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
QlikView
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
QlikView® is Qlik®’s original BI offering designed primarily for shared business intelligence reports and data visualizations. It offers guided exploration and discovery, collaborative analytics for sharing insight, and agile development and deployment.
N/A
Tableau Cloud
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is a self-service analytics platform that is fully hosted in the cloud. Tableau Cloud enables users to publish dashboards and invite colleagues to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data, from any browser or mobile device.
$15
per month per user
Pricing
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
QlikView
Tableau Cloud
Editions & Modules
Power BI Pro
$14
per month per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month per user
QlikView
Custom
per user
Tableau Viewer
$15
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Viewer
$35
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Explorer
$42
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Explorer
$70
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Creator
$75
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Creator
$115
per month billed annually per user
Tableau+
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft BI (MSBI)
QlikView
Tableau Cloud
Free Trial
No
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
On an perpetual license basis, based on server plus number of users.
Contact vendor for pricing.
Specific data displays are some of the strongest aspects of Microsoft BI when compared to alternate programs. It also does a superior job in compatibility with many programs, especially those from Microsoft. Since my company primarily uses Office 365 and other Microsoft …
The software stacks [well] because it has more graphics resolution and the colors are fresh and actualized. On the other hand, there is the Microsoft family software and this is an advantage. Microsoft has a lot of users around the world and it's like everyone knows how to do …
Microsoft BI is very well suited to implement reporting and visualization within departments. Choosing Microsoft BI over tools like Tableau is the variety of third party apps it extracts data from. This functionality is limited in Tableau as it digests data from large data …
One of the main reasons Microsoft BI was chosen by our company is because it is a reliable program. We tried different programs in the past (and currently also use other ones for certain reporting and analysis needs) but Microsoft BI was the least buggy out of our top choices.
QlikView has its own data warehouse, which is the most important reason why would I choose QlikView over any other tools. Apart from that, the feature options are good for the ones who know the tool well but created a steeper learning curve in the beginning. Once you went …
Qlik was less intuitive than Paxata, but less expensive than either microstrategy or PowerBI. Qlik has enough breadth to accommodate most use cases without breaking the bank.
It is inexpensive and cost prohibited software. Has alot of canned reports that you would need and doesn't request much development work. Widely adopted as an industry leader and works well with many of the top data source applications. Very easy to use and intuitive in the …
I was forced into QV by QuickBooks -- I did not have the opportunity to evaluate it specifically against other packages. I have, however, seen Microsoft BI and BIRST --- both of which seem much more expensive (and perhaps complex) than QlikView. But I'm conjecturing a bit here.
The only other vendor product that I have worked with that provides a similar experience to Qlikview is Tableau. I would recommend Tableau if your use case is to build a fixed dashboard. You can share reports for free without needing to buy additional licenses. I would …
Tableau Online is the best tool over Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and Charts and Microsoft BI because it integrates most easily with Salesforce. We selected Tableau Online because it is easy to use and it integrates easily with Salesforce. There are other tools out there, but …
Tableau provides more robust system to perform data analytics as compared to the alternatives like Power BI and Qlik. Moreover, Tableaus is super simple to use and is very reliable in terms of its connection with databases. The ability to manipulate data is another big reason …
Verified User
Project Manager
Chose Tableau Cloud
Tableau is among the top applications out there in the space and at this level. It really comes down to personal preference and data visualization goals. All of the top products I listed do their job very well and are packed with features. I prefer Tableau online for analyzing …
Tableau does a great job compared to all of these mentioned tools. Other tools also have a great shape-up of dashboards but obviously all have their advantages and disadvantages. The reason Tableau has an edge over all the other tools is because of its excellent visual design …
Both Tableau Online and BI solutions provide visualizations. In Power BI we choose the visualization first, then drag the data into it. In Tableau, we select the data and switch between visualizations on the fly. It’s easier to jump between visualizations in Tableau. Power BI …
My work environment uses both Tableau Online, MicroStrategy & SSRS in parallel. Tableau is much closer to the SSRS in terms of visualization tool where as MicroStrategy is an enterprise data modeling and reporting tool.
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.
Sales data validations have helped manage our justifications in the past, especially with regard to new product development and new business introduction. It has also been helpful in identifying trends with business impact and direction specific to quarter and monthly sales from ERP data as well as decisions to purchase equipment of staffing based on run rates and product demand.
One thing that can get out of hand is data output - if you aren't careful in your query, you may be overloaded with data dumps and drown in the amount of info you have to filter through. This is a user caution, not a comment on the software itself.
