Altair Monarch vs. Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Altair Monarch
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Altair Monarch (formerly Datawatch Monarch, acquired by Altair in December, 2018) works with both relational and multi-structured data including support for a wide range of formats including PDF, XML, HTML, text, spool and ASCII files. The product can access data from invoices, sales reports, balance sheets, customer lists, inventory, logs and more. According to the vendor, the system is easy to use, allowing users to quickly select any data source and automatically convert it into…N/A
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Power BI for Office 365 allowed users to model and analyze data, and query large datasets with complex natural language queries. It has been discontinued in favor of other editions of Power BI going forward.N/A
Pricing
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.0
11 Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.011 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.5
11 Ratings
16% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings9.011 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings9.011 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings10.06 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.5
11 Ratings
13% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings9.06 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings9.64 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.73 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
10.0
11 Ratings
22% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings10.08 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.8
10 Ratings
14% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings9.08 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings10.09 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings10.05 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
9.5
10 Ratings
17% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings10.010 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings9.09 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings10.09 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Power BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
7.8
3 Ratings
1% below category average
REST API00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.5 out of 10
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.0 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(6 ratings)
8.0
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(6 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Altair MonarchPower BI For Office 365 (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
Altair Engineering, Inc.
The product is especially useful when you have real-time and/or time series data to analyze. If you have more mundane, simpler requirements, other products might do the job you need for less money (there are even some decent open source visualization tools you can find.) I know the product is very widely used in capital markets applications to monitor and analyze risk and price and volume changes; if you're working in that area, I don't think there's a better tool to use.
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Microsoft
If you're already using Office 365, Power BI for O365 is an easy choice. Start playing around with the free version and then easily add individual Pro licenses with little risk. However, if you anticipate using this with many users, it can get expensive quickly.
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Pros
Altair Engineering, Inc.
  • Creating a basic model to extract data from a report is very easy.
  • Advanced features like Calculated Fields and External Lookups allow you to augment the raw data.
  • You can create a "project" to automate the data extraction. Combined with Datapump (a separate DW app), you can fully automate the process once the raw report is generated.
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Microsoft
  • Easy to make visual dashboards from SQL queries. Previously we had to use a third party application that had to run on a web server that was so complex to setup and run. PowerBI removes all that.
  • Ability to control who/which group has access to each dashboard or report. Ties in well with the rest of the Office 365 ecosystem.
  • Has many connectors to allow pulling data from various systems, both onsite (via gateway) or external (via APIs), and join the data to create a report/dashboard.
  • Ability to show data but also export the data, if permitted.
  • Easy to show PowerBI dashboards on SharePoint or on other websites via embedded code.
Read full review
Cons
Altair Engineering, Inc.
  • Recently, we had some major sticker-shock when we wanted to upgrade Data Pump. It is an exceptional product, but when the price jumped from $6,000 to over $60,000, it was impossible to get the funds approved internally for the upgrade.
  • We also paid for yearly maintenance contracts which included Professional Services, but rarely found those services beneficial. However, we did receive all software upgrades for Datapump as part of the contract which we found to be very beneficial. However, with the new pricing, that is not longer the case.
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Microsoft
  • Licensing: Currently, Microsoft has a fixed pricing model for Office 365 users, regardless of role/function of the user. Most organizations have a small number of "power users" that create usable content and many more "consumers" that simply view/run reports created by power users. Microsoft does not differentiate between these users, and thus the pricing limits organizations from large deployments of the software.
  • Version incompatibility: Excel 2010 and 2013 workbooks are compatible with each other. However, workbooks created in 2010 that include PowerPivot databases must be upgraded to 2013 format to run in 2013. Subsequently, you cannot open these upgraded PowerPivot workbooks in 2010. This requires ALL users to be on the same version.
  • Visualization: Excel charting with PowerPivot workbooks is adequate for many users. Power View also contains a number of GREAT visualizations, including animated bubble charts and a very flexible dashboard/report design canvas. However, compared to some of the other self-service BI solutions, it is still limited in its visualization capabilities.
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Likelihood to Renew
Altair Engineering, Inc.
Even though we do not utilize it on a daily basis, I do hope my current company renews it's license. If not, I intend to purchase myself.
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Microsoft
I will continue to recommend this suite to folks looking for a reporting and analytics solution, as I find in MOST cases, it's great at meeting almost every requirement I've been given by a multitude of clients across a range of industries. I've built Capacity Planning solutions that allowed end user input which was then submitted to SharePoint, Executive Dashboards, custom applications, simple analytical tools for teams to easily slice and dice data, and super simple reports as well as some very complicated ones. If you haven't seen the demos online, do a search, and see for yourself - this is a great BI suite! (I do not work for Microsoft, although I do consult out there from time to time. I do occasionally make a recommendation for a different BI reporting tool, but in general, find Excel can accomplish quite a bit for less money and in less time.)
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Usability
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
We are satisfied with the functionality and capabilities of Power BI. Product is cost effective and full-fill the reporting requirements of the organization. You can perform most of the report level complex analysis with the help of DAX which makes Power BI very powerful analytic tool. Power BI for Office 365 has gone away and Power BI is the next evolution of it. Power BI comes with your Office 365 E5 subscription or you can purchase licensing for it separately.
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Support Rating
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
as of now there is strong community for Power BI, you can get solution for most of your problems from there. Also you can send your error to Microsoft as well. After every 15 days they release updates to overcome all the issues of defects.
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Alternatives Considered
Altair Engineering, Inc.
Datawatch is very good value of money compared to QlikView; QlikView is really more of a BI tool and has a lot of functions that I didn't need. Datawatch is very strong in the real-time area where Tableau, Panorama, and Qlik don't do very well. If you need to set up a visual monitoring dashboard, Datawatch is the best product I've seen for that. if you want to do a lot of in depth statistical analysis of large databases, Tableau is probably a good option.
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Microsoft
Oracle was nice, super expensive to implement if it's not in use already. JobDiva is choppy and heavy on the system while does not give great reports. Salesforce is good; remote access is good however their support is terrible
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Return on Investment
Altair Engineering, Inc.
  • Data Pump reduces complexity of report solutions by offering a standardized approach for organizing and scheduling
  • 97% service level for past 5 years for all of our jobs going through Data Pump
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Microsoft
  • As a Microsoft Partner implementing Business Intelligence solutions, Power BI has removed the barrier for our clients to begin the "BI journey". So often, projects get hung up in that early phase of procuring and installing/configuring expensive hardware and software. Just simply getting started and designing a beginning solution has allowed our clients to see results in 1-2 weeks using their data that might have taken months to achieve otherwise.
  • One significant ROI example is process improvement. In many cases, individuals or teams are spending days each month gathering data from multiple sources for reporting to their constituents. We are reducing these times to minutes by automating many of the data collection and integration processes that were previously manual.
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ScreenShots

Altair Monarch Screenshots

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