MicroStrategy Reviews

The OLAP functionality of this product is best in class. The cubes created in MSTR can utilize all cores of the server and thus can be configured to use MPP architecture.

Another feature to highlight here is the latest Big Data Engine; MSTR's BDE is a Yarn based application that embeds right on top of Hadoop FS providing direct access to files in FS without need of any other language - Pig/Impala/Hive. I believe this is the closest a BI tool can embed on top of Hadoop FS.

The last one (not a feature though) which I would like to mention is the SQL that MSTR engine creates to retrieve data from warehouse. The multi-pass SQL is a very effective tool that provides lot of VLDB settings to tweak the SQL in regards to database, load and multiple other factors.

We were able to automate multiple repetitive tasks in the BI environment using administrative tools provided with this product. This helped the team focus their energies on critical work tasks.

Version control is still a major concern in MicroStrategy. I am aware that MSTR is working on it as an enhancement.

License cost is also on the heavier side. Perhaps the desktop version that launched recently, might help ease pressure on budget.

I have been using it for 7 years.

There are no issues with the stability of the product. It works well even with huge datasets and under heavy workloads.

Scalability is not an issue. Administrators can make use of clustering feature to balance out loads on MSTR I-Server. MSTR can scale vertically as well as horizontally.

Technical support has improved a lot in terms of response time as well as technical know-how. The trend was observed with the release of major version 10.x.

I have used some other solutions simultaneously and also at previous work places but I have never switched from one tool to another.

The initial setup is quite vast. Users need to install & configure a lot of components in the MicroStrategy toolkit. Starting from version 10.x, enterprise manager console is embedded in the operations manager console which requires additional configuration.

License cost is quite pricey with loads of add-on functionalities and tools. Organizations possessing an enterprise-wide vision should be the right customers for this tool.

The new addition - MicroStrategy desktop can be used as a standalone application and can help ease pricing pressure.

I did an assessment of Microsoft and MicroStrategy but I realized that both fall into quite different leagues. Microsoft is an ideal fit for low to mid-level companies while MicroStrategy is perfect for huge enterprises. The assessment is a part of market study and will be used for future prospect engagements to position MicroStrategy.

MicroStrategy requires a heavy dose of training and experience to master it. Prepare yourself with an experienced team before jumping into any project.

The best thing I saw was the excellent mobile integration. The interface is very clean and beautiful. The configuration of devices is extremely fast, you just need to click the link that is sent to you with all the configuration.

Another great feature of MicroStrategy is the SDK, with which you can introduce new charts and customize the whole web environment. You can customize almost everything in MicroStrategy. Finally, the MicroStrategy Community is very active, you can have answers faster than the support sometimes.

We provided dynamic reports, using data from a large database. The ability to use in-memory calculations in association with the calculations performed in the queries, made possible to run heavy queries faster, because the the heaviest calculations were performed by the analytical engine. So the query passed less time at the RDBMS.

In another situation, we were supposed to configure MicroStrategy Mobile on many devices. To do this, we made a list of the users, told them to download and install the app, and then we sent them the link to configure the application. In a few minutes, almost every device was configured and running.

The main thing that the company must improve is the support for their clients.

In Brazil I have seen many issues not being resolved for a long time, which makes the clients become impacient and disappointed.

I´ve been working with different versions of MicroStrategy since 2011, for different customers such as government agencies, banks and insurance companies.

A common issue during deployment in Windows was that, the registries were not being well configured, then the developer (Desktop) tool stopped running. To fix this issue you need to reinstall the tool.

There are also problems after installing MicroStrategy Web at IIS, and you need to go to the registries and change a specific path to the JNI Bridge.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered, and when we needed to upgrade a machine, we just had to change the memory configuration to use the new memory that was available.

In some cases MicroStrategy took too long to respond the opened cases, what made the clients very upset and disappointed.

I believe the customer service needs to improve. It can be better.

The manuals of the tool are very complete, if you follow that, you are not going to have many problems.

MicroStrategy need to create cheaper solutions, as nowadays it's too expensive, and sometimes you pay for something that you are not going to really use.

v10 of MicroStrategy is helping a lot of users by giving them the possibility to add new charts using JavaScript libraries like D3, in a very simple way using Visual Insight.

HTML5 is supported everywhere, so using it will be a game changer.

You must practice! The amount of configurations and possibilities are huge, so, go through the manuals, go through the online courses, participate in the community. There are a lot of things to learn.

Web Dashboards, Mobile, Transaction Services, and Visual Insights.

I am a consultant so my list is big. Therefore, I will pick the most recent one which on my current assignment is directly proportional to the operational costs for a business. At Interstate Batteries using RFID Technology we have a couple of web dashboards that displays inventory in the field, lists all the shops and their respective out of stock counts, shops that need to be serviced, and shops that have old batteries. Participating distributors(people who own the business of selling batteries) have sold their unwanted trucks(reducing operational costs), increased the amount of batteries sold for every stop made), reducing hot shots(delivering out of stock batteries) and increased sales at an average of 50% .

Transaction Services is a new field which allows users to have interaction with the databases. I am pretty sure MicroStrategy has improvements lined up in this section.

6 years

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

8 out of 10.

9 out of 10.

MicroStrategy is my first BI tool.

It is straightforward to implement.

We sell it as an underlier to our own analytics tool. It works pretty well. 

