Cognizant offers Cloud360, a comprehensive cloud management platform.
N/A
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft BI is a business intelligence product used for data analysis and generating reports on server-based data. It features unlimited data analysis capacity with its reporting engine, SQL Server Reporting Services alongside ETL, master data management, and data cleansing.
$14
per month per user
Pricing
Cognizant Cloud360
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Power BI Pro
$14
per month per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cognizant Cloud360
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cognizant Cloud360
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Considered Both Products
Cognizant Cloud360
Verified User
Analyst
Chose Cognizant Cloud360
Cognizant Cloud 360 has more of a modern look to it and most of the same functionality. I prefer the layout of Cognizant as I find it more intuitive for a variety of users, but Microsoft’s is also pretty well laid out. Microsoft is more established and has more experience in …
Cognizant Cloud 360 is very well suited for cloud integration of modern, common software among users of a wide spectrum of proficiency levels. The user interface is well designed and intuitive, and all common software tools have existing implementation tools and intuitive platforms for cloud migration. Cognizant Cloud 360 is not as useful when most users are highly technically competent and use specialized, less common software tools that are to be migrated to the cloud platform. Cognizant is technically sound, but maybe not as much as some established competitors (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc) and also may not have familiarity with lesser-known software applications.
Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.
Very good customer service team. Very responsive to inquiries, and willing to collaboratively develop solutions to software Platform integration challenges.
Very intuitive user interface. Layout for various tools and settings is well-conceived and implemented, and the software is ultimately very easy to navigate for even novice users.
Customizable resource library. The platform makes it easy to select tools that are needed without forcing you to subscribe to additional tools that are not needed.
Could improve in agility in the delivery life cycle. When customer demands change and abrupt changes in resources and configuration are required, the change order process is not as quick as desired.
Advanced technical competence and knowledge of a wide variety of specialized software applications is a bit lacking. Relative to some competitor software from Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, or HP, Cognizant isn’t as technically inclined and ready to handle issues with less common software tools.
Not as forthcoming with status updates as some competitors. In cases of interruptions or upcoming updates, Cognizant doesn’t disclose timely and detailed information unless it is specifically requested by the user.
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.
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.
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.
Support is very timely and thorough in their responses to inquiries, and also is very willing to help in finding collaborative solutions to any technical challenges. Overall, the only negative is they may not be as equipped or ready to proactively handle some more customized requests as a more established competitor would be. This is more of a reflection of the software than the support team.
MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.
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.
Cognizant Cloud 360 has more of a modern look to it and most of the same functionality. I prefer the layout of Cognizant as I find it more intuitive for a variety of users, but Microsoft’s is also pretty well laid out. Microsoft is more established and has more experience in integrating a wide variety of applications, and so is more ready and equipped to handle less common application cloud integration.
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.
Cognizant Cloud 360 has saved on overall hardware costs, as many resources have been migrated to the cloud platform and local storage and hardware systems are no longer needed.
There was an initial period of negative return as the migration was occurring, as some applications were interrupted, which in turn interrupted the flow of projects and inhibited the timely allocation of resources.
Another positive return can be measured in time savings, as users can more easily access applications from the central cloud source versus various locally customized network locations.
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.
