MicroStrategy vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared MicroStrategy and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. MicroStrategy is ranked #8 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.6, and holds a 3.4% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #10 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy 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 MicroStrategy and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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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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Azhagupandi Parthiban

Vice President Of Technology at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Good for security and performance but lack of user-friendliness

MicroStrategy, for me, it's the visualization and user-friendliness that needs improvement. When compared to Power BI and Tableau, that's their sweet spot. They're super easy to pick up and use. Plus, they've got this cool association feature that updates when you change the timeframe. But with MicroStrategy, there's a lot of room for improvement, especially in integrating with developed mobile solutions using MicroStrategy. We struggled to deploy to iOS, and the Android adaptation was a big challenge for us. Everything that worked in iOS wouldn't work in Android, and videos and calendars were a whole other mess. So, user-friendliness for non-technical users and mobile performance on Android, particularly in India, where it's the dominant platform, those are my two big areas for improvement.

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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

"When it comes to decision-making, the product is very useful and used in many departments since a lot of people prefer the reports to be generated by IBM Cognos."

"A positive feature is Report Studio, where we create beautiful, complex reports."

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

"It is a stable product."

"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."

"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."

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

More IBM Cognos pros

"The dashboard features and functionalities that come through the MicroStrategy Suite are the most valuable. It can be used by end users with minimum knowledge of the product. They can run a report or create a dashboard on their phones, which is kind of cool."

"The stability of the product is good."

"The option to use various administrative tools, like Integrity Manager, is a valuable feature."

"We pretty much use the knowledge base. We feel that Microstrategy's community is a good forum to use."

"We prefer having our analytics capabilities in a single platform, which MicroStrategy's offers."

"The most valuable features are ad hoc reporting and the ability to create dashboards."

"Dossiers are going to change the name of the game for us. We want to be able to have the executive committee go into a meeting and tell a story. We want them to tell us a story, not us."

"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."

"The solution is scalable."

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

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

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

"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."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

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

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"IBM Cognos's error messages seem to be a bit ambiguous. An error will be encountered and a message will be sent out very ambiguous and after investigating the error message it could be any number of issues. There was never a direct answer to the question or a direct answer to the error messages. Sometimes it would be a generic error message for 21 different solutions. It wasn't very specific, which required a lot of digging around and trial and error trying to fix the problem. The messaging in their error messaging is something needing improvement."

"It would be good if the solution had conditional formatting."

"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."

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."

"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."

"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."

"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."

"They should provide improved visual reporting."

More IBM Cognos cons

"Needs more visual essence and connectors for the ecosystems, which would be easy to use."

"I would like to see more Writeback capabilities that would allow our IT department not to be worried about the wild, Wild West of Writeback."

"The In-Memory Capability (cubes) needs a lot of improvement."

"There is room for improvement on the graphs."

"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."

"There are some challenges in our organization on how we store the data."

"Sometimes, it has become too complex to upgrade and adjust to the ecosystem."

"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."

More MicroStrategy cons

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

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

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"The initial setup could be simplified."

"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."

"It's an expensive product to use."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is pretty expensive."

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

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

"Pricing should be improved."

"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."

"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"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."

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"Now, the price is high."

"The licensing is a bit high per user."

"The pricing is fair."

"The price was good. We have had great support along the way."

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

"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"It is a costly solution."

"The solution is expensive."

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

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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

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance 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 ...

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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 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.

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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

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

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

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 5% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 34% of the time

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

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

December 2024

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Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

December 2024

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Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

December 2024

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

Essbase

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IBM

MicroStrategy

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

December 2024

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