MicroStrategy vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

MicroStrategy and Hitachi Vantara are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. MicroStrategy is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6, while Hitachi Vantara is ranked #20 with an average rating of 8.3. MicroStrategy holds a 3.5% mindshare in BIT, compared to Hitachi Vantara’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Hitachi Vantara users who would recommend it.

MicroStrategy

Read 159 MicroStrategy reviews

4,992 Views
3,248 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Pentaho Business Analytics

Read 43 Pentaho Business Analytics reviews

697 Views
524 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

MicroStrategy

Pentaho Business Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Pentaho Business Analytics and MicroStrategy compete in the business intelligence and analytics category. Pentaho seems to have the upper hand with its powerful open-source ETL capabilities and community-driven innovations, whereas MicroStrategy offers a comprehensive suite for enterprise analytics but at a higher cost.

Features: Pentaho is recognized for its robust ETL capabilities through Pentaho Data Integration, supporting a range of reporting and dashboard tools like JasperReport and BIRT. Its Marketplace and Community Dashboard Framework drive community innovations. MicroStrategy excels with a suite of enterprise-level tools, robust mobile capabilities, and comprehensive analytics offerings, making it suitable for large-scale operations and mobile integration.

Room for Improvement: Pentaho needs to improve visualization simplicity and bridge the gap between Community and Enterprise Editions while enhancing documentation and support. MicroStrategy should work on a more intuitive user interface and make data ecosystem integration easier. Users find its visualization lacking compared to other solutions like Tableau or Power BI.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pentaho provides flexible deployment options, including on-premises and hybrid cloud models, with substantial community support. Enterprise users benefit from direct support. MicroStrategy offers diverse deployment options, including cloud solutions, with structured support services that receive mixed feedback; technical support is generally rated higher than customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho is cost-effective, especially with its free Community Edition, and offers good ROI with its affordable Enterprise Edition. MicroStrategy, in contrast, is more expensive but offers high ROI through its broad capabilities, though it comes with higher upfront licensing costs. The comprehensive analytics tools justify the price for larger enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed MicroStrategy vs. Pentaho Business Analytics Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

January 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

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

159

Ranking in other categories

Embedded BI (3rd)

Pentaho Business Analytics

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Operations Analytics (4th), Reporting (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.5%, down from 3.5% 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

Harjinder-Singh

Data engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Offers a simplified attribute and maze-creation process but lacks a thriving community

The solution provider should take some initiatives to grow the MicroStrategy community because, presently, it's quite small, and I wasn't able to find a solution to my problem by searching in the community. MicroStrategy can offer user-friendly training through platforms such as YouTube. Recently, at our company, the features we were able to utilize in the developer tool were not there in the workstation; such issues can be resolved through training videos or learning content distribution from MicroStrategy. The solution provider is presently promoting the workstation on the cloud instead of the developer tool, so there should be relevant resources for learning about the product. MicroStrategy is also working on integrating AI technology into its product. The object migration process from one environment to another using the solution is somewhat complex. It involves package creation, dependency, and transportation. But the migration process is rather simpler in OBIEE, where reports need to be archived in one system and unarchived in another, for example, from Dev to SID.

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Sayan König

Senior Manager, Financial Services at KPMG

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.

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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

"I have never had any problems with the stability."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of MicroStrategy is the ability to make your own cubes and, from those, create viewpoints."

"It's user-friendly, also the MTDI cube is a very good approach, as it helps you to use the pre-format instead of using the standard objects from the schema of MicroStrategy."

"Having the analytics capabilities on a single platform."

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

"Technical support has sent us to rapid response before, when we really needed them."

"The architecture is very solid."

More MicroStrategy pros

"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."

"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."

"Easy to use components to create the job."

"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"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."

"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."

"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."

Cons

"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 a feature where migrations are easier. When you migrate from certain environments, it could probably be a little cleaner. Sometimes it seems to be somewhat clunky when you migrate from one environment, say a development to a test or production environment."

"Data writeback, and on-the-fly predictive analysis results from R and Python could be improved."

"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."

"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."

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

"It needs better visualizations."

"Data preparation-wise, it was not so straightforward with respect to getting different sources. Preparing or transforming the data inside and then bringing it onto the dashboard was a bit difficult, and the experience could have been better."

More MicroStrategy cons

"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."

"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."

"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."

"Version control would be a good addition."

"Logging capability is needed."

"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."

"The repository should be improved."

"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."

More Pentaho Business Analytics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a bit high per user."

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

"For larger businesses, the pricing is logical."

"They gave us a good deal."

"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."

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

"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."

"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Free and commercial versions are available."

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Comparison Review

it_user6978

Co-Founder at Helical IT Solution (Jaspersoft, Pentaho, Talend, Kettle, DWBI, ETL, Ctools, iReport, Jasper Report)

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Educational Organization

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?

There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done manually. Additionally, the hierarchy creation process in MicroStrategy could b...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 24% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Cognos vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 6% of the time

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KNIME vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 29% of the time

Databricks vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 15% of the time

SAP Crystal Reports vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

Tableau vs Pentaho Business Analytics

Compared 9% of the time

More Pentaho Business Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

January 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Business Analytics

January 2025

Download Pentaho Business Analytics product report

Also Known As

No data available

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics

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MicroStrategy

Hitachi Vantara

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.

Pentaho is an open source business intelligence company that provides a wide range of tools to help their customers better manage their businesses. These tools include data integration software, mining tools, dashboard applications, online analytical processing options, and more.

Pentaho has two product categories: There is the standard enterprise version. This is the product that comes directly from Pentaho itself with all of the benefits, features, and programs that come along with a paid application such us analysis services, dashboard design, and interactive reporting.

The alternative is an open source version, which the public is permitted to add to and tweak the product. This solution has its advantages, aside from the fact that it is free, in that there are many more people working on the project to improve its quality and breadth of functionality.

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.

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

January 2025

Free Report: MicroStrategy vs. Pentaho Business Analytics

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