Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users
it_user7683 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data Analytics with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Does Microsoft Have Too Many BI Products?

I am quite excited about the launch of SQL2012 and in particular PowerView, or Crescent as some of you may know it as. I am pleased that Microsoft are sharpening their In-Memory BI story and they have a drag and drop user interface that can compete with the likes of Qlik-View et al. Blimey, this has started off like a techy post – didn’t mean to. I’ll write more about our use of PowerView on a really interesting project, next time. Let me get to the point.

Microsoft now has Excel, ProClarity, PerformancePoint, PowerView, PowerPivot, Reporting Services, Visio and BingMaps interfacing with its dimensional model (Analysis Services) and now its BISM (BI Semantic Model) which seems to have replaced the Report Model. I am confused and so are my customers. This is also an issue that Gartner picked up on when they did the last magic quadrant review. In fact I remember being at a presentation on SQL 2012 (Denali as was) last year and a poor guy from Microsoft was mullered by the audience of technical guys who berated him for the lack of coherence in Microsoft’s BI message.

I wasn’t that worried actually because, as a partner, it’s my job to take the platform Microsoft gives me and manipulate it to meet my customers’ needs and vice versa – in fact, probably more vice versa.

In my mind I have this sorted out. This is what I do.

Firstly, I talk about the health and social care BI portal as a gateway to all the knowledge assets the organisation holds and my customers shout out things like EDRM / Collaboration / Search / BI / Unstructured Content / nice-looking web-site. We don’t really talk SharePoint. I don’t talk about the different platforms and their naming conventions. For example, trying to explain the evolution of Performance Point only distracts from the need it serves. The need it serves is to provide people who live in a one –five mouse-click world to go from a macro to micro view of organisational performance using a scorecard / dashboard. I think about Public Health Maps, organisational strategy maps and caseload reports (Reporting Services) in the same way – how many clicks does it take to get the information need and how can I, as an end-user be best connected with my data.

I would then think about Excel meeting the needs of analysts by providing direct access to data and I would tell the story of in-memory BI using PowerPivot.

Then I have to think about PowerView. That’s okay – in my first sentence I articulated the value to people who sit between Excel Pivot-table Gods and people who consume data via dashboards. So individually I can map each sort of user profile to a solution and to an underlying Microsoft technology. The problem comes when you step back and think about this strategically. I don’t mean as a programme of work because things like the UI are very similar and so the training overhead isn’t a problem. I think more about the coherence and I go back to that very hot room and the hot talk that made my mate at Microsoft sweat.

I don’t think that has been figured out. Maybe in the next iteration of SharePoint all the BI will be brought together and made into a seamless application so the alignment of function to “user need” doesn’t jar but emphasises the richness of the platform. Let’s see. Microsoft friends if you are reading, what do you think?

For now, I’ll keep on telling my tale – looking into the eyes of each of the different users that I pitch to and pointing out which application is exactly for them and emphasising how we, at Ascribe, understand that this can appear confusing but actually isn’t. So does it matter that when we step back it looks a little messy, when we are actually meeting the needs of our people. I don’t think it does, yet, but I think it will as the BI becomes more embedded.

Because that is the point of BI – to a large extent. You want people to come together to look at information and make sense of it and use it – we may be victims of our own success if we solve the “one version of the truth” issue (so they are all looking at the same data) but we create confusion through the range of tools we offer.

This one will run and run.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1068 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User

Thank you for the great information you have shared. However, I got a simple question. If Microsoft indeed has several BI products, does that give them any competitive advantage over their competitors? And, does that make their products any better in terms of functionality?

See all 2 comments
it_user7683 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data Analytics with 51-200 employees
Vendor
How does the Microsoft stack help me drive BI adoption?

You drive adoption of BI through three approaches; firstly you set adoption as a goal, secondly you make your content compelling and ONLY THIRDLY do you think about tools.  Too many people focus on item 3 and their BI doesn’t penetrate the organisation like they wanted it to and therefore doesn’t deliver the benefits they sought.

It may sound strange to set adoption as a goal, however we have all worked in organisations that have taken an IT-led or procurement-led approach to BI without sitting back and working out what the BI is for.  In the NHS we have a lot of BI projects that work like that.  The goal might be to recreate the old reports on a new platform that looks more shiney and therefore will be used.  The goal might be to implement something the CEO saw at a trade fair.  Sometimes the goal might be to implement something that should deliver a performance framework (people, processes and technologies) that will show how a division is making a contribution to a national strategic agenda, local operations or delivery of service line responsibilities.

