Microsoft Power BI Reviews

We use it for taking data and turning it into intelligence.

I have been using the most recent version of it. It is deployed in a government cloud.

It saved time.

Its ease of use is most valuable.

The biggest thing with Microsoft right now is better support. There should be more timely support. We can do 90% of it ourselves by the same token. When we're into the 10%, we do not get timely support via Microsoft's support team.

Its speed can also be improved. They should come up with a fix for the speed issue and give us some good parameters as to what would help with the speed. They should give us a good white paper that has a compatibility list, similar to what they provide with operating systems, and that describes what you should have before you use Microsoft BI.

There should also be a better way to possibly do things like geolocation, and where they do it, they should do it better. If you have a satellite, offices, and that sort of thing, it would be nice to see it in Tableau and different formats.

I have been using this solution since it came out. It was probably 2010. I'm a Microsoft engineer, so I'm on a lot of beta test teams. So, I would see these items a bit earlier than anybody else.

It is overall in mid-range. Sometimes, it works very well, and sometimes, it doesn't. If it is not working very well sometimes, that means it is not a hundred percent stable.

Its scalability is good. I've used it in very large major banks down to smaller entities, and it seems to not care about the scale.

Currently, we probably have 50 users. Its usage is moderate. We will increase its usage if they come up with a fix for the issues such as the speed.

There should be more timely support. I would rate them a two out of 10 because of the lack of availability. Sometimes, we can't fix what we don't know how to fix, and it causes us a lot of time and waiting and that sort of thing. We have to have a US citizen, and I'm sure that they're just not scaled up to that.

I have used other solutions but not in this cooperation.

Its initial setup is somewhere in the middle. Each deployment seems to be a little different. You have auto-updates all the time on PCs. When you image a PC, it doesn't always match. So, each deployment is different, and I'm not sure they can change that because most of the updates are for security, but it is very important to be sure that you test the environment first before you put it into production. I know a lot of people who just put it into production because of the ease of use, but sometimes, that can be problematic. In terms of maintenance, it is not terrible.

It was done in-house with the help of a Microsoft partner. Our experience with them was horrible. We ended up fixing it all ourselves. If five was the top, they were a zero.

I would advise others to just do their homework. You should check it out first, do the trial, get it into your test environment, and then make your decisions. Don't rush to production. Everybody is a bit different. If you have monster databases out there, the performance might be a little different.

I would rate it a six out of 10. If their support were better, it would get a higher rating. 

The data is captured by transaction processing systems, and even when the data is captured by a very sophisticated enterprise resource planning system, or ERP system, such as SAP. We'll find that that data is organized in a manner that is suited for the data updated. Therefore, when data has to be used for decision making, it has to be reoriented and organized in a manner that is suitable for data analysis and further for predictive analytics also. What we do is pull out data from multiple data sources, either on SAP or somewhere else.

There could be a certain budget or plan or target-related data on some other platform or on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The data is stored at different places. Some data could be on your internet platforms. Wherever it is, we pull out the data. Then we get that into the SQL server and we organize it in a manner that's suitable for further creation of dashboards and analytics applications, which can be used for better decision making.

The company has been able to make better decisions, due to the fact that, when we prepare business intelligence or data analytics applications, they are used by very similar decision-makers, as well as middle-level management decision-makers. From the same infrastructure, the data is used by even the report consumers. You can consider three layers of users, report consumers, mid-level use, as in, those who do interactive analysis of data, and decision-makers. Right at the top, those who would like to see the key performance indicators and use them for deciding a course of action can do so. All of our applications have been providing functionality for all these types of needs, including risk and compliance.

The solution offers many features, however, just the way in which that product is designed is quite useful for us. 

The way in which it can connect to multiple data sources is also very useful. The way in which data can be manipulated by using data analysis expressions has also been a good feature for us.

The solution is stable.

The solution is quite scalable. 

Our clients seem to be happy with the level of technical support they receive.

With our experience, the initial setup is straightforward.

Microsoft is often updating the solution adding new helpful features.

I'm not a product expert as such, however, I am aware that Microsoft comes out with a newer version, which is really downloadable and it's replaced every month. Therefore, the improvement is continuous. Since Microsoft provides a free downloadable desktop version of our BI. That desktop portion gets a new version which comes every month, we can replace the older version. 

Their ecosystem is quite good in terms of adding new features, in terms of adding custom visuals or adding many more interfaces or reporting features and more functionality within existing reporting and graphs. We don't have much to complain about except that they can always add many more features as they go.

