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PeerSpot user
Systems Analyst at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Features I consider valuable include: data blending for end users, intelligent cubes, project metadata and the mobile solution.
Pros and Cons
  • "Project Schema/metadata- Very flexible, connects to a variety of different data sources and is very flexible for many specific tasks. Attributes/metrics/filters created once used by everyone."
  • "The web developer tool for documents creation does not have all the features of the client version"

What is most valuable?

Project Schema/metadata- Very flexible, connects to a variety of different data sources and is very flexible for many specific tasks. Attributes/metrics/filters created once used by everyone.

Intelligent Cubes- Can improve almost any report to run in seconds. Used often for dashboards and documents containing millions of rows of data.

Visual Insight Self-Serve tool - Allows users to create their own dashboards. There are multiple reasons this is important. Users create their own dashboards which saves resources. Users have better insight of the dashboards they require and a better on new data required in their schema and/or intelligent cubes.

Data blending for end users- They can use other data that is not yet part of our managed/governed data. It is seamlessly included it into some of the dashboard/reports that they have created. This allows users to get the reports they require without having to wait for your data team to provide the data in the data warehouse or MicroStrategy schema. It also provides you with requirements for expanding your governed data.

Mobile solution with iPad/iPhone - We haven’t gone this route yet but we did do some POCs and it was very impressive.

How has it helped my organization?

Management would spend half a week gathering data and number crunching in Excel. It was a long, slow and tedious process. In the end they could not calculate at the level of detail required. Today, management can focus on analyzing the numbers and also exploring other avenues of improvement using the self-serve features.
One example is reviewing actual route performance versus the expected performance. The result is better identification of problem routes and measurement of changes.

What needs improvement?

- Many users have requested some specific graphing capability. More precisely, they would like the ability to configure a graph to be formatted and displayed identically to their excel documents. This is not always possible.

- The web developer tool for documents creation does not have all the features of the client version. When adding a derived attribute you can no longer edit the dashboard in the client version.

- There is no type of version control to check in or check out items. As a result, users create multiple backup folders and this produces multiple versions on the go.

-Different functions and options available with intelligent cubes created from MicroStrategy Web and MicroStrategy Desktop. Options such as scheduling and multi threading/partitioning.

- We would really benefit with more mapping functionality and compatibility with different types of mapping data types. One example is a Microsoft geography data type. Using the ESRI out of the box map plugin to draw lines between two co-ordinates and colour code them based on a metric value.

- Visual Insight /Self-serve - Simple ways for users to total/percent their data to a specific level. Translating a grid developed to a graph. In summary, make the self-serve area even more intuitive/easy to use.

-Exporting to PDF is a major pain point in the dashboarding/self-serve area. Alignment and colours are not maintained. This was allegedly fixed in version 10.6. We are starting the process to upgrade to 10.8 so I can not comment further.

-Users were not able to login with using LDAP. We had to add an environment variable to ignore LDAP referral chases. TN#15655 on MicroStrategy’s website.

-IIS Web Server would have a long initial load time. A variety of IIS settings were changed to increase performance. This is more of an IIS issue than probably a MicroStrategy issue, but I think it should still be noted since it’s above and beyond the basic installation setup instructions.

For how long have I used the solution?

3 Years

Buyer's Guide
MicroStrategy
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about MicroStrategy. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Yes there were a few unique setup steps and configuration settings related to Windows Active directory and Web Server setup.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

2 years in production and I don’t believe we’ve had a single issue in regards to the system being down or unavailable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No requirement to scale larger. Scaling infrastructure hardware such as additional severs would not be an issue.

How are customer service and support?

I’ve dealt with a lot of vendors such as SAP, ESRI etc. I would rate them better than those but overall just average. You can talk to a MicroStrategy engineer in person if you call their support number. I find I mainly use their online tool and they will usually answer the question within a day or two. Any type of enhancements or bugs you will have to wait for another release or two before seeing a fix. We are signed up with the lowest support package offered.

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

No previous solution, we do have business objects within our environment but it was not selected as the platform moving forward.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is straightforward. Reading through the installation documentation is a must. Afterwards, you have a had a good idea of what is required before installation. You can run through a number of installation prompts and the software is installed. It gets a bit more technical setting up your environment after the standard setup. Manual steps after the installation such as setting up a clustered environment, integrating windows authentication with windows AD groups, intelligent cubes, cache and history etc.

