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MicroStrategy vs Oracle Essbase comparison

 

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 (15th), 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 (12th)
 

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 2.8% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.4% mindshare, up 0.9% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MicroStrategy1.2%
Microsoft Power BI7.7%
Tableau Enterprise6.2%
Other84.9%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase1.4%
Oracle Enterprise Manager4.1%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials4.1%
Other90.4%
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

"The way to create the dossier is easy, and adding geo-spatial related information on the map is quite straightforward."
"Many of my users have iPhones and iPads, and being able to deliver mobile dashboards to them is a great asset for them."
"Cube performance and easy integration with third-party tools/products, are valuable features."
"On our mobile solution you can deploy up to 100,000 users. In our case, we're up to about 10,000 active users, and MicroStrategy's server technology behind the scenes, the Intelligence Server and the Mobile Servers, are very robust and they can handle the workload."
"Technical support has sent us to rapid response before, when we really needed them."
"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."
"Provides seamless integration between browser-based BI and Mobile BI."
"It scales well. It used to have only a max of four I-servers, but I think recently, somewhere in version 10, they doubled that, so you can have eight I-servers now."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"Oracle Essbase enables organizations to take their strategic decisions, which helps them make the right decisions at the right time."
"The solution is quite scalable, which is the most useful aspect for us."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."
"It is my opinion, it is more comfortable in Oracle rather than a SQL server."
"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."
"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."
 

Cons

"MicroStrategy is not cloud native today and some of their APIs are a little limiting.​"
"It is performing well, but sometimes we have complex requirements and the performance decreases, and then we have to find another way to make it perform again. That is what you encounter when use the project, but that's inevitable because if we would have used another product, we would've had the same thing."
"I wouldn't recommend it if you have no data warehouses; for example, you would need to find a lot of knowledge to transform the data in MicroStrategy itself. So that could be quite challenging."
"In some cases MicroStrategy took too long to respond the opened cases, what made the clients very upset and disappointed."
"Transaction Services is a new field which allows users to have interaction with the databases. I am pretty sure MicroStrategy has improvements lined up in this section."
"We did encounter stability issues. We had a serious metadata corruption problem."
"Cube publish time exponentially increases with MicroStrategy Cube size. Also, it has been observed that the Cube data gets unloaded from MicroStrategy's Cube cache resulting in reports and dashboards being impacted, having no data when executed."
"MicroStrategy should become more user friendly. It should behave more like Tableau."
"It's an expensive product to use."
"The initial setup is pretty complex."
"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."
"I find managing the database difficult, especially regarding optimization and data storage with the huge volume of data."
"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"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 include the financial consolidation module that is available in EPM."
"The technical support for EPM is bad. I don't remember anytime that the service support helped me in something."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no subscription, I am using the free version."
"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."
"They offer yearly as well as perpetual licenses."
"It is expensive. We would like to extend it to many users, but we are currently restricting that because the cost is a constraint. If we are given a chance, we would love to expand it."
"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."
"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."
"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."
"The price of MicroStrategy is reasonable."
"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 - 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
16%
Construction Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
Insurance Company
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?
My company has many licenses for MicroStrategy because we can build reports in this tool. I don't know what the cost is for these licenses.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
I am quite satisfied with the reporting part of the product. However, compared to other tools, the modeling part is not as strong. Data modeling is not as easy on MicroStrategy as it is on other pl...
What is your primary use case for MicroStrategy?
Harjinder, I recall approximately two years back we had a conversation with you about ForgeRock and Auth0, and I think we had discussed MicroStrategy as well. Currently, we are using it for financi...
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.
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 ...
 

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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