MicroStrategy Reviews

Currently, we are using MicroStrategy to provide Self-Service to clients. We have different departments in our company, like finance, accounting, and so on. We provided different projects for them and they are loving the product. We have approximately 200 users, and they have different roles from user to analyst to power users.

It improved a lot because coming from using Excel files, then using Oracle OBIEE, there is more flexibility now. The product is more scalable. We can support multiple platforms and different users. It is really good.

In 2018, we will be looking at Dossier and it collaboration aspect, which will be good for us. 

The future plan is to also introduce mobile, but right now we are in the infancy stage. We are trying to introduce the ad hoc reporting, and once we get in-depth in it and we make it sticky enough, then we will move to mobile.

• A single version of the truth.
• Having the analytics capabilities on a single platform.
• The usability for users to be able to drag and drop, then create their own reports.

• There is room for improvement on the graphs. 
• They need to improve the web. 
• I know we are not competing against Tableau, but MicroStrategy needs to step up its game on the GUI side.

I have been using MicroStrategy for a long time, so I know how stable it is. It depends on how you structure it and how you architecture it. Once you are done with the basics, it is pretty stable

I have had a lot of projects where we had a lot of users, like thousands of users, and the data was in one report which could bring in six million records. MicroStrategy is doing a good job on scalability.

It has gotten better. Before you had to go through Level 2, then Level 3 of support to get your questions answered. Now, even Level 1 could answer your intermediate questions, though there is still room for improvement.

I did not do the initial setup at this company, but at my previous company where I did installation, upgrades, and configurations.

The initial setup is straightforward for me, but it could vary from person to person. It is pretty straightforward, but you have to know the key words and so on, like project source. There is definitely a learning curve, but once you get to know it, everything is straightforward.

Give the product a try.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Flexibility
• Performance
• Scalability. 

The most valuable thing is not the product. It's having a product for BI. We first made a lot of dashboards. They are very useful for management and automatic reports with summarized data.

The dashboards can be exported to MHT. This allow us send them by email, or publish in our intranet and sync in mobile devices so they can use it off line.

We have centralized a lot of reports. We all are using the same data. We've discussed a lot about the significance of some terms.

The administration of automatic email reports is not very good. It has to be improved in a more easily and effective way, with the same license.
I would like to see data mining integrated.

I have used MicroStrategy for five years.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

We have had no technical issues.

We used Oracle Discoverer but it was very poor.

We have a very smooth setup. This was because we began with a small project that includes installation.

Setup is not complex.

We evaluated an Oracle BI product, I think it was former PeopleSoft, but we choose MicroStrategy because .mht files cab be sent by email and you can use it without internet access.

The main effort is making the DW and the models. The rest is not so difficult, but you have to implement a corporative strategy to stop using any other reporting system.

Dashboard development.

Presents dashboards with more enhanced visualizations compared to other tools.

Business User friendly - which has been enhanced in Version 10.

4 years

Yes, the 2 million row limit.

No

Straightforward and simple, but takes long to install.

Mobile dashboards give people the data they need at a glance and on the go.

EVPs are able to run their entire business from an iPad; they can answer questions, see issues, etc. at their fingertips.

- Purchasing process: MicroStrategy is a very litigious organization. When we want to enter certain agreements, it's not uncommon for the request to go back and forth within legal for weeks. Some of this is our organization as well, though.
- Support: The support line used to be top notch, but now it seems as though the people manning that line are not very knowledgeable and can very rarely actually answer the question or solve the problem.

I have used it for 15 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

We previously used a different solution. We switched because MicroStrategy was more robust.

It is a rather complex setup, with many moving pieces and very configurable, so by default you must figure out how you want to configure it.

Be patient; get a good understanding of what you need.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Oracle OBIEE and SAP BO.

Hire a professional to help implement the program not just the installation.

Centralized

Object oriented

Meta Data

All business data available to analyse in acceptable time and form with no extra efforts.

Visualisation will improved in the next version.