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

Was not involved in purchasing.

We've converted our CPU licenses to user named licenses since we have two 32 core I-servers that are clustered. That means 90% of our power was sitting idle and wasted because of CPU licensing. There are a lot of benefits to have multiple CPUs. We've increased our cube refresh performance. Cube performance can be partition to use multiple CPUs. Best thing we did.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I was not involved in the decision making process.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sushrit Moundekar - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at InfoCepts
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A powerful visualization and data analytic tool that is easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's platform analytics gives us real-time analysis of how a particular user uses the report and how the systems behave."
  • "The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets."

What is our primary use case?

We use MicroStrategy for reporting on retail analytics, platform analytics, and tracking user usage.

What is most valuable?

Since it's an enterprise tool, MicroStrategy gives an end-to-end understanding of the system. The solution's platform analytics gives us real-time analysis of how a particular user uses the report and how the systems behave. At times, MicroStrategy comes in very handy to invoice the overall infrastructure. On the user adoption side, our business users find it very easy to use. The solution's dossier functionality comes in very handy.

What needs improvement?

The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets. MicroStrategy's visualization is a little on the lower side as compared to Power BI and Tableau.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using MicroStrategy for nine years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

MicroStrategy is a very stable solution. Even if there are any bugs, the support team is quite knowledgeable in resolving those usual product bugs.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The client that I'm working with has around 3,000 users for MicroStrategy.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support team resolves all our queries, but they don't provide 24/7 support. I'm working from India, and my customer is in the US. Whenever I raise a ticket, I get the response one day later. The only area of improvement for the technical support team is they should provide 24/7 support.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

MicroStrategy's installation is easier for the developer or the administrator but not for the IT person from the infrastructure team. If anyone knows MicroStrategy, they can install it. For someone who doesn't know about the solution, it's not a ready-to-be-installed tool, just like Power BI or Tableau. For MicroStrategy, you need an understanding of the product it comes with.

What was our ROI?

Organizations using MicroStrategy are seeing a return on their investment.

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

The solution’s licensing cost is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

MicroStrategy is deployed on the cloud in our organization.

The client I'm working for already had MicroStrategy as a license. Secondly, MicroStrategy provides enterprise-level support. If I have a big enterprise, my choice of tool will always be something that is very stable.

Many analyses can be easily done on MicroStrategy, which is currently not possible in either Power BI or Tableau. Also, users are not ready to shift from one tool to another.

I would recommend that users analyze their requirements before choosing the solution. I would not suggest MicroStrategy to someone with just a visualization need. I would recommend MicroStrategy to users who want reporting and some analysis done on the fly. MicroStrategy is not just a visualization tool. It's a very powerful data analytic tool as well. Users with both data analysis and visualization needs should go for MicroStrategy.

The support team addresses all the problems that arise from MicroStrategy, including product bugs. The only downside is that it is heavier on the licensing cost part. Recently, MicroStrategy has brought AI features, which are also very costly on the licensing side. MicroStrategy is trying its best to match the current trend that we see in the market.

Overall, I rate MicroStrategy an eight out of ten

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
MicroStrategy
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about MicroStrategy. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Michal Debski - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder at AF
Real User
Top 5
Enterprise-wide reporting tool, offers solid BI capabilities across various industries, but lack of a supportive community
Pros and Cons
  • "In terms of functionality, MicroStrategy is alright. It's a solid BI tool and can handle most tasks you'd expect."
  • "MicroStrategy lacks that community support. You're either stuck figuring things out yourself or paying expensive fees to MicroStrategy consultants for help."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for reporting, it's enterprise-wide reporting. There are tons of different things, some scheduled by MicroStrategy. Those old-fashioned reports, PDFs, Excel, and even portfolio and task stuff. Works for many industries now, different business lines, finance, supply chain, etc.

What is most valuable?

MicroStrategy has become an obsolete product. It might still be around for another 10, 15, maybe even 20 years, but I wouldn't recommend using it for any specific use cases. Unless you already have a MicroStrategy license, in which case it might be worth sticking with MicroStrategy for cost reasons. However, I wouldn't buy new MicroStrategy licenses.

