MicroStrategy Reviews

We have about 50-plus applications that we're currently running on MicroStrategy, and most of these are around tracking demand and supply, profitability, and growth for the organization. 

We've also opened it up as an open BI platform, so that all our business analysts can build their own dashboards and Dossiers and the like.

We are a data-driven company, so a lot of decisions happen out of data at every level. Most of our tactical decisions are data-driven, our strategic decisions are definitely data-driven. MicroStrategy is now the de facto tool within the organization, it's the go-to BI tool in the organization.

We have yet to explore the prescriptive analytics and the SDK. I expect we'll focus on these most, moving forward in 2018.

I think what we're currently excited about is the ability to integrate R. Most of our data scientists use R for their modeling. I heard at one of the sessions, here at MicroStrategy World 2018, that you can put your R scripts directly into MicroStrategy, so any modeling effort that you've done in the past can be transferred into MicroStrategy. I'm hoping it will be a plug-and-play feature.

We've already rolled out self-service to business teams with MicroStrategy. I think it's good. We just need to ensure that there are some security guardrails around any open BI setup. There's a tendency to screw up something when you just leave it open. You have to ensure that there are some processes and guidelines before you open it up for a larger platform. But there have not been any serious issues so far, so we're good.

As part of this MicroStrategy World 2018 conference, we saw some of the VitaraCharts. If there are some advanced visualization features - maybe I'm not aware of them - but if there were a Vitara which could work on top of MicroStrategy, it would make sense for MicroStrategy to have that within their own library. So they should add more visualizations to the library.

No stability issues so far.

No issues with scalability. As I said, 50-plus applications so far, and it will probably get bigger and bigger from here on. No issues.

We do use the community a lot in terms of understanding some of the best practices and the like. We've never really reached out to support because we also have a couple of partners that we work with, so they help us with the consulting and any support requirements.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but I was involved when we increased the number of licenses from 260 to now almost 950. I was involved in that deal making.

We prefer having the analytic capabilities in one platform, like MicroStrategy, as opposed to having them in many points. As it is, we deal with a lot of big data systems, tons of other vendors. It doesn't make sense to have to deal with multiple vendors and deal with different support issues. It's always better to have a single point of contact for our kind of use case.

Regarding investing in the mobile platform, out of the 800,000 odd users that we have on MicroStrategy, about 25 are already mobile. We've limited it to our CxO audience so far, but we will evaluate whether there is a use case for extending it to the larger organization.

We are still scratching the surface when it comes to our adoption. I would still rate it a 10 out of 10 for now. Once we get far and wide into the utilization of the product in the organization, that's when we'll probably realize this feature works better or that feature doesn't work better. At this stage, there are no complaints.

What we appreciate most in a vendor is their being proactive in terms of understanding what the customer needs, and showcasing their product roadmap so that we are aware of what's coming up next and can be prepared for it.

If a colleague were looking to implement this kind of solution, I would definitely ask them to evaluate MicroStrategy at some point in time. 

There's a lot of competition in terms of Power BI and Tableau. To be honest, the country where I operate in, not many people are aware of this, of MicroStrategy. Although MicroStrategy has a big presence in India, obviously Power BI or Tableau become the de facto choices. To be honest, even I hadn't heard of MicroStrategy until I started working in this organization. Maybe they should make their presence felt a little more.

• 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.

MicroStrategy is used for many uses cases. All BI cases.

For the organization, I am generating reports on revenue, fraud, collection, bad debt, vendors, and customers. I am doing a netting process between them.

I'm currently using MicroStrategy for all of the larger-scale financial treatments.

We use it in many cases for financial reporting.

MicroStrategy is also, used to generate inventory, and asset management reports for the end-users. 

The simplicity of MicroStrategy is what I like the most. It is more simple than other solutions.

It is very user-friendly.

The tool itself is very simple to use, from file creation to using the tool, generating reports, and making changes.

I would like to see the enterprise version available in a demo or as a trial version. It is the companies policy that we are not permitted to use any cloud solution in my company unless it is owned by the company, because we provide cloud solutions for others unless it is not provided. It comes down to enabling R&D for any individual.

It would be helpful to have an Enterprise version for non-enterprise organizations, for people like me who are trying to conduct test studies. As we are self-dependent study persons, my colleagues and I are required to do them. 

If I want to do something between myself and my colleagues, I have to go to my company's premises and use the companies resources. They allow us but it is frustrating because I can't do this if I'm doing something personal.

I started with MicroStrategy in 2011. I have been working with this solution for ten years.

It can be deployed both on-premises and in the cloud.

We are normally working with the latest version, and we update the solution when they are available.

Versions at the enterprise level are managed by the infrastructure. I only manage my personal desktop.

MicroStrategy is a stable solution. It is their strongest point.

The CEO of MicroStrategy usually has his own conference here and comes in personally. We have discussed many features and other topics with him. I believe they are focusing on this. And this is where they excel.

MicroStrategy is a scalable product.

I am not sure how many users there are in the organization, but the organization is very large with thousands of people.

I have never contacted technical support.

We are also using Qlik, and Progress on another project.

We use many solutions. We generate a large number of reports from the data warehouse and populate them into tables. In addition, I'm creating some reports and views, as well as self-service BI reports in some cases, for the end-user.

Aside from the enterprise, we have two projects with Oracle and SQL databases for inventory and asset management.

The initial setup is very simple. It is very user-friendly, very easy.

The personal version is completely free, but the enterprise version requires a company profile or a company email account, and I have to pay for it. If I am trying to do a test study or test case at an enterprise level, I am not able to do it on my own, I would have to use my company's resources, which is a bit costly.

There is no subscription, I am using the free version.

