Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Microsoft SSRS biggest advantage is its ability to integrate with other third party components. You could integrate it with Share Point web part or you can access it from a Web browser, depending on your existing scenario you don’t need to change much to be able to integrate SSRS with your existing application. Microsoft SSAS offers low cost BI solutions comparing with IBM Cognos, licensing for SSAS is core-based or you could opt for server + CAL-based license which is very low in comparison with IBM Cognos. Microsoft SSRS & SSAS suite is uncompromising when it comes to performance. It provides very high performance and it could be connected to many different data sources. It requires very less time to build Microsoft SSRS & SSAS solution.

Microsoft SSRS is unable to provide a mechanism where poor performance reports could be prevented to run on production environment. In case if a user creates a report which can cause huge impact on server resources / performance it should not be allowed to run on production server during normal working hours. Alternative that is provided is to use subscription option to deliver reports to particular directory or email them at scheduled time (preferably non-working hours).Microsoft SSRS does not offer any interoperability with Andriod or iPad at this time (need to consider this if you are planning to develop reports for these environments) Microsoft SSRS & SSAS suite is very easy to configure and maintain. You don’t need any license if you are looking to try out Microsoft SSRS; you can simply download and use Microsoft SQL Server Express (with Advanced Services). You can create dashboards, drill through reports, charts, graphs, maps, dynamic grouping using Microsoft SSRS.

It offers a very vibrant MSDN community along with Microsoft support staff for assistance.

I have been a professor at a program mastery at UISEK University for the past two years where I teach students how to use these tools.

Being able to transfer data with the Power Query feature is great for teaching with about one to two hundred rows of data. I am also able to see the relationship between multiple tables and create various sheets and dashboards.

The Power Query feature needs to be improved to handle large amounts of data. This feature is also slow for large data transfers making it better to use some kind of script.

Additionally, in the next release, I would like to be able to export thing, such as charts, as a PDF.

I have been using this solution for two years.

I would rate the stability of Microsoft BI at 70 percent. 

While the solution is scalable, it certainly has its limitations.

I find the solution to be 70 percent stable. 

Although the solution comes with limitations, it is scalable. 

Technical support is not that bad, fairing in the average range. 

The solution is not that difficult to install, although this will vary with the experience of the person responsible for its installation. 

There are five people responsible for the deployment, their roles comprising a mixed bag, some of them being managers. 

Our customers definitely incur a licensing fee. 

The only other cost, besides the licensing fee, would be to cover support. 

There are only three customers using the solution at present. 

I always offer more than one solution and the person must choose which he feels best suits his needs. All solutions have plusses and minuses and these should be carefully weighed before one decides which one to go with. Once the client has settled on a solution, this is what I will go with. We are talking about Microsoft store. Generally speaking, our clients prefer to make use of Microsoft. 

I rate Microsoft BI as a seven out of ten. 

This rating is based on what we have observed about the solution thus far, although it may be amended over the next few months as we become more acquainted with it. 

I like how the Query Editor lets me manipulate the data, and the available visuals are good. You can do everything using the UI.

Integration with artificial intelligence would help. Humans take time to review the data and eliminate errors. Artificial intelligence based on machine learning and understanding can bring the same functionality.

I've worked with Microsoft BI for a few years.

Power BI has been stable so far. 

Power BI is scalable. 

I haven't called technical support about Power BI. I've consulted the documentation when necessary and checked blogs to rectify my issues. 

It's fairly easy to set up Power BI.

I think the price is fair, but I can't speak for most Indian customers.

I rate Microsoft Bi nine out of 10. 

We use Power BI in cloud solutions in other systems. There are lots of products in our environment that work with Power BI. One use case is we use it to track the real-time sensor data to Power BI using Azure.

We have lots of customers. We make premium subscription projects for them. We have a Tableau portion. We are also Tableau partners and resellers. As a company, we make lots of Tableau projects. 

The most powerful site of Power BI is the cloud site. You can do everything in power BI. There are lots of things that the solution provides. If you have a huge data warehouse in the cloud, Power BI fits. 

In some cases, there are some add-ons that you can put together in Power BI - for example, data factory, data bricks, and also data lakes. Some Microsoft solutions work together and are integrated already. You don't need to worry about that.  

