Altair Monarch vs. Microsoft BI (MSBI)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Altair Monarch
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Altair Monarch (formerly Datawatch Monarch, acquired by Altair in December, 2018) works with both relational and multi-structured data including support for a wide range of formats including PDF, XML, HTML, text, spool and ASCII files. The product can access data from invoices, sales reports, balance sheets, customer lists, inventory, logs and more. According to the vendor, the system is easy to use, allowing users to quickly select any data source and automatically convert it into…N/A
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.
$9.99
per user/per month
Pricing
Altair MonarchMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Power BI Pro
$9.99
per user/per month
Power BI Premium
4,995
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Altair MonarchMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Features
Altair MonarchMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.6
49 Ratings
5% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings9.042 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.947 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.7
49 Ratings
7% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.939 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.949 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
48 Ratings
6% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.940 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.943 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.924 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
48 Ratings
10% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.947 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.944 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.942 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
49 Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.946 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.943 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.946 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.928 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.5
39 Ratings
7% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.036 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings8.027 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings9.936 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Altair Monarch
-
Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.8
21 Ratings
10% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.919 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.919 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.918 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.917 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.918 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.017 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Altair MonarchMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Small Businesses
IBM SPSS Modeler
IBM SPSS Modeler
Score 7.8 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
IBM InfoSphere Information Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Altair MonarchMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(6 ratings)
8.7
(73 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(6 ratings)
8.0
(25 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(14 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(15 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.9
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(7 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Altair MonarchMicrosoft BI (MSBI)
Likelihood to Recommend
Altair Engineering, Inc.
The product is especially useful when you have real-time and/or time series data to analyze. If you have more mundane, simpler requirements, other products might do the job you need for less money (there are even some decent open source visualization tools you can find.) I know the product is very widely used in capital markets applications to monitor and analyze risk and price and volume changes; if you're working in that area, I don't think there's a better tool to use.
Read full review
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
  • Creating a basic model to extract data from a report is very easy.
  • Advanced features like Calculated Fields and External Lookups allow you to augment the raw data.
  • You can create a "project" to automate the data extraction. Combined with Datapump (a separate DW app), you can fully automate the process once the raw report is generated.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • 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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
  • Recently, we had some major sticker-shock when we wanted to upgrade Data Pump. It is an exceptional product, but when the price jumped from $6,000 to over $60,000, it was impossible to get the funds approved internally for the upgrade.
  • We also paid for yearly maintenance contracts which included Professional Services, but rarely found those services beneficial. However, we did receive all software upgrades for Datapump as part of the contract which we found to be very beneficial. However, with the new pricing, that is not longer the case.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • 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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
Even though we do not utilize it on a daily basis, I do hope my current company renews it's license. If not, I intend to purchase myself.
Read full review
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The product has been reliable.
Read full review
Performance
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.
Read full review
Online Training
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Altair Engineering, Inc.
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
Datawatch is very good value of money compared to QlikView; QlikView is really more of a BI tool and has a lot of functions that I didn't need. Datawatch is very strong in the real-time area where Tableau, Panorama, and Qlik don't do very well. If you need to set up a visual monitoring dashboard, Datawatch is the best product I've seen for that. if you want to do a lot of in depth statistical analysis of large databases, Tableau is probably a good option.
Read full review
Microsoft
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
Altair Engineering, Inc.
  • Data Pump reduces complexity of report solutions by offering a standardized approach for organizing and scheduling
  • 97% service level for past 5 years for all of our jobs going through Data Pump
Read full review
Microsoft
  • 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

Altair Monarch Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of