If you're using Tableau as the primary BI tool, then Tableau Cloud is well suited to publish and share the results with a wide(r) audience. It is well suited for various degrees of self-service proficiency, from pure consumers of analytical work to more advanced users who can use web editing for smaller or larger adjustments, and even for desktop power users who will publish their work to Tableau Cloud. It has many good ways to organize the content and make it easily accessible via search, favorites, folders, collections ("playlists for your data"), or history ("recents"). It might not be ideally suited if there are many on-prem sources to be used (even though there are options to connect them) or if you have very special requirements regarding custom server setup, which is limited in a shared cloud environment like Tableau Cloud.
Tableau Online is completely cloud based and that's why the reports and dashboards are accessible even on the go. One doesn't always need to access the office laptop to access the reports.
The visualizations are interactive and one can quickly change the level at which they want to view the information. For example, one person might be more interested in looking at the country level performances rather than client level. This is intuitive and one doesn't need to create multiple reports for the same.
The feature to ask questions in plain vanilla English language is great and helpful. For quick adhoc fact checks one can simply type what they are looking for and the Natural Language Programming algorithms under the hood parse the query, interpret it and then fetch the results accordingly in a visual form.
We found that QlikView can be a bit slow in supporting some forms of encryption. It is web-based and we needed to upgrade all of our server to not support the older SSL and TLS 1 protocols, only support TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3. However, QlikView could not run with TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3. We had to wait over six months to get a version that would handle the newer TLS versions.
There are so many options with QlikView that you can get lost when developing a visualization. There are still items I have not yet figured out, such as labeling a graph with the name of a selected detail item.
QlikView works by pulling the data it is going to use for visualization into its database. I am a security reviewer and I need to make certain that PII and PHI is not pulled by QlikView for a visualization, otherwise this could become a reportable indecent.
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.
Ease of use, ability to load from pretty much any data source. today I created an application that loaded time sheets from excel that are not in a table format. With Qlik's "enable transformation steps" I was able to automate loads of multiple spreadsheets and multiple tabs easily. Could not do that with any other tool.
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.
QlikView is very easy to implement. The installation is very straight forward. QlikView has several different data connectors that can connect to different data sources very smoothly. The user interface to build the reports is very easy to understand. This helps to have a smaller learning curve. Something very helpful is that QlikView is a browser application for the end users. So, you don't need to install any applications on the user's computer.
Based on comments from our clients, I awarded it this grade. Non-technical customers frequently compliment us on the ease with which they can utilize Tableau Online. Usability is rarely a source of contention amongst our customers. Few complaints have come from me as a user of our internal products.
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.
My experience with the Qlik support team has been somewhat limited, but every interaction I have had with them has been very professional and I received a response quickly. Typically if there is a technical issue, our IT team will follow up. My inquiries are specific to product functionality, and Qlik has been very helpful in clarifying any questions I might have.
I have not had any issues that require customer support from Tableau at this time, which speaks well to Tableau. I have taken an online course with Tableau and it was very professional and well done, so based on that I would assume a similar level of quality for their customer service.
My team attended, but I cannot myself rate, but I think it was good as they've successfully launched a training program at our company themselves for users. It was 3-4 day training.
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.
Training was as expected. The demo environments tend to be more fully featured that our own environment, but the training was clear and well delivered.
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.
"Implementation" can mean a few things... so I'm not sure that this is the answer you want.... but here it goes: To me, implementation means: "Is the user interface intuitive and can I produce meaningful reports with ease?" On that score, I'd say YES. The amount of training required was minimal and the results were powerful. The desktop implementation is a simple, "blank" interface just waiting for your creativity. The pre-populated templates give you a reasonable start to any project -- and a good set of objects to "play around with" if you're just getting started. Finally, note that the "implementation" I used was baked into QuickBooks 2016 Enterprise -- called "Advanced Reporting"..... That integration makes it ultra useful and simple.
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.
The only other vendor product that I have worked with that provides a similar experience to Qlikview is Tableau. I would recommend Tableau if your use case is to build a fixed dashboard. You can share reports for free without needing to buy additional licenses. I would recommend Qlikview if your users are looking for a more interactive experience. They can create new objects to represent the data which can't be accomplished as easily in Tableau
In determining whether to go with Tableau Online versus Alteryx, two important factors stood out in determining our go-to solution. First, while Alteryx is an impressive tool for data cleansing, it did not stack up in terms of data visualization capabilities. Tableau, on the other hand, provided us everything we needed in terms of visualizing our data and analytics. The second factor is cost. Well neither solution would be considered cheap, Tableau was the more cost effective solution for our needs.
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.
You can use the free desktop version to do a lot of reporting and analysis work more quickly so the ROI is huge
QlikView is great at finding outliers such as data entry errors
QlikView is great at helping you quickly discover new insights about your business that can prompt you to take action that can immediately affect your cash flow.