If you know what you do, Power BI is a good solution.

The solution is stable. 

The product can scale. 

There are some limitations of Power BI. The front end, for example, is not fancy.

The solution should not be used in some cases. 

The cost of the solution can get high.

There is a strong community around the solution that can help users learn about the product and troubleshoot.

When we compare Power BI with other solutions, we can see there are lots of things that should be done. Some things are there, however, they are not working well. Microsoft puts lots of solutions in one place and declares it a complete solution. However, in the practice, you can see that this STK is not working properly or the request is not giving the same results. You discover that when you open a ticket to Microsoft. They will tell you that they are still in development on that product so it will available in the future. 

When you use the Power BI as an enterprise solution, as a consultant, you find out that the product is not fully ready for enterprise. In that way, we suffer a lot. That said,  every version becomes better.

They need to have an analytics suite of some sort.

I've been working with BI solutions for 20 years. I've been using Power BI for two years so far.

The product is stable. For one of our customers, there are one thousand clients connecting to the same report. Everyone gets their own results and can search them. It needs more power. It can consume a lot of energy. 

The scalability of the product is great. It's on the cloud, which makes it easy to scale. 

There are good communities and groups that can help you troubleshoot if necessary.

I'm also familiar with Tableau.

We are SAP partners and resellers also. We make lots of SAP business intelligence solutions and do business intelligence projects.

Step-by-step implementation is easy. The difficult part is when you enter the infrastructure site. There are lots of Power BI developers, however, they do not know the other cloud environment. In that way, they can only design the front site. That said, they should know the architecture. They should know the other infrastructure and know the data also. If they do, they can produce lots of things. As an example, Microsoft offers a flow integration so that you can create a data flow that consumes the data and give the results to other services. Also, there are lots of things that you can do, however, you need to know the Azure environment in order to do them. 

In some cases, Power BI can be expensive.

We are using the current version of the solution.

I'd advise new users that there are lots of communities and lots of user groups that deal with the product. They should attend them. They should watch the videos about Power BI. It's important to extend your knowledge. If you want to be a Power BI developer, you should also know the other technologies as well.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

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.

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. Microsoft could add some more features to its normal reporting capabilities.

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

Microsoft BI is stable. 

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.

Microsoft BI is mostly easy to set up. 

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.

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.

I rate Microsoft BI seven out of 10. 

I used it to build a simple dashboard. What I did was very simple. I used it to load different datasets. I defined relationships between them and played around with the data by using visuals.

I must have downloaded the version that was really available at that time.

I had to build a simple dashboard in which I had to combine two or three different datasets. They were large enough, so it wasn't possible to work on them easily in Excel. In Power BI, I used the relationship feature, and I was able to store the data in such a way that it does not occupy a lot of space. I could then send the file over email.

Its visualization capabilities are pretty good. It is very easy to use. You can easily make your dashboard.

There is a lot of self-help content available from a lot of different platforms, such as YouTube. So, whenever I faced an issue, it was not difficult. I could always find a solution to the issue I was facing.

Defining a relationship was very confusing. There were circular directions for which I had to do a lot of adjustments in the data. They can do something to make it easier.

I worked on it this summer. I just used it for a month or two.

Defining Relationships can be confusing when you are working with a complex data model. It can result in circular relationship referencing and the interface does not help solve it, or even understand it, in any way. It takes time to figure out a different way to structure the data model and Power BI offers no guidance on that. Online help is limited.

There is a lot of content available online. When I started out, the way I was defining the relationship between the data and the way my model was structured was not very efficient. I spent a lot of time in making it more efficient. So, I would advise others to do enough research. I was learning on the go. If you spend about six or seven hours learning it, it would be much better. Even though it is marketed as something that is easily usable and anyone can come and start using it, there is a bit of a learning curve.

I was very easily able to load the data and conduct an as-is analysis of what is happening, but if I want to do a deeper analysis of the data and break down a variable into different components, I don't know if it is possible in Power BI. I tried to do it a little bit, but it was not easy. So, it is good when you have the data, and you just want to present it and look at it in different ways, but if you want to analyze the data and break down the numbers and play around with the data, I don't know if it is possible in Power BI.

I would rate Power BI a seven out of 10.