MicroStrategy vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared MicroStrategy and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. MicroStrategy is ranked #7 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.4, and holds a 2.8% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #11 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

MicroStrategy

Read 161 MicroStrategy reviews

4,734 Views
3,456 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 14 Oracle Essbase reviews

1,949 Views
136 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

MicroStrategy

Oracle Essbase

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between MicroStrategy and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

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BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

July 2025

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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

6.6

Number of Reviews

161

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Embedded BI (2nd)

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (11th)

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 2.8%, down 3.7% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 0.9% mindshare, down 1.0% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

AJIN S L

Technical Analyst at Allianz

Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements

The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

Read full review

Pratik Phapale

Oracle Hyperion Essbase Developer at HCL Technologies

Multidimensional cube structure enables complex data storage and Oracle consistently upgrades Essbase

It's definitely growing and has many great features, especially in the cloud. I haven't used the on-premises server as much. Multidimensional data processing: Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. It's a multidimensional cube where we can store and process details, generate reports, and do multiple data processing, which isn't possible in Oracle or other alternatives. So, I'm grateful for this experience. Continuous improvement: Recently, I faced a version upgrade from 11.1.2 to 11.4. Now I'm on 11.2.10. Essbase is continuously upgrading its features in different areas, like configuration, properties, and the cloud platform. It's great to have experience with this, as well as working with the fundamental parts of the VM sets.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use MicroStrategy as an integrated solution with some of their other CRM type applications."

"I think we have a huge enterprise-wide push to Visual Insight. Our environment has transformed over the last year. We were a strong "grid to PDF," "document to PDF," that's all we did. And then they came in with these Visual Insights and everyone was like, "Wow, that's kind of cool." We created a static reporting portal behind it and now, it's just taken our reports to another level. The level of insight that you get in a 30-second glimpse, it just revolutionized it for us. It gives the user a larger subset of the data so that they can actually maneuver around, rather than being specifically pointed at whatever your document is designed for."

"Technical support is knowledgeable. The right person gets back to us whenever we email them."

"We are able to manage to get very in-depth and detailed management of the data model on the backend."

"The product is very mature. It's quite robust and an excellent enterprise-level solution."

"In terms of functionality, MicroStrategy is alright. It's a solid BI tool and can handle most tasks you'd expect."

"The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs."

"I find MicroStrategy the most suited to the enterprise-wide BI platform, because of its scalability and stability."

More MicroStrategy pros

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"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."

"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."

"The solution is scalable."

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

"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."

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

"The solution is stable and reliable."

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"It crashes multiple times for even small changes that I make on the fly in the dashboard. After doing all the necessary changes, the MicroStrategy desktop or even the web version kicks the users out, and all the changes are lost. This functionality is buggy in MicroStrategy. It is hard to keep track of all the changes that I have done before. I don't want to make copies of each change that I have made because I would end up creating a hundred dashboards. It is not feasible in a real environment. I haven't worked on integrating MicroStrategy with the cloud. I am not sure how it behaves in the cloud, but I have heard from a few of my friends that there are some hiccups when you kind of sync to the cloud through MicroStrategy."

"We've found the scalability to be very good. However, it depends on the environment. In general, it could be much better."

"I would like to see more integration."

"Our data warehouse is sort of static; negative load and that is it. It is not as real-time as we would like. We are working on building that out first to create more real-time, at which point we will work on some potential integrations with other applications, but I don't think we are there yet."

"This solution is missing enhanced features in the dashboards."

"The solution lacks good visualization. They should work on the user interface to make it more slick and modern."

"The interface you can design in MicroStrategy is great, but I feel it needs to be refreshed, add a bit more functionality. I would like to see more capabilities on the mobile side, to bring it on par with apps that you see in the App Store."

"There is room for improvement on the graphs."

More MicroStrategy cons

"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."

"It's an expensive product to use."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."

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

"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."

"The initial setup could be simplified."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us."

"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."

"The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable."

"The pricing is fair."

"Pricing, in general, is high. With Power BI, you get mobile with the license, whereas with MicroStrategy, you have to purchase mobile for extra."

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

"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."

"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."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"Essbase is competitively priced."

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

"It is a costly solution."

"The solution is expensive."

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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

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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?

Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly. Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mi...

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 concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be bett...

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 the Asda account, known as Eltham. We provide installation and support to over 50...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 25% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 12% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 11% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 7% of the time

Workday Prism Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

June 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

June 2025

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Also Known As

No data available

Essbase

Overview

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.

MicroStrategy

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.

Oracle

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 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

July 2025

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