MicroStrategy vs Sisense comparison

MicroStrategy and Sisense are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. MicroStrategy is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.6, while Sisense is ranked #21 with an average rating of 7.3. MicroStrategy holds a 3.4% mindshare in BIT, compared to Sisense’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Sisense users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

MicroStrategy and Sisense are key players in the business intelligence market. While MicroStrategy is commended for affordability and support, Sisense is favored for its advanced features, making it the choice for those focused on capabilities rather than cost.

Features: MicroStrategy offers robust analytics, comprehensive dashboards, and excellent data connectivity. Sisense excels in handling large datasets, ease of embedding analytics, and providing flexible integration.

Room for Improvement: MicroStrategy needs better cloud integration, simplifies its initial setup, and reduces complexity. Sisense should enhance customization options, improve user interface for non-technical users, and broaden tool intuitiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MicroStrategy's deployment is complex, requiring technical expertise but has positively rated customer support. Sisense offers straightforward deployment with responsive support, appealing to those needing quick implementation.

Pricing and ROI: MicroStrategy usually has higher setup costs, but long-term ROI is acceptable. Sisense is seen as cost-effective initially, providing faster return on investment and quicker time-to-value.

To learn more, read our detailed MicroStrategy vs. Sisense Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. Sisense

November 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MicroStrategy is 3.4%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sisense is 1.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado

Deputy Director Operations Management Control at Mapfre

Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department

I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.

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Azhagupandi Parthiban

Vice President Of Technology at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Good for security and performance but lack of user-friendliness

MicroStrategy, for me, it's the visualization and user-friendliness that needs improvement. When compared to Power BI and Tableau, that's their sweet spot. They're super easy to pick up and use. Plus, they've got this cool association feature that updates when you change the timeframe. But with MicroStrategy, there's a lot of room for improvement, especially in integrating with developed mobile solutions using MicroStrategy. We struggled to deploy to iOS, and the Android adaptation was a big challenge for us. Everything that worked in iOS wouldn't work in Android, and videos and calendars were a whole other mess. So, user-friendliness for non-technical users and mobile performance on Android, particularly in India, where it's the dominant platform, those are my two big areas for improvement.

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FernandoMorote

Senior Software Engineer/BI Data Analyst at a analyst firm with 501-1,000 employees

Business intelligence solution that has improved automation and provided meaningful insights

This solution does not have tabs. In order to have tabs, you have to download an add-on to mimic the tabs. They should be integrated to improve the solution. We have also experienced bugs in the widget which has required us to delete the widget and recreate it. When one user adds filters to data, the next user sees the same results which can cause confusion. The next user can also make changes to 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

"We are able to generate quality reports easily which allows us to decrease response time."

"This solution allows you to input a wide range of file formats."

"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."

"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."

"Self-service is possible through the use of dashboards, which are also very intuitive. Stories can be used to pin snapshots, tell the story for meetings, etc."

"In terms of stability, I think that Cognos is more stable than Tableau and Power Bi because of its framework manager concept that allows us to import metadata and store it in the framework manager."

"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."

"Cognos is the best application with dashboards,batch reporting, jobs, events and ad-hoc reporting for business users."

More IBM Cognos pros

"Having the intelligence server sit in the middle is huge for us. It is going to save us a lot of time, make our work a lot simpler, make it easier for deployment, and getting the reports in the hands of our users sooner."

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

"We have ramped up user adoption."

"I think what we're currently excited about is the ability to integrate R. Most of our data scientists use R for their modeling. I heard at one of the sessions, here at MicroStrategy World 2018, that you can put your R scripts directly into MicroStrategy, so any modeling effort that you've done in the past can be transferred into MicroStrategy."

"The scalability is great. It was one of the selling points for us on MicroStrategy."

"The convenience of it. Having it on the mobile, so someone has it right there in their pocket most of the time."

"MicroStrategy's solution for mobile is very good."

"We are using it for operations analysis and sales data analysis."

More MicroStrategy pros

"I have found the dashboard creating feature helpful."

"The dashboard design interface is very intuitive and allows you to quickly and easily produce professional, innovative dashboards."

"Ability to work with very large data sources without the limitations of Excel."

"Support is very responsive and clearly one of the strengths of Sisense. I have always received a fast response and the staff is very helpful."

"The solution's technical support team is good."

"It has allowed me to move my data to the cloud."

"Whenever we have an issue or are unsure how to proceed, they manage to simplify the issue and help us execute it in a graceful and scalable way."

"ElastiCube Manager is a very easy to use ETL tool, which includes the ability to easily transform raw data into reusable data."

More Sisense pros

Cons

"The data uploads that we do, such as Excel files, have a lot of restrictions. If we can make it a bit more user-friendly, allowing us to have more flexibility it would be a great help."

"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."

"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."

"The performance is a bottleneck and something that can be improved."

"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."

"I would like for the platform to become more standard. If we make a development on our report and our dashboard, it will not be used in another solution. That means there is no portability for the developers."

"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."

"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."

More IBM Cognos cons

"The product could be improved by adding additional visualization."

"Lacks decent visualization and the process for creating new objects needs to be simplified."

"Another feature to consider in the future would be adding some additional offline capabilities without using desktops."

"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."

"I would like to see a single standalone application to control everything from the administration perspective, and also to develop new applications."

"Scalability is something which will need to be improved when it goes to a bigger audience."

"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."

