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%
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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
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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
(936)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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January 15, 2016
Great value for money with Microsoft's BI
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- SQL Server Management Studio provides a nice interface to view, query, and modify the database tables. The interface is user friendly and logical.
- Microsoft, in general, has fantastic educational pricing. This allowed the TCO to be much lower for our university.
- Microsoft tools integrate nicely with one another. We are also in the process of implementing SharePoint. We plan to use SSRS (.rdl) reports which will integrate with SharePoint - and also will have the ability to experiment with PowerView (.rdlx) dashboards and PowerPivot (Microsoft's in-memory BI tool).
- The end-user reporting tool, Report Builder, is not that flexible. We feel that the Cognos Report Studio tool is more robust in this area.
IBM Cognos, Informatica,and MicroStrategy. We picked the Microsoft solution primarily due to the best TCO and match for our requirements.
- Firstly, reduction in cost from the three previous vendors which we were supporting. Just by replacing these legacy pieces of software, we have saved money.
- We are working to quantify the cost savings achieved in business improvement from the reporting that we have provided. We don't have a specific figure as of yet, but the reports that are now available 'on-the-fly' have saved many man hours. Previously, data needed to be consolidated across multiple systems which could have taken weeks of manual manipulation. Now, this data is available in one platform and we have cross-functional reporting capability.
3000
Finance, Human Resources, Admissions, Student Services, and Advancement
8
We have 4 BI developers, 2 report writers, 1 hardware infrastucture, and 1 database adminstrator supporting the project.
- We use the database platform to warehouse the data from our disparate admissions, student information, human resources, finance, and advancement systems.
- SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is used to move the data from these ERPs into staging - then onto our dimension model and SSAS cubes.
- SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is used to report on this dimensional data and provide parameterized, drill-through reporting.
- SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is used to build cubes for specific functional areas. These cubes can then connect back to the dimensional data as required for drill-through analysis.
- Using the enterprise version, we leveraged data-driven subscriptions. This feature allows you to publish reports to specific individuals or groups based upon data events. This has become useful for a wide variety of things. In a previous company, I used this feature to drive process improvements by notifying teams of early task completion. In some cases, we were able to drive a process that typically took 4 weeks down to a process that only took 2.5 weeks. That led to revenue gains.
- Since Microsoft BI contains an out-of-the-box ETL tool (SSIS), we've been able to leverage this functionality to help support other projects. Recently, we created a SalesForce integration to Workday.
- We have been able to setup nightly data feeds using SSIS which extract known sets of data for our statisticians. While the data isn't formatted in SAS dataset, it outputs the data in a common format that is easy for the statisticians to consume and transform into a useful SAS dataset.
Prior to running Microsoft Business Intelligence, Georgetown was running multiple products to support our BI efforts. We had Informatica in place to handle ETL, Oracle 11g as a database platform, and Cognos 10.2 as our reporting engine.
- Implemented in-house
- Professional services company
We utilized a combination of our in-house staff and a professional services company named Entigence.
- Self-taught
We had Microsoft SQL BI specialists on staff. We would advise to have training on the platform otherwise.
No
We have in house resources that can support the platform.
- Ellucian Banner.
- Workday HCM.
- Workday Financials.
- PeopleSoft Admissions.
- Apply Yourself.
- Sage Millennium.
Each system had to be analyzed separately. ETL routines were written separately for each system. It was tedious and complex.
- We will continue to support systems that are key pillars to our business units.
Yes, Microsoft BI will support these future integrations.
Utilize Microsoft's Higher Education EES (Enrollment for Education Soulutions) licensing. This is a great value.
March 10, 2015
Microsoft BI platform review
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Easy development tools with ability to support large data.
- Features of the predictive analytics are not the best in the industry yet.
Oracle
- Rapid report development, simple web-based reporting tools, easy support, common development techniques.
60
Line managers, internal auditors, department managers, senior staff and executives.
5
Application support, reporting developers and business analysts.
- SQL Server Data Warehouse and Microsoft BI platform allow us to collect data from transactional sources, transform to reportable format, and aggregate to a level that can be used to measure business operational metrics.
Consolidated SQL Server 2005, QlikView and Beacon reporting tools on SQL Server 2012 platform.
- Implemented in-house
- Self-taught
Yes, it was a simple deployment due to ease of the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) UI.
No
No need to. Have not had any issues that would warrant premium support needs.
- Microsoft SharePoint
Yes
Defined price versus value, and finalized support terms.
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.
September 06, 2013
Build a highly automated and flexible BI solution for your organization!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Analysis Services by far outperforms in-memory ROLAP type systems - this allows for very fast ad-hoc drill-down and discovery of huge data sets. Don't believe otherwise - I can assure you it is true. Of course, you have to know what you are doing on the data modeling side in order to get there.
- Analysis Services's ability to integrate with Reporting Services and Microsoft Excel is extremely attractive to business users, especially analysts who are very familiar with the powerful analysis tools already in Excel. The performance of reports built on Analysis Services is really a stand-out feature as well.
- Integration Services is hands-down the most flexible and powerful ETL tool you have ever used. Just try it - there is no one else even close. You will be able to pull data from anywhere, push data to anywhere, and build just about any workflow you can think of around those processes. It is also an all-around great automation tool for your BI environment.
- Reporting Services has both a feature-rich developer-oriented authoring environment (Visual Studio / BI Development Studio) as well as a simplified end-user authoring tool (Report Builder). It has an enormous collection of visualization components built in, as well as an even bigger set of 3rd party controls to allow you to create just about any report you can imagine. The ability to extend Reporting Services with .Net code (if you have the developers) expands your options even further.
- The report authoring solutions in Reporting Services could be better, especially on the Report Builder (end-user oriented) side.
- Greatly reduced reporting project development time (and associated costs).
- Significantly larger pool of experts to assist on large / ad-hoc projects.
- Faster availability of critical business data to our users (due to decreased development time as well as performance of overall system - we are able to keep the data very fresh).
- Significantly increased ETL / data integration capabilities means that more legacy and external system data is making it into the data warehouse.
- Forcasting
- Asset Management
- Pricing
- Sales Reporting
- Customer Satisfaction Reporting
- Detailed Account-level Cost and Revenue Reporting
We were using a custom, in-house developed (ASP.Net) portal and reporting system, with a little bit of Crystal Reports and Microstrategy in there.
Microstrategy - I went with Microsoft BI because of features, usability, integration capabilities, performance, availability of talent, cost, and end-user (self-service) capabilities.
- Implemented in-house
N/A
- Online training
- Self-taught
I have been working with this BI stack since before the 2000 version (even though it didn't really get pulled together until the 2000 version). Because of this, I have been steadily picking up more exposure to and experience with the parts of the stack as they were introduced and evolved; and, I was in a position to be able to build solutions with the stack all along the way. Since that may not be your background with this tool, I would highly recommend getting some training before diving into a big project built with Microsoft BI. You will want training in: (1) a data modeling methodology for multi-dimensional data (i.e. Kimball method) so you can use Analysis Services, (2) Analysis Services itself, and (3) Integration Services. SQL Server and Reporting Services are a little easier for the average developer to pick up (in my experience). But if you can, get the whole end-to-end integrated training from Pragmatic Works and you'll be building complete solutions much more quickly than you expected.
No
I have not needed to reach out to Microsoft for support on the BI stack; the community expertise is very deep and readily available.