MicroStrategy Reviews

MicroStrategy's biggest advantage is its metadata. It is the building block of the tool, which holds the foundation of the business. Not many of its competitors have this feature in their tools. Metadata will help in scalability, organizing objects and also help enhance their dashboard and report performance.

The learning curve is comparatively small and, finally, they really improved their visualizations in Visual Insights.

Data Visualization helps the company's C-level people to make decisions regarding their business, both small scale and large scale.

They could improve the Enterprise Manager and Operations Manager components. Enterprise Manager is another component that comes MicroStrategy that acts another project inside it. Though it is a great feature, it needs lot of polishing of the objects such as attributes, metrics and others. They could also improve the pre-built reports that they provide with the component.

I have used it since 2010.

As long as the initial setup is done properly, there is nothing to worry in the long run. Users have to make sure they keep the product updated with patches.

I have not encountered any scalability issues; one of the best things about the product is its scalability.

Technical support is 3/5. Elite group customers get the best technical support vs regular customers, whose tickets get delayed.

I did not previously use a different solution; this was my first business intelligence tool.

Initial setup used to be very time consuming and complex (because of so many components) but over the years, they have trimmed it down to minutes.

It’s a great tool and expensive, as well. That’s why small businesses will find it difficult to afford.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated SAP Business Objects, Tableau, IBM Cognos, and QlikView.

You need a strong and well-experienced team to successfully implement and use the tool at its best.

Centralized server and repository: It reduces the development and maintenance effort for the team, and provides a unified user experience.

MicroStrategy also provides a full set of BI features, including:

• OLAP reports
• Dashboard
• Data discovery
• Visualization
• Scheduling and alert
• Comprehensive security control and more.

All these features are built on the same architecture and repository, and support unix-like OS. Thus, we can easily fulfill a user's needs, and align with all the system and security policies of my organization.

All the business units rely on the information provided by MicroStrategy for their decisions on daily basis. This increases data accuracy and saves time to build reports.

The design process of the mobile dashboard development. Now, MicroStrategy's mobile dashboard is still not a RESTful design, which means we need to design a different layout according to the device's screen size. It costs us more effort if we want to support the mobile and tablet at the same time. It would be better if MicroStrategy supported a RESTful dashboard design pattern.

More than 10 years.

No.

No.

A nine out of 10.

It is somehow complicated for a user/analyst without a DWDM background. But for an experienced DWDM modeler, it would be an easy task.

If your are looking for an enterprise level BI product for the standard BI platform in your organization, MicroStrategy would be the best choice.

• Mobility: Until very recently, I ran the marketing department for my online gaming company. The ability to review reports, have alarms, drill through the data and make actions (referred to as TRX services) was invaluable. I could decide on the go or at home which campaigns to run the next day, which products to advertise or which partners to invest on. My business is quite volatile and fast changing and so need to be the tools that manage it.

• Usher allowed us to let go of slow connections to VPN, speeding up the tasks probably by 10-fold and providing an improved security layer.
• Transactional services allowed us to code triggers to our affiliate system, CRM, and reporting services. This allowed us to clean up the data on the go, start and stop campaigns and partners, and better relay data to other departments. It's a strong offering that most BI systems lack.
• Visual Insights: This one is where most tools focus on, and although MicroStrategy is not the best – I rate Tableau and Qlik better – it is definitely up there; easy slice and dice of information and visually appealing reports for the non-techie businessman. :)

The main transformations came in the form of mobility, security and self-service.
Smaller benefits came, for instance, from the disappearance of point-in-time presentations for board members with Office integration.

Publishing centralized reports allowed a consolidation of metrics and interdepartmental cooperation and efficiency.

There are ways to go in the areas of newer technologies (big data), better integration with other visualization tools. For instance, MicroStrategy does not provide real-time reporting and integration with other services (social media listening, for instance).

Transactional services should have a big overhaul in terms of delivery, tracking, rollback and documentation.

On the major improvements I would recommend – I would say last but not least – is a review of the UX of the whole backend, as it looks a lot like it’s from the early 2000s.

