Microsoft BI (MSBI) vs. Toucan vs. Vizlib

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.

Incentivized

Great for folks to visualize data with little to no engineering knowledge, once the product is set up by an engineer. However, tweaks and adjustments to the data set still require engineering know-how, and tweaks to the visuals still require a CSS designer. If you need PDF reports, this is not the best option, but it's great for on-screen reporting.

Incentivized

I have read reviews where Vizlib is performing well. That was not our experience integrating Vizlib with Qlik Sense cloud as a write back capability. So, my experience is that integrating Vizlib with Qlik Sense cloud as a write back capability is probably not an area where they perform well

• 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.

Incentivized

• data visualization
• data management
• ease of integration

Incentivized

• Visualizations
• Forecasting
• Storytelling

• MSBI designs can work on increasing data processing capabilities enough to handle the huge datasets etc.
• It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.
• it needs to create opportunities little more than they do regarding customization of some very unique visualization effects

• PDF exporting
• need SQL and CSS knowledge to make the best use of the product

Incentivized

• Vizlib promised a writeback capability that it just was not able to deliver. We bought additional developer licenses for QlikSense that were not planned in the initial Vizlib discussions, but even with they were not able to implement a writeback capability.
• I feel Support was horrible... very slow, and with inadequate expertise.

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.

Incentivized

We haven't had any troubles

Incentivized

The product has been reliable.

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.

Incentivized

Outstanding support, very communicative. We use Slack and have a joint channel - very easy to get the help we need!

Incentivized

Vizlib support is awesome! We have quick turnaround times and regular updates when we open cases. It’s so good we often ask them Qlik Sense questions, rather than going to Qlik support

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

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.

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.

Incentivized

I selected Vizlib based on several positive Qlik community forum comments. It would seem that they had a different use case than we did

• 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.

Incentivized

• helps us add new features

Incentivized

• Faster time to dashboards and reports
• Improved communication to donors of our key mission metrics
• Better support than from Qlik