What needs improvement?

There are definitely some drawbacks. The biggest one is the complete lack of a community around MicroStrategy compared to other BI tools. This can be a huge problem from an IT department head's perspective. If a developer gets stuck on some task, they might spend hours or even days trying to solve a problem because there's no helpful information online. 

With tools like Tableau, Power BI, or Looker, you can easily find solutions and ask questions in forums or ChatGPT (OpenAI). It's almost impossible with MicroStrategy.

Another drawback is the lack of a talent pool. It's very difficult to find developers with MicroStrategy expertise. There are barely any online courses or tutorials available, and even searching for information can be frustrating. You won't find educational videos at the top of the search results; instead, you'll see stuff about Bitcoin investments. This lack of focus on development is a major downside. 

I've been quite disappointed with MicroStrategy's investments in recent years, with them prioritizing discounts over research and development.

So, in terms of functionality, MicroStrategy is alright. It's a solid BI tool and can handle most tasks you'd expect. The problem lies outside the tool itself. You need a strong community to learn from and keep up with the rapid development of BI tools. 

Unfortunately, MicroStrategy lacks that community support. You're either stuck figuring things out yourself or paying expensive fees to MicroStrategy consultants for help. This isn't the case with tools like Power BI or Tableau, where you can find experts readily available. In addition to other drawbacks, it's not cost-effective either. 

The on-premise version used to be the only option, which meant buying licenses for CPU units. While cloud migration with SkyLink in MicroStrategy Cloud makes scaling easier, it still requires initial setup and configuration. This button with Azure or AWS can take a couple of weeks, depending on your data sources and desired outcomes. Compared to other solutions where you can start quickly and iterate, MicroStrategy's approach might be seen as slower and less agile.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with this solution for ten years. I worked with the cloud version of MicroStrategy.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten because MicroStrategy is generally stable, but every new version seems to have bugs.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

For scalability, I would rate the standard on-premises version, I'd rate a two out of ten. But the cloud version is a seven out of ten.

In Europe, I know of around 700 organizations. The US will have much more.

How are customer service and support?

You can pay for customer service and get help with specific issues. They have different tiers of support, like first-line and so on. You submit a ticket and wait for a resolution. If it's simple, you might find some help. But for complex issues, they might just push it to the next product release.

So, overall, the support is pretty good. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

I currently use other tools like Business Objects, Power BI, SQL Server Reporting Services, and others.

I didn't choose MicroStrategy. It was already in place at my previous company, and I inherited it. 

How was the initial setup?

It does require deployment, and with Azure's architecture, you need a central computing unit like MicroStrategy Intelligent Server. So, that must be installed and configured. 

Once it is set up, you can start integrating data into it and building dashboards. Setting this up takes time, but it has the advantage.


The advantage of this approach is the enterprise scale of the solution. You have time to carefully consider your implementation and follow a more waterfall-style approach, eliminating and minimizing errors. 

This is unlike some other solutions where you can start quickly with Excel files and move data into BI tools rapidly. While that's convenient for speed, it can lead to neglecting a solid, scalable approach for the future.

The deployment took around a couple of weeks. It takes around two weeks to configure everything. Moreover, setting up the project and defining the data sources and desired outcomes can also impact the timeline.

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

The Azure part has a publicly available flat pricing structure. But for the on-premises version, you negotiate directly with MicroStrategy. They're often willing to offer significant discounts, up to 80% off the original price. The pricing list itself is not publicly accessible, so it's a bit opaque.

What other advice do I have?

Overall, I would rate the solution a five out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
PeerSpot user
it_user807390 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mobile Consultant at a tech vendor
Consultant
Writeback enables our users to see instantly refreshed data on their mobile dashboards
Pros and Cons
  • "It's a stand-alone mobile development app that you don't even have to do business intelligence on. You can just use it to build apps."
  • "Building apps is easy. You just drag in your data, and then you drag in all the elements that you want on your app. It's drag and drop design, and then you can customize your visuals. They make it all easy with plug and play widgets."
  • "We are embedding multimedia content in our apps... You can embed streaming video from websites, or you can host the video files on your internal media servers. The video is clear, absolutely."
  • "On our mobile solution you can deploy up to 100,000 users. In our case, we're up to about 10,000 active users, and MicroStrategy's server technology behind the scenes, the Intelligence Server and the Mobile Servers, are very robust and they can handle the workload."
  • "The interface you can design in MicroStrategy is great, but I feel it needs to be refreshed, add a bit more functionality. I would like to see more capabilities on the mobile side, to bring it on par with apps that you see in the App Store."
  • "MicroStrategy is dragging behind other tools on the self-service visualizations, like Tableau. I would rate Tableau as a 10. For the same visualizations, I would say MicroStrategy is an eight, maybe nine. They're still behind on the self-service visualizations,"

What is our primary use case?