I have used it for three years.

We encountered stability issues in the beginning; the learning curve for troubleshooting is not small. However, after training on the MicroStrategy server was done, we found the platform very reliable.

Not for our use case, yet. We use MicroStrategy just as the content delivery layer; all our backend is done using a Hortonworks "BigData" (dislike the term btw) stack.

Technical support is good.

We previously used several different solutions. :) I’ve been in business for a while. I actually for this business never switched, as Lottoland was a new business. The reason I didn’t use the technologies that I used in the past such as Oracle, SQL Server with Crystal Reports, Jaspersoft, Cognos, QlikView, SAP BO and so on..., is that I had looked at MSTR’s potential, but their pricing structure was far too complicated and convoluted. When that changed, it tipped the scales to choose them as our provider.

From a technical perspective, the default installation is quite straightforward.

However, initial setup complexity depends on the eye of the beholder I guess. I started with around 70 end users, 120 reports/dashboards across the company, one production server of MSTR with passive fallback, and transactional services for writeback on our data warehouse.

MSTR has no contact with nor at any point was used to manage the data warehouse or our data sources.

Pricing, as I understand it, is now based on:

• Users
• Cores
• A separate price for mobile

I have no advice, I'm afraid; it’s quite straightforward. As a rule of my company, we keep costs low so strictly report readers have no access; "inquirers", power users, and technical staff have full access. If at any point the cores become cheaper, we would switch. :) Then they have to reassess access strategies, as it becomes more important the time users access the platform rather than the amount. We'll never be in that situation because we run on commodity servers (we prefer more servers with more cores rather than a big mainframe). If I have any advice, it is to go cloud if possible; due to our regulations, we cannot.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated several other options, the usual subjects: BO, SQL Server, Tableau, Qlick,...

If you implement a specific refresh window, be very wary of refresh times and memory consumption; system refreshes block any other action on the system. Other than that, the platform is quite intuitive for anyone who has BI solution implementation experience.

MicroStrategy is the best of all enterprise solutions on a price/value axis.

I am a developer working with MicroStrategy, specifically focusing on tasks related to making cubes and viewpoints. Although I am not involved in solution architecture, I utilize MicroStrategy as an end user, working within its provided framework.

MicroStrategy saves time and money for repetitive tasks, streamlining certain processes within our organization.

The most valuable feature of MicroStrategy is the ability to make your own cubes and, from those, create viewpoints. This is particularly useful in data analytics where cube making goes hand in hand.

There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done manually. 

Additionally, the hierarchy creation process in MicroStrategy could be improved.

I have been personally working with MicroStrategy for approximately 12 years.

I would rate the stability of MicroStrategy eight out of ten. The product is generally stable.

I rate the scalability of MicroStrategy as seven out of ten. We have faced some challenges, such as a lack of optimization in the data model, which affects its ability to scale efficiently.

The customer service and support for MicroStrategy are satisfactory. We have a certain agreement with them and have consultants available who respond promptly.

Positive

I didn't evaluate other solutions prior to using MicroStrategy.

I am not working directly with the BI architecture aspect of MicroStrategy, so the setup process comes to me already finished. Therefore, I cannot comment on whether it is simple or complex.

Based on my experience, I can recommend MicroStrategy for enterprise-level companies. It efficiently handles around five thousand users.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I just maintain the platform and develop the reports.

MicroStrategy does have just standard reporting on them. Not more than that. A few mobile reports.

Learning curve: 

From the end-user perspective, it depends on how the report is designed. It's very easy to handle, like a regular website. 

For end-users developing self-service, the handling itself is easy as well, but the end-user has to have some knowledge of data, I mean data wrangling and stuff like that. Otherwise, you wouldn't know what to do. It's the same, like in Excel, for example. 

For developers, if someone already has some knowledge of data warehousing, it's not a big problem. It's just another content that you can learn.

