Anaplan vs. Microsoft SQL Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Anaplan
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Anaplan is a transformative way to see, plan, and run your business. Using its proprietary Hyperblock™ technology, Anaplan lets you contextualize real-time performance, and forecast future outcomes for faster, confident decisions. Anaplan enables connected strategy and planning across your enterprise to move your business forward. Based in San Francisco, Anaplan has over 200 partners and more than 2,000 customers worldwide.N/A
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Subscription
$1,418.00
Per License
Enterprise
$13,748.00
Per License
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
Considered Both Products
Anaplan
Chose Anaplan
All these tools have different applications. Anaplan provides [the] ability to enter data online, directly to the precise cells, then to manipulate this data easily (Power BI can only present data). It allows for easy pivoting and visualizations of huge data sets and enforces …
Chose Anaplan
I believe that Adaptive is more user-friendly. The reason being, every functionality is intuitive. Also, it has an out-of-box reporting solution that allows the use of Excel for reporting purposes. Also, Adaptive offers a planning tool that allows users access to Adaptive …
Microsoft SQL Server

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.5
205 Ratings
5% below category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports6.41 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.7205 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.1
2 Ratings
10% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.8
212 Ratings
7% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Publish to Web9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.6211 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning9.1184 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.33 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.2
2 Ratings
7% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.42 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.3
215 Ratings
7% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.6215 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.670 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.7
205 Ratings
1% below category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access8.5196 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application7.8184 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.9191 Ratings00 Ratings
Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting
Comparison of Budgeting, Planning, and Forecasting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.1
317 Ratings
9% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Long-term financial planning9.4292 Ratings00 Ratings
Financial budgeting9.5296 Ratings00 Ratings
Forecasting9.3305 Ratings00 Ratings
Scenario modeling9.2307 Ratings00 Ratings
Management reporting8.2306 Ratings00 Ratings
Consolidation and Close
Comparison of Consolidation and Close features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
7.3
272 Ratings
9% below category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Financial data consolidation8.5251 Ratings00 Ratings
Journal entries and reports7.6208 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-currency management6.211 Ratings00 Ratings
Intercompany Eliminations6.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Minority Ownership6.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Local and consolidated reporting8.6240 Ratings00 Ratings
Detailed Audit Trails8.4253 Ratings00 Ratings
Financial Reporting and Compliance
Comparison of Financial Reporting and Compliance features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.5
289 Ratings
4% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Financial Statement Reporting8.8268 Ratings00 Ratings
Management Reporting8.3280 Ratings00 Ratings
Excel-based Reporting7.8258 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated board and financial reporting9.013 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics and Reporting
Comparison of Analytics and Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
9.1
308 Ratings
12% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Personalized dashboards8.6302 Ratings00 Ratings
Color-coded scorecards9.2287 Ratings00 Ratings
KPIs9.119 Ratings00 Ratings
Cost and profitability analysis9.3266 Ratings00 Ratings
Key Performance Indicator setting9.4276 Ratings00 Ratings
Benchmarking with external data9.113 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration
Comparison of Integration features of Product A and Product B
Anaplan
8.8
314 Ratings
5% above category average
Microsoft SQL Server
-
Ratings
Flat file integration9.6304 Ratings00 Ratings
Excel data integration8.5283 Ratings00 Ratings
Direct links to 3rd-party data sources8.4264 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
Small Businesses
IBM Planning Analytics
IBM Planning Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
Google Cloud SQL
Google Cloud SQL
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Centage
Centage
Score 9.5 out of 10
Snowflake
Snowflake
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Prophix
Prophix
Score 8.9 out of 10
SAP IQ
SAP IQ
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(326 ratings)
8.7
(99 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(34 ratings)
9.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(48 ratings)
7.7
(13 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(7 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(7 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.8
(22 ratings)
7.9
(25 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.7
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.5
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(25 ratings)
9.0
(5 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(5 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.4
(7 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.3
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
7.0
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AnaplanMicrosoft SQL Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Anaplan
Anaplan is great for enterprise clients that want to pursue a path of connected planning. If designed correctly, a data hub can be your central data repository which acts a shared dataset across your organization. From Marketing and Sales, to HR and Finance - Anaplan will be the one source of truth as individuals contribute to the business process.
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Microsoft
Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
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Pros
Anaplan
  • Anaplan has a very fast calculation engine which is able to model across multiple dimensions in real time across huge data sets. This helps in calculating complex scenarios instantaneously
  • Easy to maintain by business teams which reduces dependency on IT teams within the organization and also on external consultants
  • Advanced Tenant controls which allows administrators to manage security and access across various models
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Microsoft
  • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
  • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
  • Data Security
  • Easy to understand and use
  • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
Read full review
Cons
Anaplan
  • I would like there to be additional visualization improvements/features for reports
  • Additional technical support resources would be great to quickly resolve bugs