"We would like access to more storage and access to more metadata to build the right programs that can construct all the stuff for us instead of us having to type it in all the time."

More MicroStrategy cons

"I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone."

"They should improve the filters to create downloaded data by moving them to the top of the dashboard."

"I would like Sisense to improve its performance, particularly when we are dealing with large-scale data."

"The administrative side of Sisense is a little cumbersome and confusing."

"The initial version we purchased only ran on Windows servers, which was less than ideal for our DevOps team. I believe that has been remedied in the latest release."

"The solution's setup process could be easier."

"This solution does not have tabs. In order to have tabs, you have to download an add-on to mimic the tabs. They should be integrated to improve the solution."

"At present there are additional costs involved if we wish to share our data queues within this solution, which we would like to see removed."

More Sisense cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."

"It is pretty expensive."

"It's more expensive than similar solutions like Tableau and Power BI."

"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."

"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."

"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."

"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."

More IBM Cognos pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The pricing is fair."

"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."

"They gave us a good deal."

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

"We actually researched some of the other solutions. For options, price, and customer acceptance, this product has worked well for us."

"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."

"The solution’s licensing cost is expensive."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"This solution is more expensive than Tableau, Qlik and Dundas. It is an expensive tool. They charge $75,000 while Tableau is $45,000."

"Compared to Power BI or Tableau, Sisense is much more expensive."

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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

Educational Organization

55%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

15%

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...

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What do you like most about IBM Cognos?

The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.

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What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?

I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...

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What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

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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.

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What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

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

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What do you like most about Sisense?

The solution's technical support team is good.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sisense?

I would say that using Sisense on Linux's platform might not be advantageous for everyone. I am more familiar with Wi...

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What is your primary use case for Sisense?

For the use case, the tool is mostly used from an analytic point of view. We are focused on huge data size because th...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Cognos

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs IBM Cognos

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs IBM Cognos

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs IBM Cognos

Compared 3% of the time

More IBM Cognos Competitors

Tableau vs MicroStrategy

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 5% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Sisense

Compared 39% of the time

Tableau vs Sisense

Compared 29% of the time

Apache Superset vs Sisense

Compared 14% of the time

Databricks vs Sisense

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Sisense

Compared 4% of the time

More Sisense Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cognos

December 2024

Download IBM Cognos product report

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

December 2024

Download MicroStrategy product report

Buyer's Guide

Sisense

November 2024

Download Sisense product report

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics

No data available

Learn More

IBM

MicroStrategy

Sisense

Overview

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence provides a wide range of tools to help you analyze your organization's data. IBM Cognos BI allows businesses to monitor events and metrics, create and view business reports, and analyze data to help them make effective business decisions.

IBM Cognos applies techniques to describe, summarize, and compare data, and draw conclusions. This allows users to see trends and discover anomalies or variances that may not be evident by simply reading data. Data sources that contain information from different areas of a business can be stored in separate packages. Users can see only information that they have been granted access to, based on their group or role.

IBM Cognos BI consolidates the following business intelligence functions into a single web-based solution:

IBM Cognos Insight: Create personal and managed workspaces for data analysis. Using these interactive workspaces, you can share insight results with managers. Cognos Insight supports write-back, and you can also use these workspaces to capture and integrate management goals, commitments, and forecasts.
IBM Cognos Workspace: With IBM Cognos Workspace, you can create rich, interactive workspaces using IBM Cognos content as well as data from external sources. You can view and open your favorite workspaces and reports, edit content in your workspaces, and share your workspaces via email.
IBM Cognos Analytics: IBM Cognos Analytics utilizes built-in AI and intuitive searches which helps users to quickly create the visualizations and a wide range of reports. Cognos Analytics provides cognitive and managed self-service, enabling you to gain insights from controlled and trusted data.
IBM Cognos Report Studio and IBM Cognos Query Studio: Easily create structured and query reports. IBM Cognos allows users to create application and report templates. In addition, report authors can reuse report objects to apply filters, fields, and styles to reports. Users can set the language of the user interface and report content according to the user's native language.
IBM Cognos Event Studio: Receive notifications of events that occur within your organization in real time. Event Studio enables the creation of agents that detect the occurrence of business events, failures, or anomalies, based on the change of specific events or data conditions. Notification can be sent via email, publication in the portal, or by triggering reports.
IBM Cognos Connection: This is the Web portal for IBM Cognos BI and is the central area for accessing all the IBM Cognos functions. In the web portal, users can schedule and distribute reports, create tasks, administer the server and the access permissions, and more.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM Cognos stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its powerful analysis tool and its reporting capabilities.

Prasad B., a senior software engineer at a financial services firm, notes, “The product is a very good reporting tool and is very flexible. It allows for the users to get a scheduled report. We can receive automated reports as well. They are easy to schedule on a weekly or monthly basis. It is very fast. I mean in means of report output, it's very fast compared to the actual clients involved.”

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.

Sisense is an end-to-end business analytics software that enables users to easily prepare and analyze large, complex datasets. Sisense’s Single-Stack BI software includes data preparation, data management, analysis, visualization and reporting capabilities.

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.

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.

Ebay, WIX, Wave Accounting, ESPN.com, Magellan Luxury Hotel, Paylogic, Sony, Merck, EDA, One Hour Translation, NASA, Plastic Jungle, Philips, Yahoo

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy vs. Sisense

November 2024

Free Report: MicroStrategy vs. Sisense

Find out what your peers are saying about MicroStrategy vs. Sisense and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.

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