The DataRobot AI Platform is presented as a solution that accelerates and democratizes data science by automating the end-to-end journey from data to value and allows users to deploy AI applications at scale. DataRobot provides a centrally governed platform that gives users AI to drive business outcomes, that is available on the user's cloud platform-of-choice, on-premise, or as a fully-managed service. The solutions include tools providing data preparation enabling users to explore and…
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Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Score 8.4 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.
Data Robot is a powerful tool for greatly reducing the time required to build powerful and accurate machine learning models. It then allows you to utilize these items. It is probably most appropriate for organisations looking to get into data science and incorporate Machine learning and AI into their decision making. Having dedicated resources that can be upskilled is perfect, as the expertise and software provided allows for a big jump from willing to able. For the to work effectively, organisations should really consider dedicating at least one resource to the ML and AI projects, and understsand that not every project will yield fruit. A lot of this is innovation and experimentation, so relying on data Robots insights in make or break situations is not recommended. You also need to manage expectations well as the data you have may simply not allow for a powerful model. Finally, the organisation must be open to change, this has to exist in tandem with the above. If the organisation's key stakeholders don't want to change, all the insights in the world won't help. So a willingness and ability to change effectively is required to maximize ROI.
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.
DataRobot helps, with algorithms, to analyze and decipher numerous machine-learning techniques in order to provide models to assist in company-wide decision making.
Our DataRobot program puts on an "even playing field" the strength of auto-machine learning and allows us to make decisions in an extremely timely manner. The speed is consistent without being offset by errors or false-negatives.
It encompasses many desired techniques that help companies in general, to reconfigure in to artificial intelligence driven firms, with little to no inconvenience.
The platform itself is very complicated. It probably can't function well without being complicated, but there is a big training curve to get over before you can effectively use it. Even I'm not sure if I'm effectively using it now.
The suggested model DataRobot deploys often not the best model for our purposes. We've had to do a lot of testing to make sure what model is the best. For regressive models, DataRobot does give you a MASE score but, for some reason, often doesn't suggest the best MASE score model.
The software will give you errors if output files are not entered correctly but will not exactly tell you how to fix them. Perhaps that is complicated, but being able to download a template with your data for an output file in the correct format would be nice.
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.
DataRobot presents a machine-learning platform designed by data scientists from an array of backgrounds, to construct and develop precise predictive modeling in a fraction of the time previously taken. The tech invloved addresses the critical shortage of data scientists by changing the speed and economics of predictive analytics. DataRobot utilizes parallel processing to evaluate models in R, Python, Spark MLlib, H2O and other open source databases. It searches for possible permutations and algorithms, features, transformation, processes, steps and tuning to yield the best models for the dataset and predictive goal.
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.
As I am writing this report I am participating with Datarobot Engineers in an complex environment and we have their whole support. We are in Mexico and is not common to have this commitment from companies without expensive contract services. Installing is on premise and the client does not want us to take control and they, the client, is also limited because of internal IT regulations ,,, soo we are just doing magic and everybody is committed.
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.
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.
DataRobot provided the perfect balance of features and price points. The other tools we tried were very expensive and provided extra things that we really didn't need. Some of the other tools also required you to host them on a server at your institution or pay for their cloud service in addition to getting the software. This added to the expense without adding any additional functionality.
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.
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.