15 Years

No

No

Good

Good enough

MS OLAP and SAP BW.

High

OBIEE, MS OLAP, Cognos, Tableau, QlikView

MicroStrategy has what they call the Semantic Graph — an enterprise-grade semantic graph — and I think the technology is fantastic. 

MicroStrategy needs to do some more development to make the platform easier to use. It's a complicated platform that requires a lot of skill to effectively utilize. So they could work on reducing the complexity to make it more accessible for a broader community of people.

If you have a skilled individual to make sure all the settings are correct, it is stable. Once the setup is configured correctly, it's a very stable system.

MicroStrategy is scalable. It's built for enterprises.

MicroStrategy support could be more responsive. About 10 or 15 years ago, they were winning technical support awards, but I've not seen anything like that in the last few years. So I think there's a lot of room for improvement in their technical support.

If you have the right skills, it's not a difficult process. However, as environments change and become increasingly complex, it's harder to keep everything aligned on the administrative side, especially in large institutional settings. It's challenging to keep the backend administration of the system in line with those changes. Larger organizations have complex environments that the technology needs to interface with. So that's where it gets complicated. 

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. But you could do that from any BI vendor's perspective.

I rate MicroStrategy nine out of 10. Doing business with MicroStrategy is relatively challenging because of the processes that are involved. But the technology is probably the best in the market overall. I think they could add a lot more graphs and charts into their standard product. At the moment, you have to go to third parties to get some of the latest charts and graphs. 

I would recommend it. But if you're going to implement it, you need to invest in educating and training your employees on the product because it is complex. Data literacy today is a big topic, so companies investing in BI technologies should also invest in promoting data literacy among the staff who will be accessing and consuming that information. Right now, most of the training goes to BI professionals. However, companies should also train people who need to consume the data coming out of those departments.

We primarily use the solution with enterprise-level financial companies, as well as retail and telecom organizations. 

There are lots of features that provide very robust functionalities.

The solution is ideal for enterprise-level companies or corporations. 

The stability is very good.

The solution has very good reporting tools. The reporting on the solution is excellent.

The solution offers some very powerful AI features.

We've found the scalability to be very good. However, it depends on the environment. In general, it could be much better.

We've been dealing with the solution for 25 years. It's been more than two decades. It's been a very long time.

The stability is excellent. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't seem to crash or freeze. Its performance is good overall. It's a reliable product.

The scalability capabilities depend on the customer's environment. It depends on the infrastructure.

There are both premium and standard options. MicroStrategy works on the customer's infrastructure. This is a very different approach than, for example, Power BI.

There could be better scaling tools put into place. 

We have more than 2,000 users on the solution currently. There are potentially a lot of users. In Turkey, all of the financial companies or retail companies, and other sizeable companies in the country use MicroStrategy.

Technically, we don't need Microstrategy support. We typically handle troubleshooting ourselves.

That said, on the production side, we're happy to coordinate with support, however, we've rarely faced any issues that would require assistance. 

We also sell Microsoft BI. Commonly, enterprise-level or corporate-level companies use the MicroStrategy, however, SMB companies prefer Power BI.

MicroStrategy's installation takes time. However, it doesn't take weeks, for example. It only really takes a couple of days. In contrast, however, with Power BI there is no installation process at all. You just buy a license. After that, your Power BI is open.

I'm not sure of the actual cost of the solution. Licensing is not handled by my department. I can't speak to if it is reasonably priced or more on the expensive side. 

We are the company that handles approximately 95% of MicroStrategy implementation in Turkey. We are a distributor and a reseller.

I highly recommend MicroStrategy for enterprise-level companies. It brings some discipline to the industries for customers. Power BI, of course, is an option, however, part of it is like Excel or like a very free low-cost tool. 

A MicroStrategy implementer must synchronize with the customer and the application. You need to play with the features a bit and customize them to your needs. You cannot just list reports. You have to take some time to put some structure into the solution so that it works how you need it to.  

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. There are some excellent features on offer, which is why I rated it so highly.