Microsoft has got a very large repository of all change suggestions which have been raised by the BI community. They keep on adding features that are very widely sought after by the community. We don't focus on product features. We focus on business requirements. To use the solution, we find that existing features are good enough and offer us a very effective solution.

We've used the solution since its inception. We've used it for a very long time. We have been in this domain for the past 30 years.

The solution is quite stable. That's why it is right at the top, of Gartner's quadrant. We have deployed it with hundreds of users and it's withstood the test of time.

The solution is quite scalable. Of course, it requires data strategy just like any solution or any tool.

We tend to have 100 to 200 users at a minimum using the solution.

The solution is extensively deployed. We have plans to use it on an ongoing basis. They come out with new versions and new features every month, and this constant updating and iteration of the product have really been very helpful for us to provide more advanced solutions.

In terms of technical support, we don't really deal with it. Normally, our clients have a contract with Microsoft, however, my understanding is that their experience is good. 

We were using a CA tool and we have done work on Oracle. We have done work on many such platforms. However, since 2008 or 2009, we have been focusing on Microsoft as the total cost of ownership has been quite reasonable.

The initial setup is quite straightforward.

Our implementation strategy involved a business requirement phase where we sought out to understand exactly the expectations for a particular project. Then there is was a design phase where we decided on a data strategy of pulling data from multiple data switches. After that, there was a dashboard design phase, which includes wireframing of dashboards and then designing the dashboards according to those wireframes. Finally, we deploy and in that phase, we put in role level security, et cetera, and deploy it at an enterprise level. The entire process tasks three to four months in total, end-to-end.

We don't require much maintenance due to our maturity in design and development. We have been monitoring sites without having to add too many resources at our end as we have a robust design and maybe one person can handle four to five.

We do the implementation on our own. We have deep experience in this area, and we have developed two types of processes that we use to deploy our solutions. One is the data approach, where you know all best practices and methodologies are embedded into that thing. That framework gives a hundred percent assurance in terms of the success of that project. We have also developed a presentation layer framework whereby different subject areas are designed with very indicative dashboards and those dashboards can be quickly adapted to any data. That way, rather than starting from scratch, we use this framework which helps us to deploy our solution quite successfully. It's very fast also. We save around 50% to 55% of the time this way.

We don't deal directly with licensing. That said, certainly, we are aware in terms of what the Microsoft BI license costs. If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database.

They don't charge for additional features. If you want a premium capacity to handle your work or job, then there is a separate license available. That is a premium license, which is available with the entire product managed by Microsoft and you can use lot more features, including Azure, et cetera.

We are Microsoft partners.

We have two deployment options. Some of our clients have deployed the cloud solution. Some are deployed on-premises.

Anybody who has worked on existing spreadsheet-based solutions can quickly adapt to Microsoft BI and the data visualization and interactive data features, they'll find it very exciting to use and very fast to adapt to it. It's a very effective solution.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

In our sector, we're dealing with lots of FinDocs and routine FinDoc activities. So all these things are managed locally, with data coming from some secondary source. By that, I mean our in-house technicians provide a data service that is locally developed on our end, and we analyze data in Microsoft Power BI. We have about 10 to 12 users working with it.

Microsoft BI is better than most solutions we have. It's pretty easy to conduct analysis with it.

Microsoft needs to do some more research and development to make it more stable.

We've been using Microsoft BI for about six months.

I think Microsoft BI is scalable.

We have some technical partners from Microsoft, so we contact them for any issues.

Installing Microsoft BI is fast and easy. We just downloaded it from Microsoft. That's it. It only takes about half an hour. It takes a little longer for the overall deployment, depending on the data volume. If we're getting the data from a secondary source, it depends upon both the source and volume. The greater the volume, the greater the time. Usually, we can manage to get it done in one or two hours plus the testing. It takes around four people to deploy and manage the solution.

We haven't thought much about licensing because we're still dealing with some administrative hang-ups. Once all these things are resolved, then we go for the license. It is in process.

I rate Microsoft BI six out of 10. I would recommend it.

Defining the most valuable features would take a long time. While I cannot point to a specific feature, I feel the solution provides a full range of implementation capabilities. This allows for integration and modeling, for carrying out good transformations within the same platform, as well as visualization. There are not many products included inside and one can start from scratch. 

In respect of the customer, one can quickly implement phases. A person can start out with creating his data set on a miniscule amount of the client's work and, working solely with a sales team, make it agile, only involving three or four dashboards. At this point, completion is possible and progress may be made to the next one very quickly. We like the solution's ease of use, functionality range and ability to be quickly implemented. 