Primary use case would be for mobile apps, exposing mobile data to people who need data at the right time and the right location, and MicroStrategy does that. 

It does so extremely well. They have one of the best mobile BI apps available. They've the got the whole power of the MicroStrategy ecosystem, and they just expose it through the app. It's a stand-alone mobile development app that you don't even have to do business intelligence on. You can just use it to build apps. It's pretty cool.

How has it helped my organization?

In the old days - which is not long ago, about 10 years ago - before iPhones, you literally had to go back to your desk to run a report, and your report could take an hour to run. 

Now, you can run that same report, you can access it from Starbucks, or wherever, to your mobile device, and you've got access to information. The decision makers within your company have access to the information wherever they want it, whenever they want it.

What is most valuable?

Building apps is easy. You just drag in your data, and then you drag in all the elements that you want on your app. It's drag and drop design, and then you can customize your visuals. They make it all easy with plug and play widgets. That just makes it too easy. Don't tell my employers.

We use Writeback mainly for regular database transaction tables. It's just a feedback loop, back into the mobile dashboards. You can type into those and then writeback whatever you wrote in, back to a database. And then, when you refresh your dashboard, everybody can see your input refreshed, instantly. It's an instant feedback loop, we don't writeback to any source systems. It's just for MicroStrategy's circle of functionality, an "interloop."

What needs improvement?

Since I'm a "mobile-dashboardy" guy, I would like to see more capabilities on the mobile side to bring it on par with apps that you see in the App Store, like Uber or Facebook. They've got all the bells and whistles - well, maybe not Facebook. The interface you can design in MicroStrategy is great, but I feel it needs to be refreshed, add a bit more functionality. As a developer in 2018, at least I have features that we're seeing in other apps in the App Store. I feel like we're a few years behind with our features, but still pretty excellent features.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't really had issues with stability. 

Well, in the old days, say a few years ago, upgrades only came out once every year and they were more stable. But MicroStrategy has moved to a quarterly release, so they've got a lot more new features in there, which means there's an opportunity for bugs to slip through. So, occasionally, the Mobile Server does crash, but it instantly recovers and users typically don't even notice it. 

If the disconnect happens when they're on a screen, at least their data is there, and because there are local device caches holding the data, there's a certain offline capability that is just built-in naturally, so you don't need a connection all the time. By the time the Mobile Server comes back, they didn't even notice. Typically, downtimes are very limited.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

On our mobile solution you can deploy up to 100,000 users. In our case, we're up to about 10,000 active users, and MicroStrategy's server technology behind the scenes, the Intelligence Server and the Mobile Servers, are very robust and they can handle the workload, which is impressive.

How is customer service and technical support?

I've learned by trial and error, but I've been working in it for about 10 years, so I've seen everything. We do use support occasionally in our company, for the bugs that we can't find a solution for.

They have different levels of support. The front-line support is okay resolving problems. I couldn't put a percentage on it, but once it escalates up to the next it usually gets resolved.

They've got a robust knowledge base that's open to the public, in the Community. You can literally search any problems there and somebody else has usually encountered it. You can fix a lot of problems yourself using the knowledge base, or talk to service. They usually fix the problems pretty fast.

How was the initial setup?

Regarding upgrades, for version 10, which is the latest version, the upgrades are more robust. There aren't as many issues as in the previous version, version 9. There were definitely issues upgrading from 9 to 10 because it's a huge upgrade, but typically it's the same issues that you're going to encounter. 

Unfortunately, MicroStrategy is known for upgrade pain, so a lot of companies don't upgrade. You will encounter problems, and when you have major enterprises that can't run some reports for days or weeks on end, that's not acceptable. But that happens rarely. 

