest the solution is too expensive. There are licenses to use the solution."

"Microsoft BI is not expensive."

"Power BI is subscription-based, and you have three options. The Pro edition, which is the standard one, is about $9 per user. The Premium edition, which provides AI and cloud capabilities but at a limited size, is for small to medium enterprises. It is about $20 per user. For large enterprises, such as manufacturing facilities, there is an option for the capacity. The capacity subscription is about $4,000 per capacity level. They also have an option for the on-premises version, but it is not common to see someone going for the on-premises version. The on-premises version requires a specific license that is attached to SQL Server. I believe it is about $17,000, but I'm not sure about it."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"It is a costly solution."

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"The solution is expensive."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

42%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

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

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 wou...

See all answers

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 info...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?

It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

If I got the opportunity to work with Hyperion, which is the best product, I would definitely go with that. The main ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

We provide complete ownership of this application to Walmart projects. In the UK system, we support and develop for t...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs IBM Cognos

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs IBM Cognos

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 16% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

Workday Prism Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 19% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 12% of the time

Tableau vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

December 2024

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

December 2024

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

December 2024

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

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

Essbase

Learn More

IBM

Microsoft

Oracle

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.”

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

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.

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

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

December 2024

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