Tableau and MicroStrategy are certified in our environment.

I use it both on my own and in my organization. Tableau and MicroStrategy are both certified and deployed in the organization.

I would recommend MicroStrategy over Tableau.

I would rate MicroStrategy a nine out of ten.

I work for different clients. Its deployment depends on the clients. For the most recent project that I worked on, it is deployed on-premises.

The dashboard features and functionalities that come through the MicroStrategy Suite are the most valuable. 

It can be used by end users with minimum knowledge of the product. They can run a report or create a dashboard on their phones, which is kind of cool.

It crashes multiple times for even small changes that I make on the fly in the dashboard. After doing all the necessary changes, the MicroStrategy desktop or even the web version kicks the users out, and all the changes are lost. This functionality is buggy in MicroStrategy. It is hard to keep track of all the changes that I have done before. I don't want to make copies of each change that I have made because I would end up creating a hundred dashboards. It is not feasible in a real environment. 

I haven't worked on integrating MicroStrategy with the cloud. I am not sure how it behaves in the cloud, but I have heard from a few of my friends that there are some hiccups when you kind of sync to the cloud through MicroStrategy.

I have been using this solution for close to eight years.

It is stable to a certain extent, but after some time, it kicks the user out of the activity that the user was doing in MicroStrategy.

Their technical support is excellent. Technical support has been tremendous, especially for MicroStrategy. 

The user base for MicroStrategy is huge, and you have multiple platforms to post your question. I get a reply by the end of the day.

Being an admin, it was an easy task for me. If you are not an admin and you are just a user or an architect, the initial setup is not that easy as compared to other tools.

They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools.

I would rate MicroStrategy an eight out of ten.

We use MicroStrategy to generate enterprise-wide reports. It is used by all the store managers to track sales, stock, inventory, etc.

It helps all the store managers and supply chain people to obtain a view of the data and plan the next week, the next month, quarters, and so on.

We are still learning on our journey of how to roll out Visual Insights to all the business users and how much data input capability should be given to them.

In 2018, we plan on using Visual Insights heavily.

The most valuable features are drill down, dashboards, documents, bringing everything under one roof, and visualizations.

We are using mobile analytics, and it is amazing.

While we prefer having the analytic capabilities in single platform, it does depends on the use case.

More visualizations out-of-the-box. That would be my top priority. For example, the cool things that you see in 3D visualizations, if those could be made. If some of those things could be made available in MicroStrategy, that would be great. 

It is pretty good. We have not had any issues so far.

Scalability is the best thing. You can really scale. It has already scaled to approximately 2000 stores and more than 15,000 users.  

Whenever we have had some issues, we have contacted the technical support, and they are knowledgeable. However, it never really gets to the point where we are contacting them, because a lot of resources are available on MicroStrategy's support site, which is helpful. 

I was not involved in the initial setup.

MicroStrategy was a little late with Visual Insights, but it is one tool which you can find everything.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. Technology
2. Flexibility
3. More partnerships.

I have always admired how MicroStrategy has continued to strive on one particular aspect, simplification, yet not compromise on its robustness. The mobile features have proven to be the most valuable to me. Their Mobile solution is one of the best in the BI industry when it comes to quality, presentation, out-of-the-box features and ease of development. My client has fully adapted to this solution and we are extremely pleased with the end results.

In the past, our sales VP and directors will bring their laptop loaded with Excel sheets whenever they meet with their clients, but that has now been replaced with an iPad using the MicroStrategy Mobile solution. The BI application now is able to provide the analytics and visualizations required to empower our VPs and directors to make informed decisions in real time with their clients. The application has also helped identify the weak links within the sales structure.

If I were to pick a few areas with room for improvement, I would suggest the following:

• It would be nice to have more visualizations available for the user community right out the box instead of using the D3 plugin.
• It would be nice to have more features packed with the ESRI Map engine that is supported right out the box.
• MicroStrategy Operations Manager needs improvement from a visualization and stability perspective. (This is a new feature that was introduced in MicroStrategy 10.)

I've used it for 12 years, implementing MicroStrategy solutions for both government and corporate clients.

I have been involved with implementing MicroStrategy Solution for over 12 years and I have worked with other BI solution providers (IBM Cognos, SAP BusinessObjects, SAS BI) while contracting for the government. In my experience, MicroStrategy have had the greatest uptime percentile when it comes to stability compared to the rest of the tools. I've seen great improvement in stability, especially in versions 9 and 10. It is a stable tool when it’s deployed and configured as recommended.

The MicroStrategy solution is very scalable. An organization can start out with limited licensing and grow more robust without compromising on the performance.

I would say their technical support quality has been a little questionable lately and I have brought up our concerns to their regional director. MicroStrategy has acknowledged my concerns and assured me that they are working towards providing a better quality of support.

I started my career with MicroStrategy and have not worked with a different solution before. On the other hand, I was involved in a project where we switched from another BI solution, Cognos, to MicroStrategy, while contracting for a government entity.

MicroStrategy’s implementation has always been very straightforward and the organization has continued to strive to simplify the whole deployment process. It requires minimal support from other IT personnel.

MicroStrategy licensing structure has been recently revamped and in my opinion, they have done a great job. From a cost perspective, it’s pretty competitive, but one thing to keep in mind is the fact that you don’t need to hire a ton of consultants to manage this application.

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

MicroStrategy has always been one of the top leaders in the business intelligence industry and they have worked hard to provide new breakthroughs in the industry. There are other BI tools that can potentially provide a better solution for various reasons but in my opinion, they are very much focused on a specific area. If you are looking into a tool that offers the full suite of business intelligence needs, you will never go wrong with MicroStrategy.

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.

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.