Version 10, I've noticed that in the upgrade process I have not encountered any problems, so there something has changed in the upgrade process for the better.

What other advice do I have?

We are embedding multimedia content in our apps. Last week, I did a for-fun dashboard. It was all about Star Wars and Return of the Last Jedi. I had some active video in there that I started streaming from Vimeo. You can do that, you can embed streaming video from websites, or you can host the video files on your internal media servers. The video is clear, absolutely.

We are also distributing personalized alerts using native mobile push ads, for IOS and Android. It's pretty easy on MicroStrategy. There is a bit of configuration involved, so you definitely need to have a technical administrator help you get it set up, and your Apple developer to get all the certificates. There are a lot of moving parts, but once you get it set up, the alerts are great. You have to manage them, because you don't want an alert, the same alert, coming to the same person every 10 seconds because they will get annoyed and they will stop using your app. So, there's a fine line between too much information and too little.

We have configured our mobile apps to work offline to a certain extent, but most of ours do not work offline because there are some limitations involved with the offline modes, the performance issues, and sometimes performance is more important. There are tradeoffs. In some cases, we need offline data sets, but most of our clients use WiFi in the stores where they can launch their mobile app, and they're always connected. So they don't need offline. It depends on the use case. In our case, it doesn't really apply.

What I appreciate most in a vendor would be transparency, that they're being upfront with me. I would like to be able to purchase a piece of software that I know is going to cost me a lot of money, but I want them to be giving me their best price and not trying to give me a higher price and then I have to haggle with them to get a lower price. It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think.

From my perspective as a mobile-focused, dashboard kind of guy, looking at how the business intelligence solution looks, I would rate it, capability-wise, an eight out of 10. It is dragging behind other tools on the self-service visualizations, like Tableau. I would rate Tableau as a 10. For the same visualizations, I would say MicroStrategy is an eight, maybe nine. They're still behind on the self-service visualizations, but on mobile visualizations I would give them a nine or even a ten. It depends on what part of the tool you use. Some parts are older and haven't had any "love" in the past, and some areas, like Dossiers, are getting all the love right now and they look modern. From my point of view, I would rate them pretty high, overall.

Think about how many people and how much money it's going to cost to implement a solution. It's not just buying the software, which is pricey. You have to think about all the servers - you need multiple servers. You need a lot of people, you need an administrator, an architect, you need developers, mobile developers. I was talking to one guy, he has a team of 40 people, and this is just building reports. So that's a hidden cost there, if you want to crank out a lot of work, you're going to have to have a lot of people. It's not just for a small company. It's just too much.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
AJIN S L - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Analyst at Allianz
Real User
Top 5
A user-friendly visualization tool that provides stability to its users
Pros and Cons
  • "MicroStrategy's best feature is that it is a user-friendly tool."
  • "There needs to be better visualization."

What is our primary use case?

I'm working in a company, so we need to do the visualization for our client. Therefore, we are using MicroStrategy.

What is most valuable?

MicroStrategy's best feature is that it is a user-friendly tool.

What needs improvement?

There needs to be better visualization. It could be good to add new visualizations. Some of the visualizations are not there in MicroStrategy.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using MicroStrategy for a year. I am a developer and user of the solution.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

In my company, our team consists of around 100 people. Though there are not so many members in my company, my team consists of around 100 members. Out of all my team members, around 70 people are using it.

How are customer service and support?

I have contacted the technical support team of MicroStrategy. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Data Analysis and Visualization BI Team Leader at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Very good solution for mobile
Pros and Cons
  • "MicroStrategy's solution for mobile is very good."
  • "It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts."

What is our primary use case?

Create and share reports and dossiers, included mobile application

How has it helped my organization?

It is first full BI solution in our company, desighnted and administrated by BI department wo internal companyes 

What is most valuable?

I cannot say that MicroStrategy is a very good solution because it's not simple for the administrator. It is very simple for the users, though. In version 11, we had a lot of bugs and a lot of problems. But in 2020 we migrated to a new version, MicroStrategy 2020, and now we have no problem with this solution and it works very well.

In my opinion, Power BI and Microsoft servers are more powerful and cheaper than MicroStrategy. But only MicroStrategy has a solution for mobile phones. Actually, not only MicroStrategy, but MicroStrategy's solution for mobile is very good.

