MicroStrategy vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

MicroStrategy and SAP are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. MicroStrategy is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6, while SAP is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.9. MicroStrategy holds a 3.5% mindshare in BIT, compared to SAP’s 4.1% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of SAP users who would recommend it.

MicroStrategy

Read 159 MicroStrategy reviews

4,992 Views
3,248 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Read 103 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform reviews

5,814 Views
4,607 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

MicroStrategy

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and MicroStrategy compete in the business intelligence software category. MicroStrategy appears to have the upper hand in scalability and mobile integration, crucial factors in today's digital-driven market.

Features: SAP BusinessObjects supports a wide compatibility with various data sources, has a semantic layer for business queries, and provides enhanced scheduling and publication functionalities. MicroStrategy is known for its robust scalability, advanced data processing capabilities, and quality mobile integrations combined with a suite for data exploration.

Room for Improvement: SAP BusinessObjects could improve its setup complexity, increase visualization options, and enhance integration possibilities. MicroStrategy should simplify its interface, improve visualization features, and expand community support to ease setup and integration processes for users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP BusinessObjects offers flexible deployment methods across on-premises and hybrid clouds, although some users experience slow technical support response. MicroStrategy showcases adaptable deployment methods and integration flexibility, but its technical support has mixed reviews, particularly in proactive issue handling.

Pricing and ROI: SAP BusinessObjects is considered expensive, which challenges mid-sized enterprises, but offers negotiable licenses. MicroStrategy also incurs a high initial cost, yet its scalability justifies this price for larger enterprises. Both platforms provide notable enterprise features, but they differ significantly in their pricing approaches and perceived value.

To learn more, read our detailed MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

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)

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 4.1%, down from 5.4% 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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Sumeet Zalpuri

Data engineer at ASR Nederland N.V.

Fully integrated enterprise-level tool

The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult. For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation. Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated. You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders. I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.

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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

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

"There are people who are using MicroStrategy as transaction services."

"The most valuable features are drill down, dashboards, documents, bringing everything under one roof, and visualizations."

"It is a great tool and has the best offerings for doing data analysis."

"Technical support is knowledgeable. The right person gets back to us whenever we email them."

"Tech support has been great, very responsive. We usually hear back within a day. We usually email them and that works out perfect. The right person always gets back to us."

"Scalability is fantastic. It can go from a small operation up to a gigantic operation. "

"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."

More MicroStrategy pros

"The platform uses a lot of Java technologies so the performance and system-level management are tricky because it needs a lot of resources."

"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."

"We find the product to be very stable."

"Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."

"The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries."

"It can process big volumes of data fast."

"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."

"We use it to identify critical KPIs to senior management."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pros

Cons

"With Cube partition (v10.1 and above) scalability has not been an issue, but the Cube publish time, and temporary space consumption while the Cube is being published, has almost doubled during implementation of Cube partition."

"The learning curve is quite steep."

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

"I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side."

"There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done manually."

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

"The solution lacks good visualization. They should work on the user interface to make it more slick and modern."

"Something I would be interested in is more visualizations, because right now we use SDK to create some. If there were more out-of-the-box options, we would be happy with that."

More MicroStrategy cons

"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."

"They could reduce the licensing expenses. There is nothing really wrong with the product in terms of what it does. It works well. If you are a part of BI Launch Pad, then you could run ad hoc reporting, but for the integration, you need access to BI Launch Pad, which is quite expensive. We're an organization with 18,000 employees. It is not really practical to give people access to BI Launch Pad. So, from a customer perspective, in terms of saturating our employee base, we don't really have great saturation because of the expense."

"SAP BusinessObjects is actually losing popularity within our company because people find the user interface and the way things are set up not to be as easy as many other tools that are on the market, like Qlik and things like that."

"Most of the Apps right now are into dashboarding. This tool, for the Crystal Reports in the phase I'm primarily working on, does not have those dashboarding capabilities, like in the other advanced tools like Power BI or ClickView, and compared to them the dashboard generation is not that great."

"Technical support may not always be timely or effective."

"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."

"It is not simple to use."

"The performance could be improved, like when we extract a large amount of data."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They gave us a good deal."

"They offer yearly as well as perpetual licenses."

"MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product."

"The pricing is fair."

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

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

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

"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."

"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."

"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."

"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."

"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."

"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."

"Its price is fair."

"We are satisfied with the solution, but we are not satisfied with the licensing cost which SAP offers. They offer one lumpsum licensing which does everything. That is not the right strategy, because sometimes you don't have power users, they are only viewers, but we need to buy the full license for them. This is not something we want to continue with."

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform pricing and cost advice

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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

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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...

See all answers

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

Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?

Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

See all answers

What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?

What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.

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

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 6% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

SAP Analytics Cloud vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 27% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Cognos vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Databricks vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

January 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

December 2024

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report

Download SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects

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MicroStrategy

SAP

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.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.
Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.
Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

Reviews from Real Users

SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."

A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization.

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.

SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform

January 2025

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