Bizintel360 vs. Microsoft BI (MSBI)

-Scenarios where Bizintel360 is appropriate

When a team needs to analyze fairly big data sets from multiple sources, without having a dedicated IT infrastructure (ETL etc.) and when the teams members have little or no knowledge of coding languages and data analysis algorithms.

-Scenarios where Bizintel360 is less appropriate

When conversion tracking is required is E-commerce data analysis scenarios

When 2-Factor authentication is required by security-aware clients.

Incentivized

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.

• Process large amount of data at rather high speed
• Cloud based solution that required no coding
• The dashboard UI is very intuitive

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The dashboard freezes sometimes when processing too much data
• Lack of Conversion Tracking when analyzing E-commerce data
• Lack of 2-factor authentication (security issue for some clients)

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

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.

I think it is a great tool for teams that do not have access to a dedicated data analysis infrastructure, and/or do not have skilled human resources in that fields.

However there are E-commerce data analysis scenarios when Bizintel360 is not the best option (mainly conversion tracking), and the lack of 2-factor authentication might bring security issues with some clients.

Overall a very good tool for limited analysis scenarios.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The product has been reliable.

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.

The interface itself is very intuitive so we did not need much support when using it.

However the support team is very responsive and communicating by email was not an issue.

Incentivized

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.

This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

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.

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.

Google BigQuery is unbeatable in terms of processing power: it leverages Google infrastructure to process data without any limitation of data size or number of data sources. However the user interface is not intuitive, and most people need to undergo some kind of training from Google to be able to use it properly.

Bizintel360 is less performant in terms of processing power, but provides a very intuitive dashboard and beginner friendly functionalities making it very accessible and quick to master.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• Give us the ability to analyze large data very quickly (Speed Gain)
• Cost reduction (no need to build a dedicated infrastructure)
• Improve client business KPI (not in very case though)
• The lack of 2-factor authentication can be an issue

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized