Likelihood to Recommend 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 I believe that Sage is not suited well for our company because we are too large. To add new users we have to go into all 200+ companies and add their access individually. This is time-consuming and not a good way to manage access.
Read full review Pros 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 Central Repository. Staying up to date on tax law changes. Read full review Cons 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 Adding new users with multiple company access Copying users Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 Usability 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 Reliability and Availability The product has been reliable.
Read full review Performance 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 Support Rating 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 Rather lackluster. Our account manager generally works with Sage's support team and oftentimes finds herself frustrated with a lack of understanding from the support team. Additionally, when IT is attempting to update the system (which from my understanding is a bear of epic complex proportions) they often times find themselves frustrated and at a loss for what needs done.
Read full review In-Person Training This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.
Read full review Online 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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 Alternatives Considered 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 [I believe that] Sage is nowhere near as good as Oracle. Oracle is easy to use and administer and the features are much better. The system is cloud-based so there are fewer issues with on-prem or virtual servers.
Read full review Return on Investment 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 It is incredibly difficult to use and our business users generally do not look favorably on it. It is relatively low cost, which is a nice feature and lends to quick ROI. Read full review ScreenShots