MSBI : a new boom in the digital world!
I use MSBI specifically for data generation and data analytics. It has helped me to create a data way more simpler and easy to understand. …
Starting at $9.99 per user/per month
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What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)?
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.
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Popular Features
- Report sharing and collaboration (49)8.989%
- Report Formatting Templates (47)8.989%
- Formatting capabilities (49)8.080%
- Customizable dashboards (49)8.080%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Power BI Pro
$9.99
Cloud
per user/per month
Power BI Premium
4,995
Cloud
per month
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerbi.microsoft.com/pricing
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Features
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Product Details
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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)?
Microsoft BI (MSBI) benefits from the ubiquity of SQL server and the set of tools built around the database, including an ETL layer, master data management, data cleansing, report and reporting.
The reporting engine is SQL Server Reporting Services which does not have the visualization capabilities of visualization tools like Tableau or Qlik. Excel has historically been the platform visualization tool. Power BI for Office 365 has done much to improve the discovery and visualization capabilities of Excel.
Microsoft now offers Power BI cloud as the visualization platform with geospatial 3D, natural-language query generation, and self-service ETL along with charting and other data visualizations that can be uploaded and shared through the Power BI service.
The Power BI platform also provides live access to on-premises Microsoft SQL Server instances, and self-service access to third-party cloud sources including Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, and GitHub. Mobility is supported through a native iPad app, an iPhone app.
This new platform is viewed by Microsoft as a visualization layer sitting on top of their earlier generation of installed SQL-based technology.
The reporting engine is SQL Server Reporting Services which does not have the visualization capabilities of visualization tools like Tableau or Qlik. Excel has historically been the platform visualization tool. Power BI for Office 365 has done much to improve the discovery and visualization capabilities of Excel.
Microsoft now offers Power BI cloud as the visualization platform with geospatial 3D, natural-language query generation, and self-service ETL along with charting and other data visualizations that can be uploaded and shared through the Power BI service.
The Power BI platform also provides live access to on-premises Microsoft SQL Server instances, and self-service access to third-party cloud sources including Salesforce, Marketo, Zendesk, and GitHub. Mobility is supported through a native iPad app, an iPhone app.
This new platform is viewed by Microsoft as a visualization layer sitting on top of their earlier generation of installed SQL-based technology.
Microsoft BI (MSBI) Competitors
Microsoft BI (MSBI) Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Oracle Analytics Server and Spoom are common alternatives for Microsoft BI (MSBI).
Reviewers rate Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile highest, with a score of 9.9.
The most common users of Microsoft BI (MSBI) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
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Reviews
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November 13, 2014
Thoughts on MS BI
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Overall it is a robust BI platform that is not difficult for a technically-oriented person to learn and use.
- I am a huge fan of Analysis Services and actively try to find ways to get data into cubes for reporting. While learning MDX may be one of the more difficult aspects of MS BI, it is powerful and anyone who has prior experience using T-SQL alone to build complex reports can appreciate its power.
- I have been disappointed in how all the front-end delivery tools have been centered around Excel and SharePoint. I understand it from a business sense but I much preferred the ProClarity interface as a stand-alone ad-hoc reporting tool. Many end-users are intimidated by merely mentioning pivot tables and therefore do not even try to create their own queries.
- We use Microsoft BI products to publish accounting reports and automatically generate general ledger journal entries to distribute departmental expenses.
- Implemented in-house
- In-person training
- Self-taught
Yes, the product was fairly easy to learn without training. There are some professionals that could use this approach as well depending on their learning styles. With all the information available, I generally recommend this approach.
November 05, 2014
Tools and Integration
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- ETL and Cube reporting through Excel are the two main functions where Microsoft BI excels.
- Without Sharepoint, web reporting is not very robust. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) provides limited functionality but, without Sharepoint integration, Microsoft BI doesn't match up well against other products.
OBIEE, Cognos, and Business Objects. Microsoft BI provided ETL, basic reporting, and cubes for analytics at a reasonable price.
- Financial month-end reporting.
- HR Resource and Manager reporting
- Ticket resolution and project management tracking. Data is pulled from 4 different systems and loaded into SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) for reporting.
- SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) - Used for data integration across multiple systems.
No
None
- Vendor implemented
- Implemented in-house
- In-person training
Yes
November 04, 2014
Best TCO of any comprehensive database and analytics platform
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- The Microsoft Business Intelligence stack has come a very long way since its inception. For value and TCO there's really no comparison. Where other vendors charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for database systems, ETL tools, MDM solutions, reporting portals, etc. Microsoft ties all this functionality and more together for the price of just one of those components. Developers that know the toolset well are readily available worldwide and at a lower cost than those with expertise in competing platforms. In partnership with both Dell and HP, Microsoft has recommended reference architectures running on commodity hardware to create highly performant, highly available warehousing and OLTP systems. The SharePoint layer adds a rich user interface and collaboration platform for analytics, data discovery, reporting (both ad-hoc and scheduled) and data driven subscriptions.
- The Microsoft platform - today - comes up short in cross-platform delivery. While efforts are being made to port the Power BI tools to HTML5, so far these tools are only available with this rendering engine in the online (O365) version of the platform. Silverlight is a dying technology, and it can be frustrating to explain the design and interop limitations of the end user facing dashboard tools. For true styled enterprise dashboarding where the look and feel of the artifacts is important (external audiences), it's often necessary to turn to a Microsoft partner tool such as Dundas to augment the stack. These problems will resolve themselves over time, but right now Microsoft comes up short in this area.
- The MDM solution in the Microsoft toolset, Master Data Services, is effectively a blank slate. This is both a strength and a weakness, in that you can model any data domain imaginable without being pushed in a particular direction but having some basic customer or other key domains available either via Codeplex or otherwise would be helpful. Additionally, record lineage isn't handled well OOTB in MDS and this key function shouldn't require a custom implementation.
n.a.
- Traditional "canned" reporting.
- Online transaction processing systems.
- Data warehousing.
- High availability.
- Self-service analytics.
- Collaborative decision making.
n.a.
- Implemented in-house
- Online training
- In-person training
- Self-taught
I'm always an advocate of self-learning. Training is an opportunity to catch things you missed and get answers to questions that have arisen through your use, not a primary vehicle for mastering a tool.
No
Premium support is available to us at no cost.