When you get into this area you are starting down the right road but the wheels come off if this top-level intention is not enshrined in operational delivery methods.

I often meet organisations that bought a reporting solution because they were going to implement service line reporting.  There is a particular reporting application vendor that is doing quite well out of this trend just now, with a high number of wins but a questionable level of adoption.  Their software looks cool. It has in-memory BI and therefore you can get going with it pretty quickly.  The licensing model means it is quite attractive for PoC work.  Moreover the pitch really talks to the value of self-service BI as an enabler of behavioural change and therefore performance improvement.

Obviously I am not talking about the Microsoft stack here.

Contrast this with the perception of the Microsoft stack, though, for a minute.  Enterprise-class solution, feature rich and therefore perceived as expensive, not nimble and therefore not suited to quick PoC work – often we here this story.  Not true, my friends.  Not true.  We have done a fair few PoCs on the platform and scaled them out quickly and relatively inexpensively – so it can be done.  But in terms of this blog the point is that the reporting solution I was talking about is very costly to scale and therefore that is a barrier to adoption.

So, we agree.  The best way to achieve adoption is to set it is a target and focus on delivery.  Put information in the hands of decision makers and they will make better decisions – give them a shiney tool and they may or may not.

The key point is achieving the link between the evidence and the decision – in other words creating compelling content.  Compelling content will provide decision-makers with what they feel they need in order to do their job.  It’s not difficult to understand that.  I favour the agile software development approach of collecting a user story, such as:

As A I want to So that
Theatre scheduler
  • Prevent session over-runs
  • Monitor session utilisation
  • Help Consultants keep their log book of work done in theatre
  •  Sessions do not cost more money than they should
  •   The available time is used to treat the most patients, to the highest   quality, in a way that maximises Trust revenue
  •   I can help them with their professional development

This tells me what the Theatre Scheduler considers to be compelling so that I can work out the data he needs (session times, staff, work done etc) and then how to render it in the fewest clicks.

After all that I can then worry about tools……guess which ones I would use blog-readers!

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsoft Partner

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power BI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1571778 - PeerSpot reviewer
Responsable Industrie 4.0 at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to use for a non-IT person and good for data modeling and working with a large amount of data
Pros and Cons
  • "I like data modeling. You can connect with your database, which is quite useful for me. It is a good tool if you have a large amount of data and you want to gather different data and interconnect it. The Power Query functionality is quite an interesting feature. If you have a query in Excel, you can also copy your query and run it in Power BI. Its dashboard is also very nice and not complicated. You don't need to be a developer to be able to use it. I am not an IT guy, and it is quite easy to use for somebody who is not an IT person."
  • "It is not the right tool to do deeper analysis or predictions. When you have some data and you want to do some deep analysis, there is no feature to help you with this."

What is most valuable?

I like data modeling. You can connect with your database, which is quite useful for me. It is a good tool if you have a large amount of data and you want to gather different data and interconnect it.

The Power Query functionality is quite an interesting feature. If you have a query in Excel, you can also copy your query and run it in Power BI. 

Its dashboard is also very nice and not complicated. You don't need to be a developer to be able to use it. I am not an IT guy, and it is quite easy to use for somebody who is not an IT person.

What needs improvement?

It is not the right tool to do deeper analysis or predictions. When you have some data and you want to do some deep analysis, there is no feature to help you with this. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for one year.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Microsoft BI an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Project Manager with 51-200 employees
User
It helped identify bad data
Pros and Cons
  • "Helped identify bad data, enabling the corrections needed to the data for management."
  • "​It needs more graphics and overlays."
  • "​It needs more analytic tools."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use cases for this solution are Health and Wellness claims and short-term and long-term disability data.

How has it helped my organization?

It helped identify bad data, enabling the corrections needed to the data for management.

What is most valuable?

  • Ease of use
  • Dashboard
  • Easy access to databases and spreadsheets
  • Multi-table access

What needs improvement?

  • More graphics and overlays
  • More analytic tools
  • More interfaces to databases, especially multi-table management

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Head of Information Systems Department at a government
Vendor
It made data correlation between the agencies fast. Our expectation is to get real-time data collection systems in the maritime environment.
Pros and Cons
  • "It provides easy integration with Office tools."
  • "Our expectation is putting BI to work in real-time data collection systems in the maritime environment."