  • I would like for improvements around the ability to have a lot of dimensions in a table of data and the speed around processing those calcs.
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Microsoft
  • Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
  • Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
  • It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
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Likelihood to Renew
Anaplan
In any line of work, a tool that is flexible and would allow different departments of your company to easily interact and exchange valuable insights, is highly anticipated and needed. For me, what Anaplan provides to a business, be it a smaller one or an enterprise customer, is an easily scaling, agile planning and modeling platform that can meet almost any need and give a high-end solution to the problems any company faces on a daily basis.
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Microsoft
We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
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Usability
Anaplan
Anaplan is very usable from a user perspective. Anaplan's level 1 and level 2 training courses are great resources and I highly recommend any power users of the platform consider completing both. These courses showcase, and therefore unlock an understanding of the platform which allows for quick and easy, agile, and iterative front end design
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Microsoft
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
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Reliability and Availability
Anaplan
There are very few outages. Maintenance is scheduled on two or three Saturdays per month, so as not to affect businesses. When there is an outage, users are kept informed of progress to restore the platform and typically this takes no more than an hour. Anaplan customer support is very responsive if we ever have questions about platform issues
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Microsoft
Its does not have outages.
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Performance
Anaplan
Everything is calculated in memory in the cloud. It's nearly instantaneous updates when you make changes. The only time things get a little slow is when you have a massive model with very intricate calculations...but "slow" for Anaplan is not what I would call "slow" for something like Hyperion. We used to have Hyperion calcs that ran for 60 mins before you could use data. The equivalent would be 60 seconds in Anaplan.
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Microsoft
SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
Read full review
Support Rating
Anaplan
Support quality has dropped since Thoma Bravo has taken over. I think some serious re-focus needs to happen here -- part of the beauty of being in the Anaplan community was how involved you felt in it before. Before I didn't dread sending a support ticket, now I am starting to.
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Microsoft
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
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In-Person Training
Anaplan
the training is great. I achieved master Anaplanner and on a consulting career path all through Anaplan forum. The training is very easy to follow and there are a lot of people who will help you on the forrum if you are stucked real simulation without the need to go to anaplan for some training
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Microsoft
It was good
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Online Training
Anaplan
Anaplan training materials are clear, simple, easy to understand and to follow. Visuals are excellent. The vendor is good at updating training materials in a timely manner and encouraging users and administrators to keep coming back to Academy site for refresher courses or new feature courses. I really like their interactive diagrams
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Microsoft
very hands on and detailed training
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Implementation Rating
Anaplan
Agile methodology and breaking the work down into sprints was very helpful. Implementation required a deeper dive into our data than expected for the consultants to be able to construct the data model. But once it was in place, the focus on knowledge transfer enabled us to be able to use the product effectively after the team rolled off.
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Microsoft
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
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Alternatives Considered
Anaplan
Compared to OneStream and Venna Anaplan offers a more modern look and feel of the platform. It is better situated and maintained in regards of platform updates as it's a full SaaS software there are never any issues with the system version as it's always automatically up to date with no backward compatibility issues. Due to the flexible nature of the modelling engine, it is also better suited to perform larger multi-department use cases, like IBP (Integrated Business Planning)
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Microsoft
[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
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Scalability
Anaplan
We have managed to leverage Anaplan for financial planning and forecasting across the business. It is now used by almost every department, with more than 50 users (but I know of companies that have hundreds of users) and still the platform is quick and reliable. It is easy to make changes to divisions and departments or add users and apply different user settings - the core part of the model is not affected and end users can continue their work without any disruption
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Microsoft
SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
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Return on Investment
Anaplan
  • Creating forecasts takes at least 1 week less time due to FPA not needing to track down and consolidate forecasts from the entire business. The department heads can log in and enter it themselves
  • Peace of mind knowing that every change ever made can be traced down to the individual cell level
  • No risk of spreadsheets with data not meant to be shared to everyone being sent out. Security provisioning is flexible and works 100% of the time
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Microsoft
  • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
  • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
  • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
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ScreenShots

Anaplan Screenshots

Screenshot of Platform: The Anaplan platform is a unified cloud-based solution that connects people, data and plans to enable complex scenario modeling and drive growthScreenshot of OpEx Planning: Review revenue-target-setting goals by brand, season, and capacity all on one, unified, highly-visual dashboardScreenshot of Supply Planning: Break down costs across assembly production to project profitability and align your supply chain to market opportunitiesScreenshot of Territory and Quota Planning: Keep track of sales goals and quotas across territories and industries to optimize sales performanceScreenshot of Headcount Planning: Easily align workforce plans with your strategic plans and quickly see where the best qualified talent resides to fit your organization’s staffing needsScreenshot of Marketing: Eliminate spreadsheets to drive efficiency across planning and manage budget against planned activity