Microsoft BI (MSBI) vs. Middesk vs. Yellowfin

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.

Middesk is an excellent and vital tool for any business needing to set up operations in a new state. The process the seamless and easy. For businesses looking to transfer administration of existing state accounts, the process is a little more clunky. Either way, Middesk saves a ton of time and brainpower needed to maintain registrations with state agencies.

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We can recommend this software without hesitation, as it has the ability to generate reports and data analysis, as well as process the data automatically, which saves time. It is ideal for small and medium-sized companies that wish to improve their services in the business world

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• The layout of Power BI is very intuitive. Someone that is familiar with Excel and working with Charts and Graphs in that environment will find the learning curve a rather short one to start using Power BI.
• I like the way Power BI fits an assortment of users and how the functionality that you engage is replicated in Excel, that being Power Query and Power Pivot. So what you learn in one tool can be readily applied towards the other which allows you to more effectively apply your training.
• I appreciate how Microsoft is working to develop tools that go a long ways to empowering the end user. Prior to Power BI I would have had to consult with a "BI" professional to develop a dashboard. With Power BI I don't have to consult with anyone, I can work to put together the dash board I want and using a tool set that is really robust and allows me to engage an enormous amount of data. It's provides a great deal of flexibility and the types of data I can connect to.
• Updates...Microsoft is working diligently to keep Power BI current with monthly updates. They do a really good job of listening to the end user, if there is functionality not currently present just give them a month or so.
• Just to be clear, even though it's easy to get going right out of the gate with Power BI it provides plenty of opportunities to create some really sophisticated reporting solutions. With DAX in Power Pivot and M language in Power Query, you are provided with plenty of head room to do some really amazing things in Power BI.
• Training...there are resources across the web for learning and growing your skills and Power BI. And what's even better is the majority of those resources are free.
• Data engagement, when presenting the data to the end user Power BI goes a long way to allowing that end user to engage the data and begin to identify root cause by simply interacting with the graph/chart/data set. It allows for really fluid engagement. Prior to Power BI so many times during the presentation of data we often times ended the engagement with that data with more questions than what were answered. With Power BI, more often than not, the end user is able to get answers to the questions by simply clicking on the data in the graph/chart/dataset to see the details. This tool really does have the capacity to make you look like a rock star.

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• Gathering information needed for registration.
• Making the registration process efficient.
• Guiding us through the process when we hit snags.

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• The Yellowfin user interface fits seamlessly into our own web software as it too is designed in the latest web technologies making it easy to use and easily accessible to our client base.
• The Yellowfin user interface is intuitive and easy to use, elevating VSV clients from needing in-depth training on the product before true value can be realised.
• The Yellowfin architecture supports the Pintl architecture 100% due to a similar design strategy and as such no real overhead is added to the Pintl system for the addition of the Yellowfin product nor does it add any additional IT overhead to be used.
• The Yellowfin product is quick and simple to develop reports and dashboards in cutting turn-around-time at the VSV development team and when new/custom reports are required by VSV clients.

• 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.

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• Better navigation.
• More marketing and make it very reachable to customers.
• Login is difficult.

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• The ability to predefine a colour for a specific graph as a selection option dynamically.
• The ability to customise the label of a chart, especially with respect to performance related reporting graphs we need an increase in dynamic charting options to meet our more specialised requirements.

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.

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UI is not as intuitive as other systems we use. For states that require income tax withholding, some of them require registration with multiple agencies - the UI doesn't easily tell you which login credentials are tied to which agency.

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Yellowfin has large promises that did not meet our expectations after we got it installed. We tried to configure it but things did not go as planned. After 1 year of trying - we still cannot get it working. Be very careful when signing up with them - everything is not what it seems.

Reports are stable and always avaiable when needed.

99.9% availability

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.

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.

The user experience of this tool must be rearchitected. I am able to observe a lot of lag in the process when initiated. There are sometimes when the tool's navigation becomes difficult. The time taken at times is large to process a request and this can also be highly improved in the future.

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Anytime I needed a report, I ran into issues with this software. We used Yellowfin for a period of months, having switched from Salesforce. I found the reports were difficult to produce, and the data management was okay at best.

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This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

Yellowfin provides 3 levels of training to support consumers, business analytics, developers and Administrations :

1. Yellowfin BI Training - Level 1 (Exploration)
2. Yellowfin BI Training - Level 2 (Advanced)
3. Yellowfin BI Training - Level 3(Expert)

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.

Web-based training for large audiences for Level 1 and Level 2 I would suggest

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.

Design the data model and views for each dashboard is very important and it is the success factor Configuration of cluster for large implementation

We use Microsoft BI because our organization has all of its software in the Microsoft ecosystem. It just made sense to utilize Microsoft BI because it can so seamlessly connect to all of the other Microsoft tools and data sources that we were using before. We often find that more people have experience with Microsoft BI than other tools that we looked at due to its popularity and widespread use within other organizations.

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It provides higher quality. Although the price is very costly compared to its competitors, the result after usage is exceptional. Although this product has less marketing, it is able to be reached a large number of people. The navigation is slightly better than the other competitor tools. User experience is another important reason it attracts people.

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Yellowfin is no doubt, a stronger, more eloquent and polished tool compared to Microsoft's Power BI. The issue with our company specifically is that we are a big Microsoft shop, and pay for Power BI more or less in our bundle esp w/ O365. While the Yellowfin tool is a more sleek tool, the cost to our company is something that we have to weight against a negligible cost with Power BI.

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- Tested 500 con-current users in Linux platform with 4 cores systems - Tested with cloud based VM - Tested with 1000 reads per minutes

• Profit increase due to MSBI output and a better understanding of multiple functions other than cost.
• Data compatibility will be improved, and MSBI will have the opportunity to handle the API more effectively. The MSBI ETL stack works well with relational databases, but with cloud-based data sources emerging, non-relational data sources should be supported.
• Save time interpreting data. Our analytics capabilities have helped our clients understand complex data with simple reports. Thus, it facilitated decision-making.

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• Better speed.
• Better quality for optimal cost.
• Saves a lot of time.

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• made our org more data centric
• Decisions are made based on data vs opinion
• has created a single source of truth for the bulk of the organization

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