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MicroStrategy vs Oracle Essbase comparison

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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

MicroStrategy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
164
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (14th), Embedded BI (5th)
Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

MicroStrategy and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. MicroStrategy is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 1.2%, down 2.0% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.5% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MicroStrategy1.2%
Microsoft Power BI7.1%
Tableau Enterprise5.8%
Other85.9%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase1.5%
Oracle Enterprise Manager4.0%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials3.8%
Other90.7%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Prabu Thanikchalam - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Architect & Software Engineering Department Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Reporting has improved with strong administration tools but performance and memory still need work
Compared to the new tools, MicroStrategy is still on the old mechanism, the attributes and metric creations that are still a bit vague compared to other tools. They can actually improve on the go, having derived metrics or derived attributes in MicroStrategy. If they have something like that for the attributes as well, it will be good. A pain point is MicroStrategy memory fluctuations that we couldn't actually read that much. If they can improve that performance, that would be great. MicroStrategy struggles a bit with large data volumes, but they are coming up with new ideas. They have moved to Intelligent Cubes, which can actually handle better data handling. They are coming up with good measures to handle big data.
Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Infosys
Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements
The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are using it for operations analysis and sales data analysis."
"MicroStrategy is now the de facto tool within the organization, it's the go-to BI tool in the organization."
"It is scalable and integration-friendly."
"It is a good tool to help our customers visually see loads of data."
"It's useful if you need to create dashboards that you check every day. Also, we can create a queue, but it will be updated every day with scheduled updates."
"The subscription model is excellent. About half of our reporting comes out of the subscription, and from there, the ease of use in dragging and dropping reporting objects."
"I find MicroStrategy the most suited to the enterprise-wide BI platform, because of its scalability and stability.​"
"Rapid development: Once you have data, it is pretty fast to develop dashboards that are available in both web and mobile environments."
"Its multidimensional analysis is great; 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, allowing you to do sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."
"Oracle Essbase enables organizations to take their strategic decisions, which helps them make the right decisions at the right time."
"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."
"The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports."
"Essbase is a multidimensional database (MOLAP) is undoubtedly leading in that space."
"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."
"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."
"Oracle's capability to define custom hierarchies and dimensions has helped my organization in performing nuanced data exploration and advanced modeling because we use Oracle Essbase for dimension definition and also to define the properties of these members, such as dynamic members, stored members, shared members."
 

Cons

"I don't think that they will, but I'd like to see parallel processing, scalable parallel processing."
"Needs more visual essence and connectors for the ecosystems, which would be easy to use."
"Support: The support line used to be top notch, but now it seems as though the people manning that line are not very knowledgeable and can very rarely actually answer the question or solve the problem."
"They need to improve the web."
"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."
"MicroStrategy should improve migration automation. Additionally, I would like there to be better partnership support."
"I would say their technical support quality has been a little questionable lately and I have brought up our concerns to their regional director."
"The setup is quite complex and requires extra configurations."
"The solution could be cheaper. It is costly, and the initial setup could be simplified."
"I would like to improve calculations by optimizing performance and reducing processing time."
"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"The initial setup is pretty complex."
"The technical support for EPM is bad. I don't remember anytime that the service support helped me in something."
"Variable attributes functionality needs to be incorporated in Planning, though it is available in Essbase I believe it is still not in Planning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​They gave us a good deal.​"
"They offer yearly as well as perpetual licenses."
"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."
"The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque."
"We are waiting to switch to Microsoft Power BI because MicroStrategy is too costly."
"We have one of the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information."
"The solution’s licensing cost is expensive."
"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."
"It is a costly solution."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"Essbase is competitively priced."
"The solution is expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise102
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, I have only a four when it comes to pricing and setup cost because in my earlier companies, everything was done by another team. Here, we actually handle some of ...
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
Compared to the new tools, MicroStrategy is still on the old mechanism, the attributes and metric creations that are still a bit vague compared to other tools. They can actually improve on the go, ...
What is your primary use case for MicroStrategy?
MicroStrategy is basically a reporting tool, and I take care of the administration side, so I handle complete maintenance and administration of MicroStrategy servers across all environments. Day-to...
What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?
A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...
What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Essbase?
The pricing functionality in Oracle Essbase is handled through the model you develop, where each cube can be customized with members and dimensions for pricing and entities. You can implement any f...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Essbase
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo 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.
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