I wouldn't recommend it if you have no data warehouses; for example, you would need to find a lot of knowledge to transform the data in MicroStrategy itself. So that could be quite challenging.

We have MicroStrategy in place for a couple of years, actually more than 15.  

It's quite stable, actually. We don't have a lot of issues with the platform. So it's good.

The data volume is not a problem because we have data warehouses. We only point to data warehouses where we have the data stored. 

So it's actually the distinct count of current users that would be necessary to scale up. But we don't have to cope with that right now.

We did have some issues over the years. One or two issues a year. We changed servers to the Unix platform. We had some troubles there. It was actually hard to find someone who has Unix experience with MicroStrategy. Because most of the staff had good knowledge with Windows, but not with Unix. So this was actually quite challenging. Once we had all the issues closed, it was stable then. But it took at least a few weeks.

We have different products like Oracle. We are trying to harmonize and switch to only one technology.

We are not developing something. We are just defining the target architecture. And after that, we will create a project for the transformation.

We already have a lot of experience, so for us it's not a hassle.

I was part of the in-house deployment. 

Not for all the deployments, but for the reports that we develop, we deploy them.

I wouldn't recommend it if you have no data warehouses; for example, you would need to find a lot of knowledge to transform the data in MicroStrategy itself. So that could be quite challenging. 

If you have data, it is not that complex. It's manageable even for end users. But most of the time, some source systems have a lot of tables. And so if you have to make some matrices, you need to know what to do and how to do it. So you need a little bit of experience. It really depends on which source systems you're reporting from and which users you have.

In our case, with our purpose and the skills we have, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

It is performing very well. We meet once a week in the organization and talk about the performance of the prior week. There are a lot of things going on. We sell a lot of product to a lot of customers for a lot of different reasons. Therefore, MicroStrategy gives us the opportunity to dig into the data and find out what the story was.

It has certainly given people the ability to ask more questions and get more answers. It has made them even hungrier for the data.

In 2018, we are eager to start the mobile platform, because we are going to create a sense of urgency in developing more tools, then just creating more reporting solutions.

I like the user interface and the experience has been great.

The subscription model is excellent. About half of our reporting comes out of the subscription, and from there, the ease of use in dragging and dropping reporting objects.

Business systems are always going to have reporting solutions. A single platform is a good way to centralize it. I do not want to take data out of the database system unless I need to. When I do need to, that is when I am going to use MicroStrategy.

We have rolled out Self-Service to our business teams. It has been pretty good. It can be a challenge and change, but when people see why we are offering them a solution that is governed by the analytics team, they get a better sense of saying, "Okay, all the work is done for me. I can just get this, and access it."

There are a lot of offerings, and we are not fully using everything to its advantage.

There are some challenges in our organization on how we store the data. However, if you are throwing something at it and expecting it to give you the one true answer, you got to do some homework before that.

Their business practices and the solution itself are in sync with our business strategies, so I am very confident.

The scalability is great. It was one of the selling points for us on MicroStrategy.

We have not scaled yet, but we should be soon.

Tech support has been great, very responsive. We usually hear back within a day. We usually email them and that works out perfect. The right person always gets back to us.

We usually hear about updates every couple of months. 

We were actually giving people SQL access to the database and certain people had it, but not everybody. While we had bottlenecks before, the bottleneck just got wider and the need to consume data got bigger. We really needed a more holistic solution that was governed and defined by a team to get the one single truth.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had some help installing it, but it made sense for what we were doing.

The price was good. We have had great support along the way. 

We actually had Birst and Qlik on the shortlist. What made us choose MicroStrategy was its longer term benefits. While the other solutions seemed flashier, we would actually grow out of those solutions within a year or two.

The biggest thing is to think about the people involved with the software process, not just the people installing the software or administrating the software, but the people who are going to use it. Then, you need understand how you maintain adoption throughout implementation and post-implementation. 

How do you keep people hungry for the data? You have to make yourself available. It is critical for whatever solution you choose, because if you do not offer adoption, ways to help train, or think about the end use cases, then you are dead in the water.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

• Scalability
• The administrative tools
• Managing the reporting solutions
• The user interface. 

