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MicroStrategy vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
160
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (3rd)
Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (4th), Reporting (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AJIN S L - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The single stack solution will always be more profitable, scalable, and elastic for organizational needs."
"The ability to integrate with PPT is another plus. The platform's ability to write back data directly to the database is also good."
"I find MicroStrategy the most suited to the enterprise-wide BI platform, because of its scalability and stability.​"
"The option to use various administrative tools, like Integrity Manager, is a valuable feature."
"It's a stand-alone mobile development app that you don't even have to do business intelligence on. You can just use it to build apps."
"The most valuable features are drill down, dashboards, documents, bringing everything under one roof, and visualizations."
"We've made a few enhancements to our Enterprise Manager system to allow self-reporting to grow. We see that as a very useful system. It's been incredibly beneficial in diagnosing production performance issues, diagnosing what reports are running slowly, where the SQL could be optimized, opportunities or metrics where we see long-time running performance. Enterprise Manager has been absolutely vital in giving us some of the insights about our system."
"It definitely impacts people, who are excited to use it."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
 

Cons

"The learning curve is quite steep."
"I would like to see more integration."
"If there are some advanced visualization features - maybe I'm not aware of them - but if there were a Vitara which could work on top of MicroStrategy, it would make sense for MicroStrategy to have that within their own library. So they should add more visualizations to the library."
"Needs more visualizations out-of-the-box."
"I would like to see a single standalone application to control everything from the administration perspective, and also to develop new applications."
"MicroStrategy should become more user friendly. It should behave more like Tableau."
"I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version."
"They need to do a better job In its ability to allow end users to produce their own reports, metrics, and self-service business intelligence."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"Logging capability is needed."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a bit high per user."
"Now, the price is high."
"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."
"There is no subscription, I am using the free version."
"​The solution is scalable. A little expensive perhaps, but it is scalable.​"
"The pricing is fair."
"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."
"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

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.
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.
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...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
For those starting to use this tool, there is a free version available which is beneficial. The company also finds the pricing to be good.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java. The platform works with Java, and it has brought some issues to the company.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

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.
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about MicroStrategy vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.