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 7.5, 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.

MicroStrategy

Read 160 MicroStrategy reviews

4,652 Views
3,064 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 14 Oracle Essbase reviews

124 Views
101 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

MicroStrategy

Oracle Essbase

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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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February 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

6.7

Number of Reviews

160

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (8th), Embedded BI (3rd)

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (10th)

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 3.4%, down 3.6% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.2% mindshare, up 0.7% 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

RANOJOY PAUL

Analyst at Tata Consultancy

Stores multidimensional data, good customer support and interface is very easy

It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL. It doesn't store data in tables in the back end. To load data into Essbase, we need to prepare it in a table format. When we find the data in the table, we need to verify it. This way, you can rate the data. But Essbase stores multidimensional data. We have dimensions, which means the data belongs to some company or some time period. For example, if you work for three years, your salary should be something. In this way, we prepare top-level members called dimensions. The dimension defines your position, the year, and the section you were working in the company. We get an intersection of all these dimensions for certain data, and fetching that data is very fast in Essbase compared to normal SQL. If you store this data in a normal SQL table, you need to prepare a row with your company name, employee name, employee ID, joining date, and everything, and then you need to push it into a SQL table. You can search it using your query, but here, that thing is different. Here, you can collect data using forms, reports, and we use a Microsoft tool, which is an add-in called Smart View. Using that, you would just take that data. Here, you need to just create an integration of all these dimensions, and then only you can find the data.

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

"Getting more data to people more quickly. Providing more flexibility for how they use the data."

"It is a good tool to help our customers visually see loads of data."

"The most important feature is the way it handles ad hoc queries and provides formatted reports."

"The interactive features that appear in the report were good. The external rendering option they give with multi servers was also good."

"In the past, when we had so many legacy systems, with Cognos and others, it was took multiple steps to get what we wanted. Now, it's a seamless integration. We can connect directly, in the form of In-Memory Cubes or live-publish cubes, to the data warehouse, and blend in the data with big data. Not only relational databases, but we can also integrate other third-party files, and create a single-source software."

"The most valuable features of MicroStrategy are user-friendliness and integration with the different data warehouse systems."

"The data governance leads people to trust the data that they have, and they know where to get it."

"MicroStrategy has powerful data security features, which are crucial these days. For example, when users view data in MicroStrategy, they're only allowed to see a portion based on the permissions. When we evaluated other solutions like Power BI or Tableau, we found the security is very poor. They can't help us secure access to the data."

More MicroStrategy pros

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

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"The solution is scalable."

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

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

"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."

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

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts."

"One of the things that I want to see MicroStrategy do is become more cloud native. Right now, the deployment on cloud is very easy to ruin, it is very much like spinning up separate VMs."

"I think they're still lacking on customer service. I think historically, MicroStrategy's customer service was a lot better than it is today."

"Consolidate the functional offering to be more concise in the front-end for web reports, dashboards, and self-service."

"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."

"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."

"MicroStrategy lacks that community support. You're either stuck figuring things out yourself or paying expensive fees to MicroStrategy consultants for help."

"The pricing could be lower because it is costly."

More MicroStrategy cons

"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."

"It's an expensive product to use."

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

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"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."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

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."

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

"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."

"All BI software vendors' list prices are high. It's about a price that fits the customer's needs. And I think MicroStrategy has some flexibility in its pricing model where we can easily demonstrate a total cost of ownership comparison against any of the other players."

"There is no subscription, I am using the free version."

"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 price of MicroStrategy is reasonable."

"The pricing is fair."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

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

"It is a costly solution."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

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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

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance 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?

MicroStrategy could learn from Power BI's user-friendly interface. I find the user interface lacking when compared to Power BI. Additionally, their hyperintelligence could be improved in certain as...

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 22% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Cognos vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 33% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 18% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 13% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 7% of the time

Workday Prism Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 3% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

February 2025

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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

February 2025

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