Kalido Business Information Modeler vs. Longview Analytics (arcplan)

Suitability depends on your business model.

Incentivized

It is very suitable for complete corporate BI solutions. If you see BI as embedding information into your organization and business processes, and thus as more than just a few scattered dashboards and reports, arcplan is your platform. It's less suitable for ad-hoc reporting and data discovery. It can do it (everything is possible), but there is strong competition in this area.

• Kalido has developed a data security and privacy manual for its personnel that is easy to understand and that provides direct guidance with respect to security requirements, including requirements related to support services to Kalido customers.
• Flexible master data modeling
• Kalido clearly establishes in its policy documents that Customer Database Information (CDI) is confidential information that must beprotected, and sets forth specific requirements for handling of CDI including encryption during electronic transmission and storage, as well as other controls.

Incentivized

• Excellent dashboard.
• Well advanced BI metrics.
• Better interfacing to other DW.

Incentivized

• Multiple rows, linked by pointers that makes data difficult to read. Could be structured in columns in a table.
• Kalido indicated in its survey response that it does not formally employ a standard configuration for its workstation builds, and/or it does not periodically review systems for deviations from the standard configuration. The Kalido DSP Manual indicates that Kalido does use a system security agent to maintain patches and anti-malware defense.

Incentivized

• Positioning and marketing. Most BI vendors use a non-technical sales strategy and focus on shiny, sexy dashboards to sell the story. In order to position arcplan fairly and correctly, the technical and business advantages need to be part of a sales story. So, it is not really an easy product to sell to customers, if it has to compete with now-to-wow-five-minute products.
• Learning/training for developers. It's easy to learn the basics of arcplan, because the interface is logical. But nothing prevents a beginning developer from creating a monstrous application, because there is no prescribed architecture. It really takes some experience to become a good arcplan architect. It's a disadvantage resulting from one of arcplan's biggest advantages.
• Data connectors: arcplan standard comes with a connector of your choice. Additional connectors need to be purchased separately. Many other products come with a full range of connectors.

Personally, I prefer QlikView not because it's more stable but simply just for the looks of the dashboard. One of my clients in Sydney recently moved from arcplan to QlikView. The reason was mainly looks and that QlikView has more training materials for the support users to train with. So in all, it does not really stack well against QlikView.

Incentivized