What is most valuable?

  • It provides easy integration with Office tools.
  • It is easy to understand BI architecture.

How has it helped my organization?

Microsoft SQL Server BI made data correlation between the agencies so fast, that the simple POCs for the dashboards let the decision-makers to migrate our so-called enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture is the integration of ETL, CDC, DWH, reporting, and forecasting tools.

What needs improvement?

Our expectation is putting BI to work in real-time data collection systems in the maritime environment.

The Automatic Identification System is a great source of data regarding the ships from around the world. From kinematic to static including some commercial data, it streams to the maritime monitoring stations. So, collecting and processing of this data and also, creating useful information are the key factors for our government entity. However, this data is real-time data which means that the process should be done in seconds for thousands of ships. We are forcing the boundaries of the Microsoft BI product right now and wish to see some stream data processing methodologies in the future.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this product for a year and a half.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product was pretty stable but when it comes to collecting real-time data we encountered some data dropping issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Sometimes, the scalability becomes an issue; instead of horizontal scaling, we always need vertical scaling.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support in Turkey is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using some open-source BI tools. It was very difficult to get support for open-source and that is why we switched to Microsoft.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was okay because Microsoft integrated BI to the SQL product. Instead of using a special product, you get the sense of using native add-on libraries for BI. It is a part of the database process. Training is the key here.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't want to speculate but there is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price. So bargain wildly with Microsoft.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other open-source alternatives.

What other advice do I have?

You will need training personnel and powerful servers.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Business Intelligence Analyst & Developer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
With drill-through reports, links in the data presented take a report viewer to related reports. Reports look terrible on mobile screens.

What is most valuable?

Since its integration into SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has made a number of improvements and added many new features. It had a big overhaul in 2008 and acquired a bunch of new features with 2008 R2: KPIs, maps, sparklines, new functions, published Report Parts, and more.

Let me highlight some of the advanced features that keep people on the platform:

  1. Drill-through reports. These are ones where links in the data presented take a report viewer to related reports. Information Builders is another BI platform where this is available, but not as customizable as in SSRS.
  2. Highly customizable charts. The data-driven custom colors. The fact that almost every attribute of a component of a chart can be tweaked. Try doing some of those customizations on your flashy new cloud BI platform. Reports within reports. Sub-reports within tables of data and sophisticated charts within tables within sub-reports within reports. Go as deep as you want. See as much detail as you want.
  3. User-accessible parameters. Reports can offer report users parameters like no other platform. This makes linking to and from reports easy and allows you to integrate SSRS reports into other business applications. Try sending parameters to an Excel spreadsheet, a Power View report, or a cloud-based dashboard – impossible.
  4. Extensible. Programmers can extend the tool’s functionality. Custom data sources can be coded. Custom delivery extensions can be built. External DLLs can be referenced from within reports. Many companies do take advantage of these features.


What needs improvement?

The few things I mention below constitute very strong reasons why Microsoft has essentially abandoned the platform and why I agree with them.

  • Lack of mobile support. Reports look terrible on mobile screens. They don’t have the ability to redraw themselves as with responsive UIs. Security remains a hassle on mobile because SSRS relies heavily on Active Directory.
  • Speed of development is too slow. To be fair, each SSRS report has the potential to be its own business application, aware of who is viewing the report and customizing the output accordingly. Those that take advantage of the advanced features are in for a surprise – developers will spend countless hours squinting at the screen getting every pixel to fall exactly where they want it. Setting up data sources is still a thing for advanced SQL developers. It’s not like other modern BI platforms where stores of data sets are easily converted to dashboards.
  • Antiquated IDE for code developers extending it. I really wish that the custom code windows provided richer programming assistance (like auto-complete, object-oriented constructs, Intellisense…) and support for other programming languages.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for two years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We have not encountered any deployment issues.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

  • Long-running queries could take your system down. The desire of "I Want It All In One Report" should be avoided. All users should tune their reports and use parameters to get their reports in a light way.
  • Internet Explorer could be tricky sometimes.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Customer service is 7/10.

Technical Support:

Technical support is 7/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I switched from 2005 to 2008 in order to get more features.

How was the initial setup?

It is easy to install and to integrate in an enterprise setting.

What about the implementation team?

