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
Microsoft Power BI Embedded
Score8 out of 10
N/A
A solution from Microsoft to provide customer-facing reports, dashboards, and analytics in applications by using and branding Power BI as one's own. Designed to reduce developer resources by automating the monitoring, management, and deployment of analytics, while getting full control of Power BI features and intelligent analytics.
N/A
SAP Crystal
Score7.1 out of 10
N/A
SAP Crystal is an analytics and reporting software solution for SMBs. SAP Crystal comprises Crystal Reports for pixel-perfect reporting, and SAP Crystal Server for automated distribution and self-service access to reports, dashboards and data exploration.
$295
per single user license
Pricing
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Microsoft Power BI Embedded
SAP Crystal
Editions & Modules
Power BI Pro
$14
per month per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Upgrade Version to SAP Crystal Reports 2020
$295
per single user license
SAP Crystal Reports 2020 64-Bit
$495
per single user license
SAP Crystal Reports 2016 32-Bit
$495
per single user license
SAP Crystal Server 2020 1 NUL
$869
per user license + first year maintenance to be added
SAP Crystal Server 2020 5 CAL
$8,744
5 concurrent users + first year maintenance to be added
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Microsoft Power BI Embedded
SAP Crystal
Free Trial
No
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
—
* SAP Crystal Reports 2020 Viewer allows you to view static data within a SAP Crystal Reports file.
* SAP Crystal Reports 2020 - Full version allows you to create powerful, richly formatted, and dynamic reports from virtually any data source, delivered in dozens of formats, in up to 28 languages. If you already have an older version of Crystal Reports, buy a license for SAP Crystal Reports 2020 - Upgrade at a discounted, upgrade price.
* SAP Crystal Server 2020, 1 NUL includes 1 license of: SAP Crystal Reports 2020 - SAP Crystal Server 2020.
* As an add-on to SAP Crystal Server 2020 1 NUL, SAP Crystal Server 2020 5 CAL allows you to support a wider, intermittent audience of end users, up to five logged on at the same time.
Software Engineer in Information Technology at Prime Tech Solutions Ltd. (Information Technology & Services, 51-200 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Better integration with Microsoft products is one of the advantages of using Business Intelligence (BI). It's simple to understand, and plenty of resources are available to outsource it. Many of our existing clients have Microsoft licensing agreements. It's an obvious path when …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IT Specialist in Research & Development at Lamda I-TECH (Information Technology & Services, 11-50 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
MSBI is great for data collection and reporting, but it lacks the visual appeal and features of Power BI. Even though it's still useful, it falls short of Power BI in terms of features. There's no reason to doubt MSBI's findings. MSBI has a proactive customer service team that …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Verified User
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
A lot of our existing client base has licensing agreements in place with Microsoft, couple that with decision-makers wanting to achieve the outcome with the least amount of additional licensing costs added, and it becomes an obvious path, however, it is very crucial to first …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Business Intelligence Specialist in Information Technology at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 501-1000 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
-Tableau is clearly more cutting edge when it comes to data visualization and connecting to multiple data sources (support for MongoDB, Hadoop, etc). -Assuming your data is not that sophisticated, Microsoft BI is a great product. I would say its a good "all around" BI tool. It …
Business Intelligence Architect in Finance and Accounting at BAASS Business Solutions (Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 5001-10,000 employees)
Chose Microsoft BI (MSBI)
Microstrategy - I went with Microsoft BI because of features, usability, integration capabilities, performance, availability of talent, cost, and end-user (self-service) capabilities.