For example, all our top directors and board members only use the mobile version. Of course, we have some problems between iPhone and Android versions. It's not simple to build one report for two mobile decisions. Of course MicroStrategy works perfectly on an iPhone, but with Android we have some problems because there are different Android versions and mobile phones.

So now we don't want to migrate to something else, so we will stay with MicroStrategy, and our plan is to migrate to the cloud version or update to MSTR 2021 Enterprise solution.

What needs improvement?

In terms of what could be improved in MicroStrategy, it does not have enough variance of visualization for building dashboards, etc. and I need to buy a custom visualization from  different companies. It would be good if it had greater analytics so we could build these visualizations by ourselves with scripts or if more visualization options will be added in future updates.

For how long have I used the solution?

3 years totaly and 1 year on version 2020

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any bugs with the latest version of MicroStrategy.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have limitations with MicroStrategy, but the limitations are from our servers because we have a lot of users, and a lot of reports, and of course we need the most ability from the system and from servers because we need to have a lot of memory and a lot of CPU. For example, every Monday at 9:00 in the morning, all our users, maybe 300 users, are running a lot of reports. It's not good for the system, but the system works. At the moment it is very hard for the servers, but MicroStrategy is a very stability system.

I don't have any down times. Of course, our decision to migrate to the cloud version is because I don't want to administrate the servers. It's not my problem. I want to administrate only MicroStrategy for users and reports.

How are customer service and technical support?

I have not had any contact with tech support. We have our own team within our company for maintenance because we have one ticket to date that is open with the support team and we don't have answers for one week. I don't understand what's happening at times. But through this I can review the report or receive my problem. So of course I want to have an answer immediately.

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

Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?

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

MicroStrategy is comparable to Power BI, Tableau or Qlik. There is no big difference.

But there is a difference in price, in cost. With MicroStrategy I need to buy licenses for the users only once. Whereas for Power BI, I need to pay every year or every month.

What other advice do I have?

I really recommend the Power BI, but if I were to go to another company, and change my work, today I would want to continue working with MicroStrategy. I really recommend it.

At the moment, we have received some cases to log in with MicroStrategy for education. It is a big plus of MicroStrategy's that we have this possibility. MicroStrategy sites have a great  education part, with a lot of meetings, a lot of video, etc...

On a scale of one to ten, I would give MicroStrategy a 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user519399 - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelance MicroStrategy Expert, MicroStrategy Master at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
I can create optimized queries for each data source type. It integrates various data sources without ETL.

What is most valuable?

  • The ability to work directly on top of almost every known data source, while creating optimized queries for each data source type.
  • The ability to take the load of the DB with cubes while still baeing able to access the raw data at the db level when needed.
  • The ability to "complete" missing features in the big-data platform with mstr features.
  • The ability to create very complex queries logic automatically.
  • The flexibility to integrate various data sources without ETL.
  • The freedom to generate reports and use both cubes and relational data in the same dashboards seamlessly.
  • The ability to create simple but good looking dashboards easily while still being able to implement very complex logic and UI in more complex documents.

How has it helped my organization?

The ability to investigate high-level data in cubes and once an issue is found, you can directly drill to the row-level data within the same platform. No coding or integration is needed between different tools. It is all done within the same platform, using the same objects, which allows the best of both worlds, especially while working on large-scale projects (big data).

What needs improvement?

  • The default color pallets could be improved, and they are improving with each version.
  • Simplification of the various configurations: The product offers a huge amount of options and configurations. It takes a while to get a good grasp of it all.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used MicroStrategy very extensively for over five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We encountered a few stability issues in the early 10.0 and 10.1 versions. Since 10.3 was released about 6-8 months ago, it has been stable.

version 10.4 was the first "platform version" and is more stable , while creating complex dashboards in 10.3 you might encounter various UI bugs , for most there are simple workarounds though.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues. The only thing is that if you plan on using cubes as a solution, prepare the servers with enough memory; processing the cubes is heavy on memory.

The platform now supports a cluster of eight nodes, which should be enough for over X *10K users.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

the customer service is usually pretty high , support responses to cases within a day or 2 , even for cases which are not P1 priority.

