Likelihood to Recommend As a Data Analyst, it is my job to analyze large datasets using complex mathematical models. Anaconda provides a one-stop destination with tools like PyCharm, Jupyter, Spyder, and RStudio. One case where it is well suited is for someone who has just started his/her career in this field. The ability to install Anaconda requires zero to little skills and its UI is a lot easier for a beginner to try. On the other hand, for a professional, its ability to handle large data sets could be improved. From my experience, it has happened a lot that the system would crash with big files.
Read full review Microsoft BI is well suited for Stream analytics, easy data integration, report creation and UI/UX designs (limited but what all available are great ones) Microsoft BI may be less appropriate for handling huge number of datasets and difficult queries. It may also be difficult for a company with heavy data.
Read full review Pros It provides easy access to software like Jupyter, Spyder, R and QT Console etc. Easy installation of Anaconda even without much technical knowledge. Easy to navigate through files in Jupyter and also to install new libraries. R Studio in Anaconda is easy to use for complex machine learning algorithms. Read full review Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple. Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money. Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs. Read full review Cons Although I have generally had positive experiences with Anaconda, I have had trouble installing specific python libraries. I tried to remedy the solution by updating other packages, but in the end, things got really messed up, and I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall a total of about 4 times over the past 2 years. If you have the free version of Anaconda, there is not much support. Googling questions and error messages are helpful, but there were times when I wished I would have been able to ask technical support to help me troubleshoot issues. There were a few times when I tried to install tensorflow and tensorboard via Anaconda on a PC, but I could not get them to install properly. Anaconda allows you to create 'environments' , which allow you to install specific versions of python and associated libraries. You can keep your environments separate so they do not conflict with one another. Anyway, I ended up having to create several 'conda envrionments' just so I could use tensforflow/tensorboard and a few other utilities to avoid errors. This was somewhat annoying, because every time I wanted to run a specific model, I'd have to open up the specific conda environment with the appropriate python libraries. Read full review The race to perfect gathering of Non-Traditional datasets is on-going; with Microsoft arguably not the leader of the pack in this category. Licensing options for PowerBI visualizations may be a factor. I.e. if you need to implement B2C PowerBI visualizations, the cost is considerably high especially for startups. Some clients are still resistant putting their data on the cloud, which restricts lots of functionality to Power BI. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It's really good at data processing, but needs to grow more in publishing in a way that a non-programmer can interact with. It also introduces confusion for programmers that are familiar with normal Python processes which are slightly different in Anaconda such as virtualenvs.
Read full review Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.
Read full review Usability The interface is an easy to use command-line interface, or a GUI for launching and/or discovering different parts of the system.
Read full review The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.
Read full review Reliability and Availability The product has been reliable.
Read full review Performance SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.
Read full review Support Rating Anaconda provides fast support, and a large number of users moderate its online community. This enables any questions you may have to be answered in a timely fashion, regardless of the topic. The fact that it is based in a Python environment only adds to the size of the online community.
Read full review While support from Microsoft isn't necessarily always best of breed, you're also not paying the price for premium support that you would on other platforms. The strength of the stack is in the ecosystem that surrounds it. In contrast to other products, there are hundreds, even thousands of bloggers that post daily as well as vibrant user communities that surround the tool. I've had much better luck finding help with SQL Server related issues than I have with any other product, but that help doesn't always come directly from Microsoft.
Read full review In-Person Training This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.
Read full review Online Training I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.
Read full review Implementation Rating We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.
Read full review Alternatives Considered ANACONDA VS
Alteryx Analytics : Even though I find Alteryx to be an excellent tool for managing extremely massive data, Anaconda is much better and easy for analytics. Anaconda VS.
MicroStrategy Analytics : Compared with Anaconda,
MicroStrategy Analytics is very difficult to use and counter-intuitive Anaconda VS.
Power BI For Office 365 : One of the main advantages of BI for Office 364 is its capacity to data connectivity. However, it's very hard to edit data connections, once BI for Office is deployed in other platforms
Read full review We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.
Read full review Return on Investment Positive: Lower maintenance cost compared to other tools on the market Positive: Ease in hiring professionals already accustomed to the tool in the job market Positive: Projects are portable, allowing you to share projects with others and execute projects on different platforms, reducing deployment costs Read full review As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations. However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless. Read full review ScreenShots