Microsoft
No answer on this topic
SAP
Verified User
Chose SAP Crystal
We actually have all 3 in place and all 3 are used in different situations. Some are bundled with certain products so we continue to use them. Others such as BI from Microsoft are stand alone and allow for easier data visualizations than SAP Crystal does. We chose SAP Crystal …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Product Manager in Product Management at ANS Commerce - E-commerce Solutions for India (Internet, 11-50 employees)
Chose SAP Crystal
Due to its bigger brand and excellent user support, it is better than many competitors. If you have huge organization support, then operating it will make your reporting system much better. Otherwise, you might need better employee support for operating it. Otherwise, the whole …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
AP Specialist & Payroll Practitioner in Finance and Accounting at William Kelly & Sons Group of Companies (Construction, 51-200 employees)
Chose SAP Crystal
We are very happy with SAP Crystal Server and we chose to go with SAP Crystal Server because it was the best fit for all the different departments that use it. With the other programs that we evaluated, we could not come to a consensus because certain critical features were …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose SAP Crystal
SAP Crystal Server was chosen because of the scheduled reports capabilities that it had and because we were happier with the end look of the reports. We found the reports that are obtained with SAP Crystal Server easier to interpret than some what some of the other BI programs …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose SAP Crystal
When we evaluated several options, we found SAP Crystal Server to be more reliable than some of its competitors. We wanted something that we could customise to use in several departments and for all different types of situations where reports would be useful. We also use other …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Verified User
Chose SAP Crystal
My department actually had a preference for another more powerful product but in the end I think SAP Crystal Server was chosen because it met our needs and it was within the budget we were looking to allocate to this type of software.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Clinical Informatics Consultant in Corporate at Symphony Post-Acute Network (Hospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees)
Chose SAP Crystal
Crystal Reports fits a niche for us in standard reporting. We don't use it for creating dashboards or interactive data analysis. That's where Tableau excels. For on-demand reports, we prefer Microsoft Reporting Service and Analysis Services. Crystal Report is very good when it …
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
This product is very convenient to use and implement and is considered a "de facto" standard in the Business Intelligence sphere. First of all, it contains numerous features in terms of visualization, data provisioning, data source integration which makes it a perfect tool for the development of BI analytics. Secondly, it provides great capabilities for the development of data markets for the whole development team. Thirdly, the sharing capabilities of dashboards that are updated in a real-time manner provides great incentives for end-users
Generation of templated reports is the strong suit of SAP Crystal. Allows users to change formats in templates bases on requirement with minimal effort. Automated report delivery requires the user to be aware of sql which cannot be expected from all users. Should support more document export formats and improve the UI for SAP B1 Users
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crystal Reports allows us to create a consistent template for all of our reports.
Crystal Reports and Server allows us to house a repository for all of our reports to make them easy to find and update when necessary.
Crystal Reports can connect to a wide variety of data sources.
Crystal Reports can be a little daunting when first implementing. There are a lot of nuances in learning how to truly master this software and it can be frustrating at times.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Similar to how Excel has VBA, Microsoft Power BI uses PowerQuery (M/DAX). Though DAX is similar to Excel in terms of how it is written, I just think it's something that would be difficult for new users to figure out.
Something I would like to see done differently in Microsoft Power BI is the ability to have presets for sorting/arranging of visualizations. Though it is nice to arrange the dashboard freely, it would also be nice to have preset arrangements based on visualizations (for those of us bad at making dashboards look appealing).
With Microsoft Power BI, it is hard to show others your dashboard using the free platform (unless you show them from your computer/account). This can cause issues if your firm is trialing Microsoft Power BI before purchase.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
We have been using this product for so many years and it has truly become a cornerstone to our business processes when it comes to developing and distributing information via reports. We currently have over 500 reports developed to date over about 30 systems and that will continue to grow as user needs change.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's easy to use for what is presented in the reports that have been developed and presented. It's not so easy to customize those reports, "make them your own" and save them for later reuse.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crystal is very robust, but not always easy to use. It create wonderful looking reports, and so deserves a high rating. However, I have to take a couple of points off for the simple fact that I cannot hand it to a user and expect them to be able to do development with it.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The support community can be difficult to navigate. I've also run into issues with my login. The SAP system has a bizarre mechanism for validating users that requires users to have what is called an S-ID. A basic ID may not give you access to all the features in the portal. The limitation may include not being able to perform a simple task like downloading patches and updates. This isn't a big deal for single user license but for teams it can be a pain.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
Just like any other implementation: When designing the differing reports, get end users' input, make sure to design the reports so that they display the information that the company requires, in the best and clearest way possible.
Test, test, test, revise when needed, and, particularly, do sufficient training so users are comfortable using Crystal Reports!
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I haven’t used any other software that can be compared to this and that is a good thing as this means that this software is the best one on the market. Tough other apps may exist we only use Microsoft Power BI because it is simply the best app out there.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Crystal reports is useful in case we want to import data from data base . We can write queries in it but Google Charts require to be implemented in our application using code so crystal reports is better than Google Charts.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It is a decent buy for specific departments in terms of reporting capabilities but updates and cost (frequent) demands are higher with the benefits offered.
So long as the requirements are not ever changing, with scheduling functionality, it's a handsome tool.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