Technical Support:

Technical support is at a high level. Most of the time, they are quite accurate; most issues are solved within 2-3 iterations, even without remote login to the servers, which is not possible most of the time.

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

  • I previously used Panorama on top of Microsoft SSAS cubes. I think that in today’s world, the cube is just a fragment of the performance tuning, rather than being the complete solution. Therefore, when people keep asking for the raw data, the cube simply does not contain it.
  • In today’s big data projects, nobody thinks about taking all the data out to a cube, with very limited capability to drill back to the actual live data.
  • Regarding SSAS cubes, today’s dashboards are complex, and only a small number of developers actually write MDX queries correctly. Therefore, each additional logic requires a very experienced developer and takes a lot of time.
  • Panorama had stability issues.
  • I also worked with Qlik, but I do not think it is meant for today’s big data projects. Nobody wants islands of data completely disconnected from the original data (no way to drill for further details, and no way the detailed level will be extracted from Hadoop/Vertica into an in-memory application).

How was the initial setup?

The initial configurations of the server and the project require a high level of experience. The installation is rather straightforward, but the configurations require deep understanding of the product and the environment.

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

Most high-end tools cost roughly similar, but the TCO of MSTR is said to be lower than others due to the reuse of objects and the ability to work with the dependencies between the objects, instead of guessing which report/dashboard uses which metric.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Of course, we evaluated Qlik, Tableau and MSBI Suite.

What other advice do I have?

If you are not a MicroStrategy expert, use one, especially in the initial phases of the projects; it will save you a great deal in the long term.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Database Architect at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Very good all-round; we're able to build good mobile apps and there's a great semantic layer feature
Pros and Cons
  • "Has a great semantic layer."
  • "Lacks decent visualization and the process for creating new objects needs to be simplified."

What is our primary use case?

I work for an airline and we are customers of MicroStrategy. 

What is most valuable?

The MicroStrategy semantic layer is a great feature that I haven't seen anywhere else. I also like the mobile applications that we're able to build with MicroStrategy's apps. The solution has very good all-round capabilities. I've implemented the HyperCard feature, introduced a couple of years ago, for embedding tags in my emails. It enables users to roll over a detail in the email and they can see airline performance. MicroStrategy is also excellent at providing connectors.

What needs improvement?

MicroStrategy needs to work on visualization and get closer to what Tableau or ThoughtSpot provides. They need to simplify the process involved when new objects are created. It currently requires updating the schema which takes time. In the next version, I'd like to see the inline processing of Python script that Tableau has and it would be great if they could introduce the Natural Language Processing feature that ThoughtSpot has implemented. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for four years. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable but time consuming. If I want to add an additional node into MicroStrategy it takes some time. We have around 200 MicroStrategy users. 

How are customer service and support?

The customer support is great, I always get a timely response. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is simple. I use an on-prem implementation for all these tools and it's straightforward, particularly for a single note cluster.

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

MicroStrategy licensing is costly when you're rolling it out to 200 users. A license with Tableau costs the same as I pay for two MicroStrategy users. In order to keep costs down, I'm proposing that we use the data connector for MicroStrategy in Tableau. The company wants to move to one tool but I think we should keep the bare minimum of MicroStrategy with the semantic layer working with one or two architects and a few power users and expose the data connectors to Tableau so that the end-user has one tool, but we have two tools on the backend. 

We're probably going to move towards the MicroStrategy professional license scheme which provides flexibility and discounts.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also use Tableau and I've had experience with ThoughtSpot. As a backend guy, I like MicroStrategy. As an end user, Tableau has a crisper visualization with a better color palette. On the other hand, Tableau generates a huge amount of log which is time-consuming to go through. That aspect is simplified in MicroStrategy where I can go to one place and see the error. Tableau doesn't provide any service unless you purchase their premium-level support whereas I have MicroStrategy on speed dial and I can call at any time to get help. On the other hand, everything has to be defined with MicroStrategy which is difficult whereas in a solution like ThoughtSpot, it's just a case of ensuring that all the keys are defined. The same thing that took a month to do using MicroStrategy was completed in three days using ThoughtSpot.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend MicroStrategy for anyone looking at an enterprise-level solution. If an organization only requires localized reporting, they should go with Tableau. 

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free MicroStrategy Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free MicroStrategy Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.