An in-house team implemented it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The SQL Server Reporting Services works as a part of SQL Server license. If we have a licensed copy of SQL Server, we can run Reporting Services on the same server for no additional license fee. However, if we run Reporting Services on a separate machine that is not yet licensed for SQL Server, such as a Web server, we will need to purchase an additional SQL Server license.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

https://www.brentozar.com/arch...

What other advice do I have?

SQL Server Reporting Services is one of the most popular components of SQL Server, but it has always been surprisingly difficult to get from one place all the basic facts you need to get up and running from scratch, to the point of producing reports. My overall experience with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is that it is easy to install and to integrate in an enterprise setting. Developing sophisticated reports, however, can be slow and tedious. Ultimately, getting information to business users is the name of the game. Doing it fast and doing it intuitively trumps fancy features.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user7680 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Data Analytics at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
Microsoft BI on iPad

I know that Microsoft have promised that they will be playing catch up later this year in terms of Mobile BI, and for sure they need to. Offerings available right now from the likes of Cognos, QlikView, Business Objects and Microstrategy (current personal favourite) far outstrip what you can do with the current Microsoft stack. But what does work?

Well, from what I can see, anything Sliverlight based is out, so that rules out PowerView and Decomp Trees in PPS. It seems that most of the other things work though, so there’s much you can still do.

Having managed to blag a company iPad in my new role as Reporting & Analytics lead, I figured I’d hook it up to the MSFT 2008R2 demo server I built that currently hosts some of Logica’s Spark Centre demos. Having installed Junos Pulse, a VPN app that allows me to securely connect to my work network, I found that the Sharepoint “pretend Telco” site renders quite well on the iPad.

Firstly, I checked out SSRS… There’s no right click on iPad so you need to hit the screen over any drop downs and wait a moment for the selections to pop up.

Looks pretty good… Next was PPS – remember, no Silverlight and doesn’t look like drill downs are fully working, but still able to do things like selecting chart items, changing from chart to grid and most impressively, export to Excel and PowerPoint works just fine (providing you have an Office programme installed such as QuickOffice, Docs to Go etc). Click Export to Excel and you get a choice..

And here’s the report in QuickOffice

Last thing to try was Excel services. Here, the Open in Excel function does not work. Apparently, there is no fooling it in to accepting being opened in a cheap substitute ;) but the charts look OK…

So, not perfect, but not all despair, and I’m assured that there are lots of goodies to come later in the year once the SQL2012 launch is out of the way. Still, it will need to be good to match my current favourites… If you get the chance, have a look at the Microstrategy iPad app….

And the nice app from RoamBI

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user1068 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user1068Tech Support Staff at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User

It is a shame (sorry to say) that the big giant has not yet gone mobile with their BI solutions in this modern age where technology has made mobile very handy!

See all 3 comments
Sales Director at Expeditus (Pty) Ltd
Real User
Dashboards are helpful, but it needs better metadata management for enterprise clients
Pros and Cons
  • "Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful."
  • "Power BI could have better metadata management. It's easy to use for a single person. However, it lacks an enterprise-grade metadata management system, which can be a problem if you're doing an enterprise deployment with multiple users."

What is our primary use case?

It depends on what the client needs. I've got multiple use cases for Power BI. There's no single one that stands out. But generally speaking, my clients primarily use Power BI for financial and sales reporting.

What is most valuable?

Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful.

What needs improvement?

Power BI could have better metadata management. It's easy to use for a single person. However, it lacks an enterprise-grade metadata management system, which can be a problem if you're doing an enterprise deployment with multiple users. Microsoft could add some more features to its normal reporting capabilities.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Microsoft BI for about 18 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Microsoft BI is stable. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There are limitations and license restrictions. So if you're an enterprise that needs to increase the volume of data and users, you normally have to go to higher license models.

How was the initial setup?

Microsoft BI is mostly easy to set up. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

At the entry level, it's affordable, but as you scale up and have more needs, it becomes expensive because you get tied into the whole Microsoft stack.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I also work with MicroStrategy. Out of the two, I would recommend MicroStrategy. They have what they call the Semantic Graph and Enterprise-Grade Semantic Graph. I think the technology is fantastic. However, doing business with MicroStrategy is fairly difficult and complex because of all processes involved, but the technology is probably the best in the market.

What other advice do I have?

I rate Microsoft BI seven out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Power BI Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Microsoft Power BI Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.