Amazon Tensor Flow vs. C5i Discovery vs. MicroStrategy Analytics

A well-suited scenario for using AWS Tensor Flow is when having a project with a geographically dispersed team, a client overseas and large data to use for training. AWS Tensor Flow is less appropriate when working for clients in regions where it hasn't been allowed yet for use. Since smaller clients are in regions where AWS Tensor Flow hasn't been allowed for use, and those clients traditionally don't have enough hardware, this situation deters a wider use of the tool.

Incentivized

Course5 Discovery was able to help my organization with cross-functional data by monetizing it. Our data was transformed into augmented dashboards which are easy to navigate - I've never used a platform like this, so I found that this solution minimal enough for a beginner, but also intelligent enough for a seasoned professional. Course5 Discovery was able to curate personal stories around our data which allowed us to make better business decisions because we were basing them on facts and analytics. More importantly, these analytics are presented in a way that makes sense! The insights provided to our business were a mix of facts that were both predictive and prescriptive, which brought out the business to the next level. We no longer have to take the time to run endless reports, and then spend hours trying to decipher them. Instead, with Course5 Discovery all the information, data, and insights we need are right in front of us when we need it most.

Incentivized

MSTR is great for any organization that is looking for a way to deliver complicated data in an uncomplicated way. From business teams to marketing and finance, several departments benefit from using MSTR to keep track of KPIs enabling teams to make optimizations along the way. MSTR provides great visual representations of data enabling team members to distill thousands of data points into easily digestible charts and graphs

Incentivized

• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows resizable compute capacity in the cloud, providing the necessary elasticity to provide services for both, small and medium-sized businesses.
• Tensor Flow allows us to train our models much faster than in our on-premise equipment.
• Most of the pre-trained models are easy to adapt to our clients' needs.

Incentivized

• Data Visualization.
• Predictive Modeling.
• Trend Analysis.
• Data Analysis.

Incentivized

• They sell the product well, and make promises you will actually believe
• "checks the box" for most features a company would need. Doesn't actually deliver them though
• They answer the phone in a timely manner. Can't answer your questions or provide support, but the queue time isn't bad
• They have online documentation. It's not up to date, and likely doesn't reflect the version of software you are using, but hey... they can point to it.

• SageMaker isn't available in all regions. This is complicated for some clients overseas.
• For larger instances, when using a GPU, it takes a while to talk to a customer service representative to ask for a limit increase. Given this, it's recommendable to ask in advance for a limit increase in more expensive and larger cases; otherwise, SageMaker will set the limit to zero by default.
• Since the data has to be stored in S3 and copied to training, it doesn't allow to test and debug locally. Therefore, we have to wait a lot to check everything after every trail.

Incentivized

• Multi-Platform use.
• Mobile Suport.
• Customization.

Incentivized

• The graph options are not as robust as an Excel user might want.
• The metadata layer can sometimes be slower, and it takes a long time for reports to run.
• Viewing the data feed entered can be cumbersome at times, in terms of validation with reports.

Incentivized

I would always choose to renew MicroStrategy as long as they lead the market in features, functionality and price. The support of MicroStrategy is timely and professional, I frequently get answers to my questions within 24 hours and normally have solutions within 48 hours. Training available for MicroStrategy completely covers everything required to be able to expertly use MicroStrategy and understand data warehousing.

Incentivized

The standard grid reporting could look more like the styling and object used for the Import and Visual Insight products. In addition, object properties almost seem to be hidden when first using the product. It's as if they are asking the engineers to only use the presets we make available...and, these presets are 10+ years old. On the positive side, Microstrategy seems to be the only product, not named Cognos, which can scale to Big Data. The product is "hackable" via the SDK or tricking the Intelligence Server to do uncommon things. The Microstrategy development team also seems to be very involved with their OEM partners; especially when it comes to features and enhancements. A large majority of the improvements we suggested have made it into the product or on the roadmap for future enhancements. Only suckas fall for the shiny objects from most other vendors; Microstrategy is really the only choice for Enterprise BI.

I've never had an issue with MicroStrategy not being available due to MicroStrategy application malfunction. It is very robust and only failures I've seen were due to user error or the platform the machine running the service failed some how.

Incentivized

Being able to customize the performance based on the business need is extremely powerful. Proper configuration and understanding of the usage pattern is key, if the technical ability of the architect is not at top level, then the product will not be configured correctly which will lead to poor performance.

Incentivized

Good user community. Support team is available if you are under AMC. You get decent support after raising the support ticket. If it is product bug they will inform you and let you know which patch will resolve the same.

Incentivized

I have attended many trainings offered by MicroStrategy; both distance and in-person training. I earned my CRD (Certified Report Developer) certification via the online training. I found the training to be well organized and concise. Overall I will definitely continue to increase my knowledge with MicroStrategy via the online training offering.

We measured following KPI for the success

• Increase in Business Feeds Loads
• Reduction in Controllers Manual Work.
• Conversion of Manual Work into Systematic Workflows.
• Increase in Customer Spend
• Reduction in Service costs
• Reduction in time-to-market for new campaigns
• Increase in cross sell and Up sell
• Error reduction in customer Identification
• Existing client retained

Incentivized

Microsoft Azure is better than Amazon Tensor Flow because it provides easier and pre-built capabilities such as Anomaly Detection, Recommendation, and Ranking. AWS is better than IBM Watson ML Studio because it has direct and prebuilt clustering capabilities AWS, like IBM Watson ML Studio, has powerful built-in algorithms, providing a stronger platform when comparing it with MS Azure ML Services and Google ML Engine.

Incentivized

Tableau is probably MicroStrategy Analytic's biggest competitor I've noticed over time, and I'm not sure why. Tableau only covers visualizations independently for each business user, which then creates the issues of every employee creating their own version of the data, and then you have 20 versions of the truth. A enterprise data warehouse and MicroStrategy's Visual Insight is a better method.

Incentivized

This software is extremely scaleable, one can add more core servers which performs as a load balancing. The configurations available to manage usage patterns and daily activity are as high a caliber as any other enterprise level software. This product can be installed on both a windows and unix platform allow for integration on a budget.

Incentivized

• Positive: It has allowed us to work with our overseas teams without any large hardware investing.
• Positive: Pre-trained models significantly reduce the time to develop solutions for our clients.
• Negative: Since it's a relatively new tool, you have to be careful about not paying for large errors while learning to use the tool.

Incentivized

• We saved time because the analytics were presented in a way that made sense.
• Return on Investment.
• Scalability as a company.

Incentivized

• MicroStrategy was helpful for reducing the amount of time we needed to spend number crunching large data sets, and in doing so, allowed me as the primary users to spend more time gleaning insights from the data that in turn informed our leadership team to make strategic decisions.
• By creating numerous canned reports available to all members of the team through email distribution or basic access to the platform, we were able to reduce the time I spent showing people how to pull the data in Microsoft Excel by nearly 40% .
• We ended up needing to make many changes to the way our DMP was feeding data into MicroStrategy due to incorrect reporting that caused complications in accounting and finance.