Microsoft BI (MSBI) vs. OpenText Magellan

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
OpenText Magellan
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
OpenText Magellan Analytics Suite leverages a comprehensive set of data analytics software to identify patterns, relationships and trends through data visualizations and interactive dashboards.N/A
Pricing
Microsoft BI (MSBI)OpenText Magellan
Editions & Modules
Power BI Pro
$9.99
per user/per month
Power BI Premium
4,995
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)OpenText Magellan
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Features
Microsoft BI (MSBI)OpenText Magellan
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.6
49 Ratings
5% above category average
OpenText Magellan
7.0
2 Ratings
16% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports9.042 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards8.049 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.947 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.7
49 Ratings
7% above category average
OpenText Magellan
8.3
3 Ratings
2% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.944 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.049 Ratings8.03 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.939 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.949 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
48 Ratings
6% above category average
OpenText Magellan
8.3
2 Ratings
1% below category average
Publish to Web8.944 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.944 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Report Versioning8.940 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.943 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.924 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
48 Ratings
10% above category average
OpenText Magellan
8.0
1 Ratings
1% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.947 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.944 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.942 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.9
49 Ratings
3% above category average
OpenText Magellan
9.0
2 Ratings
5% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.946 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.943 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.946 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.928 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.5
39 Ratings
7% above category average
OpenText Magellan
7.0
2 Ratings
13% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access8.036 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Mobile Application8.027 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile9.936 Ratings7.02 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
8.8
21 Ratings
10% above category average
OpenText Magellan
6.2
1 Ratings
24% below category average
REST API8.919 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Javascript API8.919 Ratings9.01 Ratings
iFrames8.918 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API8.917 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.918 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.017 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Microsoft BI (MSBI)OpenText Magellan
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)OpenText Magellan
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(73 ratings)
9.0
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(25 ratings)
3.9
(9 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(14 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(15 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
6.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.6
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft BI (MSBI)OpenText Magellan
Likelihood to Recommend
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
OpenText
If you do not have a large budget and are a large organization, I would steer clear of Actuate. If you are looking to do very complex washboarding, I would not use them. Your developers have to be very skilled to work with this. Plan to bring in consultants if necessary to help your process. Adhoc reporting is weak. If your pricing is user based and you expand, this could be very expensive.
Read full review
Pros
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
OpenText
  • The report outputs can vary across different types such as HTML, PDF, and Excel
  • Their open source offering is very sufficient
  • There are great boards and blogs for developers and engineers to expand and use their features.
  • The people from the company that I've worked with are professional and courteous.
Read full review
Cons
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
OpenText
  • The documentation on all the available features, but most importantly on the scripting side, can be improved
  • The standard look & feel of some basic options, like parameter selection or sorting and filtering, looks dated and can't be customized
  • The server portal needs to provide better tools
  • More integration is needed with other OpenText products
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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
OpenText
I am no longer working for the company that was using Actuate but I believe they would continue to use it because the stitching costs would be to high. It would require a complete rewrite of the reports and the never version of Actuate (BIRT) even required an almost complete report rewrite
Read full review
Usability
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
OpenText
It is quite intuitive to use. It is fit specifically for doing sentiment, emotion, and intention analysis as well as text classification and text summarization. I would have given 10 if it is fit for the purpose of doing image processing and analysis as well. There is a huge market to analyze video and image data.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
The product has been reliable.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Performance
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
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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
OpenText
Always there on the front and backend for us and the client.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Microsoft
This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.
Read full review
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Online Training
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
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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
OpenText
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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
OpenText
It is vastly superior to these in many ways, for complex reporting it is a much more sophisticated solution. Visualizations are very good. Javascript extensibility is very powerful, others don't support this or as well. Pentaho and MS are both OLAP oriented. Pentaho is moving more toward big data, which was not our primary focus. Others are stuck in the Crystal Reports Band metaphor.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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
OpenText
  • Actuate can handle 50 to 60 sub reports inside a report very well.
  • Dynamically creating the datasource, chart, graph, reports are the main advantages. We can do any level of drilling, and can create a performance matrix dashboard efficiently.
Read full review
ScreenShots

OpenText Magellan Screenshots

Screenshot of A Magellan BI & Reporting dashboard that an individual can interact with and personalize to their needs, such as changing chart types or computations.Screenshot of Magellan Data Discovery provides a Smart User Interface, designed to equip new users and users seeking a more streamlined set of features for insightsScreenshot of Magellan Data Discovery provides an Advanced User Interface that allows data analytics pros to leverage its breadth of sophisticated capabilities for insightsScreenshot of Magellan Text Mining insights can be displayed within easy-to-use dashboards.Screenshot of Data scientists can create visualizations within the Magellan Notebook and see it dynamically update as they write changes to it.