I would like to see a change in the premium capacity. It is very costly, particularly for the Egyptian market, amounting to $5,000 per month. Perhaps in the Gulf this would work well. The data flow should be enhanced from OnPrem-Gateways, which we find to be somewhat complicated and which does not always work. Regional pricing is the main issue. 

The stability is okay, although there can sometimes be an issue with the connection when it comes to data OnPrem and the need to manage gateway communication and do troubleshooting. In brief, there are certain issues with OnPrem stability. 

'Although we feel the solution to be a dream, it would be great to see everything on Power BI services, obviating the need for Power BI desktop. I hope to see such Power BI implementation. 

I feel like we don't have a very powerful ELT or ETL tool when it comes to power and data cleansing. The solution compares unfavorably with such products as Informatica in this regard.

I have been using Microsoft BI for two years.

The stability is okay, although there are occasional connectivity problems when it comes to managed gateway communication of data OnPrem and troubleshooting. The OnPrem stability should be addressed. 

While the stability is okay, there is an occasional need to add extra products, such as those involving Azure data analysis and Azure Analytics Services. 

Big data would require the involvement of different products, Microsoft sign ups, for example. While we did not go for this, our technical teams are trying to get up to speed to have big data rediness. 

I feel like the solution has a comparatively inferior ELT or ETL tool when it comes to power and data cleansing and compares unfavorably with Informatica. There is occasionally a need to involve other solutions, such as Informatica and Alteryx. 

While we have not made much use of Microsoft support, I did previously work with Microsoft's premier support and found it to be very good, overall. 

The solution is easy to set up and implement. 

The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly. The regional pricing should be addressed. 

The solution has an edge over others in its quick implementation. It is also very helpful to consider Microsoft data platform on Azure. Doing a combination with Microsoft data plaform will give one a great edge over, say, Tableau. 

The combining of Power BI with Microsoft data platform on Azure provides one increased familiarity. We are talking about a great ecosystem. 

The solution is comparatively inferior to those offered by other companies in respect of the ETL and ELT as these relate to power and data cleansing. It is not the best. 

My advice to someone looking to implement Power BI for his own organization would be to take things step by step. He should initially refrain from taking on big projects, instead focusing on agility, starting with the most requisite dashboards, working on them and garnering experience. The person will improve from one time to the next. One should familiarize himself with the details and how to move data and big data. He should not remain stuck waiting for the implementation of a big project. 

I rate Microsoft BI as an eight out of ten. 

As a consultant, I propose something appropriate for my client companies. Mostly, it's some type of ERP, warehouse management, or BI software. It depends on the size of the companies and their requirements.

Small and medium-sized businesses usually need some operations software to cover all the daily necessities. In most cases, I propose some local or regional software for ERP and warehouse management solutions. But for business intelligence and reporting, I typically go with a Microsoft solution.

Microsoft BI's visualization could be better. Though Power BI's visualization has steadily improved over the years, it's not on the level tools like Tableau and SAS or some of the more expensive products on the market.

Power BI is as stable as every other Microsoft product. It depends on the environment and other factors — it's not just Power BI. But it's quite stable, I think. And it's also on a very high level.

Microsoft has a lot of partners that offer support and help you with implementation. So if you have some issues that can't be resolved by one level of support, you can find someone else in the same environment. I would say that from the partner level, Microsoft support is excellent. But, of course, it depends on how much you want to pay for it.

The complexity of the Power BI setup depends on how much integration you need, the number of different databases you have to connect, and whether you're automating the system. However, setup is relatively easy for a standard environment. For reporting alone, it was easy to set up. So it really depends on the complexity of the environment, not on the tool.

Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions. So in that regard, I would say Microsoft Power BI's price is appropriate.

I recommend Tableau to customers for some things and Power BI for others. But, overall, you can use Power BI in more ways, it's cheaper, and it has a better pricing model.

I rate Microsoft Power BI nine out of 10. It's widely used and incredibly practical. And it's a little easier to prepare, distribute, and automate reports or connect to databases. Power BI is also useful for warehouse management and data systems in data lakes. It's like a Swiss knife for reporting. So I generally recommend Microsoft Power BI for clients who don't have specific requirements for visualization. Tableau is better in that area. But at the same time, Power BI is also upgrading those features. 