Pretty much everybody needs to be pleased.

We used the solution for reporting and data visualization. We used Google BigQuery to collect data and build dashboards and reports about production, manufacturing data, HR, people, positions, and headcounts. MicroStrategy was the platform where we built visualizations on dashboards, created standard reports in table format, and allowed some users to analyze the data.

The solution is a very good enterprise tool with excellent enterprise functionality for security and user access. It also works perfectly in distribution, with everyone getting their own reports. It is very complex, so you can do whatever you want. If you want to make some data limitations, you can do it. I also like the internal in-memory engine with the Symantec layer. This makes the solution pretty powerful.

The solution has a very non-logical user usage part. It has a library mode where users can access all the data, reports, and dashboards, but they also can be accessed from a platform. They have to log into the platform. The user experience is confusing for the users. MicroStrategy needs to define which one they will use. Some functionality isn’t available in library mode but is available in the portal. 

There should be Office integration. For example, if I do a presentation, then I should be able to add a chart to my presentation.

I have been using MicroStrategy for two years actively. Our company is using the latest version of this solution.

The solution is stable. We haven’t got into any trouble.
 

The solution is scalable. We have used the solution with 100s of users, and it has been good. We never saw any logging or problems.

We connected and wrote a question to them, which was answered in a few days. We checked the problem together and finally figured out it was something misunderstood.

I previously used SAP BusinessObjects BI, and it was not as fast as MicroStrategy with the same data set size. The solution moved smoothly and quickly based on the in-built engine and some queries. SAP BusinessObjects BI can be used if you have an SAP environment because they have the connectors. However, SAP BusinessObjects BI is not up to date today. SAP is using Elastic Cloud. Both tools are very similar, but SAP BusinessObjects BI has some limitations and graphical queries. It's not as beautiful as Tableau or Power BI, but it is good. In some cases, SAP BusinessObjects BI is slower than MicroStrategy, but it has more features and tools. MicroStrategy is better for SAP environments.

It is important to have a good user security strategy. When building a model, take some time to consider how you want to secure it; limited or accessible. The goal is to build a Symantec career, but it may be in the early stages. It's a good effort. However, step by step, over time, it will pay off. It is a good investment.

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

The primary use case of the solution is for management reporting and analytics across many different subject areas.

It's an information delivery mechanism to pull all of our data into one central tool, allowing us to look at key metrics across the organization.

The most valuable features are the scalability and management reporting.

They need to do a better job in its ability to allow end-users to produce their own reports, metrics, and self-service business intelligence.

MicroStrategy is a complex tool and you need to have a MicroStrategy architect. 

In the next release, I would like to see better visualization and more service audience or functionality.

I have been using MicroStategy for ten years.

They have recently changed the version numbering and they go by years now. We are using version 2019 in the cloud.

It's very stable and we have not experienced any issues.

This solution is the most scalable BI platform in the world. There is no other BI platform that is in its class. We have used all of them.

It's used by our analysts, our franchises, and by our executives.

We have 40 users inside the company and 4,000 users outside the company.

We plan to increase the usage of MicroStrategy. We are probably going to go as high as 8,000 users.

We don't leverage technical support a lot because we have our technical resources on-site, but if we do call them, they are good at responding.

Previously, the main solutions that we used were Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and Amazon Quick Site.

We were using Oracle OBIEE, which is a Business Intelligence Enterprise. We moved from OBIEE to MicroStrategy.

The set up takes a while, but once it's set up it's an automatic mode.

We hired someone that had the consulting experience and became our permanent team member.

We have the best pricing available, but we can't disclose that information.

We have two ways of using this solution. We have an SSBI, which is self-service intelligence. We also have an enterprise-class, where we publish everything on the web, from tablets to phones, for our end-user base who are franchises.

It is the best for large scale deployments, but you cannot become a MicroStrategy shop without having the right technical resources on the team.

Don't even think about it, if you don't want to spend the money for the right person.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.