It does not really impact the way we function, so much as what we sell. It is a good tool to help our customers visually see loads of data.

We will be using Dossier the most in 2018.

The dashboards. The visual end side. Being able to do visualizations is important. 

The Geospatial and mapbox stuff that will be coming out should be really helpful. I know that is something that we have wanted: the map. That is coming, so it is good.

There are areas for improvement. Training would be an area that they could improve upon, but otherwise it is a pretty good tool. 

It is very stable. We do not have any issues. 

We have not experienced any issues with the scalability.

The technical support is good. We always get very responsive care, but we are a reseller so we probably get a little bit more support. 

The initial setup is complex, because of the customer's data and the configuration is time consuming.

The technical support of MicroStrategy can be helpful through implementation.

Spend a lot of time with the training. If you do not learn the ins or outs, it can be a difficult tool to use. You could do a PoC and get enough out of it to be able to use it. However, when it comes to administering it, you definitely need the training.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Usability
• Stability 
• Good support. 

The use case for this is for our sales people who work in the field.

In terms of performance it's really good, they're giving good feedback.

I look at the front-end, the website. They have landing pages and that makes life easy for exhibiting things.

The architecture, it's very solid.

We are also using the Writeback capabilities. We are writing back to our CRM, Salesforce.

If they can make it more stable, in terms of the connectivity, that would help.

It is very stable. The only problem, I feel, is the connectivity - that has hiccups. Other than that, it's good.

Scalability is pretty straightforward.

We use tech support. They're knowledgeable and easy to contact.

It is easy because we didn't customize anything. If you know what are you doing then it's not difficult.

We are not yet using multi-media content in our ads, but we will. And we do have a capability for our mobile apps to work in offline mode.

When looking for a vendor the most important thing to us is the use case, the capabilities of the product.

I give it a six out of 10 because of the connectivity and a few other things. The main thing is the connectivity, and then there is the caching, so if they can work on that it would help.

Still, I would tell a colleague to definitely go for MicroStrategy.

Primarily, as a developer, I am administering user privileges and creating reports for analysts and clients. 

The product is performing great.

It has greatly benefited our organization. We have a lot of products based on it. We license products from MicroStrategy to clients, therefore it is pretty important.

We started with Self-Service and now we are actually restricting Self-Service. What we do is give access to prompted reports for clients and we control ACLs on those objects. It feels like Self-Service because they are picking what they are using in the report, but they are not actually getting to the semantic layer.

The option to use various administrative tools, like Command Manager, System Manager, and Integrity Manager.

I prefer having the analytic capabilities all in one place, such as a single platform.

Something I would be interested in is more visualizations, because right now we use SDK to create some. If there were more out-of-the-box options, we would be happy with that.

Stability is great, especially with package deployments. It is very consistent and stable.

We have not had any issues with it. Usually, a client selects only a couple of users, so we are not up to the thousands.

I have not personally used technical support, but people on my team have.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I have implemented upgrades.

Upgrades seem like they are straightforward now. A couple years ago, they were a bit more complicated. There were unknown changes and they would do version releases, then sometimes things would break and they would have hotfixes. However, when we were less mature, it was harder because we did not have the right Integrity Manager tests and automated tests that we really rely on, so it was very manual back then.

We will not be investing in mobile analytics. We work in healthcare, and the data is sensitive. We do not want people on the move with healthcare data.

Do not give clients access to Self-Service or the entirety of everything, such as the semantic layering and creating reportings. It is a headache if you do it. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The ability to have multiple roles within the organization use it and being able to restrict it. For instance, there is consumer level access that business users can use, but then IT can use its tools and keep it separate but all within the same technology.

Reporting on some daily sales activities. It works well in this task.

It is convenient having it right there on the phone. They do not have to login. They can get it from anywhere they are.

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

It is a pretty simple solution so far, so we have not really gone beyond where it is.

It is actually pretty complicated to use. It is complicated enough that user adaptation is sometimes difficult. We developed more experts rather than people using it.

If there was a server down, we are not allowed to use it offline. Therefore, if there is a server down, then it’s down.

They are pretty good most of the time. There have been a few times that I have left a message and not been called back for at least a day or two.

Previously, we did not know we could have a mobile app. We looked at having a mobile app with MicroStrategy when we found out that we could, then we tried it out.

The mobile setup was not too bad.

We set it up in-house.

Most important criteria that I want to see when selecting a vendor: One that provides good, stable software. MicroStrategy does this.

• Dashboards
• Documents
• Reports
• Filters

Working as a BI Consultant, I have to develop different analyses, reports and dashboard documents to analyze the status of different business measures. We are using OBIEE and MicroStrategy for the purpose of enterprise performance management by defining and describing different business perspectives and objectives, initiatives and results are analyzed on the basis of these defined attributes.

There are limited features available for the overall enterprise performance management and analysis. There isn't a proper mechanism to define proper KPIs, collaboration or analysis of numeric data separately.

I've been using it for six months to a year.

Sometimes there is an issue of font size, spacing and other related formatting document issues.

We've experienced no issues with performance. However, the larger amount of number of selectors, filters etc. you have, the longer it will take to display an analysis.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

7/10

8/10

I started with OBIEE, and I am still using it for References.

It was straightforward.

We implemented it in-house.

We're also using MicroStrategy.

If you are looking for purely Performance Management of whole enterprise, then you should choose OBIEEE, otherwise choose MicroStrategy.