MicroStrategy Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

it_user5331

Business Intelligence Engineer at a leisure / travel company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 15, 2016

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The ease of mobile BI development and deployment is good.

What is most valuable?

- SQL Engine

-Ease of mobile BI development and deployment

-Scaleability

- Security (encryption) with compression

- Idea for enterprise wide BI delivery

What needs improvement?

It needs better EM logging. EM is MicroStrategy enterprise manager which logs usage and stats. It has becomes very difficult over last couple of years to use this feature to have a BI environment rolled out to users.

How are customer service and support?

MicroStrategy customer support including premium support is pretty bad in handling product level question or defects..which leads to lots of dissatisfaction for a customer

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user220092

Project Associate at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 20, 2015

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It has helped a lot of business users gain insight into their business but the developer friendliness needs to be improved a bit.

What is most valuable?

Robust architecture
Scalable reports and scorecards
Integration with other products

How has it helped my organization?

It has helped a lot of business users gain insight into how their business is doing.

What needs improvement?

The developer tool-kit is bit like that of late 90's and the developer friendliness needs to be improved a bit.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for over four years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No major issues.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None as of now.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good. The support site is very helpful.

Technical Support:

Very good. The tech support team responds very quickly.

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

No solution was used previously.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is well documented and is easy to do.

What about the implementation team?

We used an in-house team.

What was our ROI?

As the licensing cost is, relatively, not high, it provides great ROI.

What other advice do I have?

A must have Gartner leader BI tool. Tableau and MSTR can complement each other but I would put my money on Microstrategy..

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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it_user72702

Business Analyst at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 12, 2013

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The initiall setup was very complex but the formatting tools and the subscriptions are valuable

What is most valuable?

2 most favorite features are the easy formatting tools and the subscriptions.

How has it helped my organization?

Key Sales and Operations figures receive periodic tailor made data pertaining their responsibilities and interests.

What needs improvement?

The relationship between attributes needs to be clearer and the ability to edit contact lists and subscriptions.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Deployment or more to the point adaptability to the different markets and local branches was a bit shaky. It still doesn't suit perfectly every branch.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: No use for it up till now. Assimilation team is very capable and helpful.Technical Support: No use for it up till now. Assimilation team is very capable and helpful.

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

No BI tool existed in the company beforehand

How was the initial setup?

Very complex. The tool was designed for a companywide solution yet erp systems differ between branches and some definitions such as product categories and distribution channels are different. We are still experiencing definition gaps which cause some confusion.

What about the implementation team?

The system was mainly implemented through an inhouse team.

What other advice do I have?

Mainly to make sure that the data your looking to get in the end can actually be obtained and arranged easily using this tool.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Aug 19, 2014

Do you know if MicroStrategy Cloud can be configured so that end users can only access the service through a certain VPN?

it_user528906

Business Intelligence Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 10, 2016

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Architect lets you design schema for multi-dimensional analysis. Visual Insight is still not mature.

What is most valuable?

Architect (lets you design schema for multi-dimensional analysis)
Visual Insight (self-service BI)

How has it helped my organization?

This tool lets you design operational/analytical reports that business utilizes to overcome bottlenecks in processes of product development life-cycle.

What needs improvement?

Visual Insight is still not mature & does not have as much flexibility as its competitors. It is very unstable while doing development or using. Also, it does not have features such as associative filtering that Qlik has. Also, you do not have many options when formatting graphs. There is still a large gap between document vs VI features.
Concurrent usage of Architect while retaining consistency.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Schema development stability issues.

Browser compatibility.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support can be improved.

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

I did not previously use a different solution.

How was the initial setup?

Installation & configuration is straightforward.

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

Licensing is a bit complex.

Identify the user base & then analyze usage from the end-user & developer point of view. Keep track of unused licenses instead of adding new ones every time.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you are implementing this as an enterprise system & always check compatibility with other integrating systems.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot

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Oct 13, 2016

What is your current strategy for bridging the gap between document and VI features?

it_user6525

Engineer at a insurance company with 51-200 employees

May 1, 2014

High ROI, dynamic and user friendly

For how long have you used this product?
- 5.5 yrs

Which features of this product are most valuable to you?
- Dynamic and user friendly

What areas of this product have room for improvement?
- Easy Performance tuning is required on MSTR Desktop.

Did you encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability?
- No

Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?
- In MSTR itself we have alternative for different solution

Before choosing this product, did you evaluate other options? If so, which ones?
- Yes I have done comparison with Cognos and SSRS reporting tool.

How would you rate the level of customer service and technical support?
- 6 out of 10

Was the initial setup straightforward or complex? In what ways?
- Straight but only have to install all depending software’s.

Did you implement through a vendor team or an in-house one? If through a vendor team, how would you rate their level of expertise?
- In-house

What is your ROI on this product?
- High

What was your original setup cost for this product and what is your day-to-day cost of using this product?
- License base so no day to day cost

What advice would you give to others looking into implementing this product?
- Really good product which have its in built powerful feature like performance, attractive

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user7263

BI Expert at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

May 1, 2014

Incredibly powerful but it's not for everybody

MicroStrategy is incredibly powerful for BI, but it isn't for everybody. The analytics engine behind MicroStrategy is top notch, removing a lot of the complexity that a user may experience on the front end and moving it to the middle layer. Unfortunately, in doing this, managing the middle layer is somewhat complex with a ton of options. I'd highly recommend MicroStrategy Enterprise for companies with significant volumes of data, but smaller companies with only one or two analysts or very little data backend should look at MicroStrategy Cloud/Web or products that aren't as powerful/advanced. To summarize: end users love the front end but the ease of use comes at the expense of being a little more investment in the middle "metadata" layer.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user93297Senior BI Developer / Administrator at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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Jun 3, 2016

Imran_sh - there is no silver bullet and no magic, if you need sophisticated and scalable solutions MSTR is your ticket, with a tiny team. Agreed, if you needs are small and/or simple use one of open source tools, or Excel.

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it_user4689

Business Development Staff at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Mar 1, 2013

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I would agree with Gartner

Valuable Features:

Our BI consultants single out MicroStrategy BI. The solution proofs to be efficient and full of capabilities: large volume data is easy to process, capability to tweak the attributes for complex reports and dashboards. One more plus is its widgets that enable to realize user-friendly interface.

Room for Improvement:

For really complicated and huge projects, one should take into account great number of relations between metadata entities. New analytic capabilities presuppose R language background. And yes, it will cost you. But both money and pleasure to work with.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user8547Consultant at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

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Nov 20, 2013

I would like to add to this if you if you talk about cost any business implementation is supposed to be costly as there is no direct ROI.We have developed some very complex visualizations and dashboards at Infocepts and it was a real pleasure to work on this tool. If you have a proper dashboard development and data visualization frame work this tool can do wonders.

You can go through Infocepts website to see what we are doing:-
www.infocepts.com
Below is the link of our dashboard library to show you some great examples.
www.infocepts.com

In case you have any questions/queries I would be happy to assist. Feel free to reach out to me.

Thanks and Regards
Arpit Agrawal
Business Intelligence Consultant
Email: ArpitAgrawal9@yahoo.co.in

Please consider the environment before printing this email

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