Many of my customers already use Microsoft products like Office 365, so I often propose Microsoft Power BI because it integrates well with all the standard Microsoft business tools. And it's the quickest tool to implement and start using daily. You don't need much training. People can pick up this tool quickly and start using it right away. So I think that's the biggest advantage of Power BI. 

We were using Microsoft BI but it could not do what we wanted it to do. Then we moved to an open-source platform, which was Apache Tika, Kafka, and third solution. We ended up moving back to Power BI only to display the information because displaying information with Power BI is better than open-source software. We are not using all aspects of the solution at the moment.

In the process of using data there is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). For extracting we are using another software, for transforming we are using our own coding in C#, and then we use Microsoft BI for loading the information. Microsoft BI displays information very well.

The solution could improve the extraction and transformation of data. For example, you transform the data and then send it to Microsoft BI without having to use your own API. We are only providing the API to Power BI, and then Power BI is doing the job.

In an upcoming release, Microsoft BI should increase the functionality of the solution.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately six years.

We were satisfied with the stability of Microsoft BI.

We have 30 users using the solution in my organization.

We are in contact with the support of Microsoft but I have not been in contact directly.

I have used other solutions, such as Apache Tika and Kafka.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The solution only needs one person to do the maintenance.

There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay.

The solution has had a lot of changes over the years and it is very good. However, there is more work to be done on extract and transform functions for it to be done properly.

I rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

It is one of the business intelligence tools we are using—mainly for all our data visualization purposes and building interactive dashboards. We use Microsoft Power BI to generate all different types of analytic reports. We move information from our data warehouse to a SSAS cube that we've built on top of all our dimensions. We also do a certain level of aggregation in the cube itself, which is then connected to Power BI.

It works well with SSAS, which we use to generate all different kinds of trending and analytics reports. Sometimes we use Power Query and DAX to build some aggregations on the Power BI side as well.  

I would like to see Microsoft BI add custom visuals and certain machine-learning capabilities. It would be nice if the DAX functions could perform some kind of predictive modeling. Right now, it just does a kind of descriptive analytics.

I've been working on Microsoft Power BI for three years. 

Throughout several updates over the past three years, I never saw any issues, particularly with installation or anything, so I see the product as stable.

I feel that scalability is one area where there is room for improvement. When there is a huge volume of data, like when we apply the aggregation, the reporting slows down. That's why we mostly build things in the SSAS cube itself instead of bringing it back to Microsoft BI to do the aggregation. Certain incredibly small aggregations can be done on the Microsoft BI side, but if the dashboard size is more than 1 Gigabyte, you start to see some performance issues. 

The Power BI community is really big, so we mostly rely on other users for support.

In some projects, we have used Tableau or ThoughtSpot. If we're dealing with big data, then we often consider using Tableau. Power BI has some additional features that Tableau doesn't have, like DAX and Power Query, but Tableau works better from a scalability standpoint. Sometimes for reporting purposes, when we want to generate some kind of dashboard on the fly for the user, we have used ThoughtSpot. 

We didn't experience any complications. We built everything on the desktop and in the .pvi files, then just move those files to the server. Afterward, we didn't see any issues at all in terms of setup.

I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for.

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten. 

We are using this solution for analytic dashboards.

The solution integrates with other Microsoft solutions very well. 

When it comes to security Microsoft BI can integrate well with Microsoft Domain Services, you are able to make it as secure as you want.

There are useful visualizations available in the dashboards.

If you are having millions of rows of data or you have a large database, Microsoft BI's performance depends upon how powerful your hardware is. When I am handling large amounts of data I do not use Microsoft BI or Tableau because of this, I use D3.

In a future release, they need to have better integration to allow any visualization that is done in other solutions, such as D3 or Tableau, to be able to be imported in Microsoft BI easily.

I have been using Microsoft BI for approximately five years.

The solution is stable when the database is reasonably sized. If you have large databases of 20 million rows it can begin to have difficulties requiring a purchase of more hardware.

The scalability is good. If you have a direct query, Microsoft BI can run on billions of rows of data.

Microsoft BI is available to the 70,000 users in my organization.

This solution is used extensively because everyone has access to it, not because it is the best.

The support from Microsoft could improve.

The solution is easy to install.

We did the implementation of the solution.

For those customers we have that use Microsoft BI on a dedicated server, we have a technical team that does the maintenance.

I have evaluated Tableau and D3.

I would recommend Microsoft BI over Tableau if you are comfortable with Microsoft solutions. Additionally, understand your use case and choose the best solution that fits your needs.

I rate Microsoft BI a six out of ten.