Overview
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.
Multiple tools in single package.
"Microsoft BI is a powerful analytic tool for large data sets."
In the world of data visualization, this is one of the best virtualization tools
"Easy To Use BI Platform With Effective Reporting"
Microsoft BI
Microsoft BI: The only data analysis tool you will ever need
MSBI - Bang for the Buck
A smart tool for data analysts to generate awesome reports
Excellent BI Stack for an all-in-one solution architecture, however may need specialized platforms for non-traditional datasets
Powerful tool for data visualization
Best when used by larger companies in a predominantly Microsoft environment
Microsoft PowerBI unleashes the power of your data
Microsoft BI the killer data analytics and visualization tool
Casual User’s POC
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
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
Power BI Premium
4,995
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Features
BI Standard Reporting
Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.
- 9Pixel Perfect reports(42) Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports are highly-formatted reports with graphics and ability to preview the report before printing.
- 8Customizable dashboards(49) Ratings
Customizable dashboards are dashboards providing the builder some degree of control over the look and feel and display options.
- 8.9Report Formatting Templates(47) Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.
- 8.9Drill-down analysis(44) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
- 8Formatting capabilities(49) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
- 8.9Integration with R or other statistical packages(39) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
- 8.9Report sharing and collaboration(49) Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration is the ability to easily share reports with others.
Report Output and Scheduling
Ability to schedule and manager report output.
- 8.9Publish to Web(44) Ratings
- 8.9Publish to PDF(44) Ratings
- 8.9Report Versioning(40) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
- 8.9Report Delivery Scheduling(43) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
- 8.9Delivery to Remote Servers(24) Ratings
Ability to deliver reports to remote servers
Data Discovery and Visualization
Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.
- 8.9Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)(47) Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats are canned visualization types that can be selected to visualize different kinds of data.
- 8.9Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization(44) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
- 8.9Predictive Analytics(42) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
- 9Pattern Recognition and Data Mining(1) Ratings
Pattern recognition and data mining mean the ability to recognize hidden patterns in large quantities of data.
Access Control and Security
Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.
- 8.9Multi-User Support (named login)(46) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
- 8.9Role-Based Security Model(43) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
- 8.9Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)(46) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
- 9Report-Level Access Control(1) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
- 8.9Single Sign-On (SSO)(28) Ratings
Allows users to use one set of login credentials to access multiple applications
Mobile Capabilities
Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.
- 8Responsive Design for Web Access(36) Ratings
Web design aimed at producing easy-to-read sites across a range of different devices.
- 8Mobile Application(27) Ratings
A dedicated app for iOS and/or Android.
- 9.9Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile(36) Ratings
In-app dashboard reports and data visualization.
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another
- 8.9REST API(19) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
- 8.9Javascript API(19) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
- 8.9iFrames(18) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
- 8.9Java API(17) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
- 8.9Themeable User Interface (UI)(18) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
- 8Customizable Platform (Open Source)(17) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)?
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
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(937)Attribute Ratings
- 8Likelihood to Renew25 ratings
- 9.5Availability2 ratings
- 7Performance2 ratings
- 8.9Usability14 ratings
- 8.9Support Rating15 ratings
- 8.5Online Training2 ratings
- 6.9In-Person Training3 ratings
- 9.6Implementation Rating7 ratings
- 10Configurability2 ratings
- 6.8Data Visualization10 ratings
- 8.4Data Sources42 ratings
- 8.5Data Sharing and Collaboration43 ratings
Reviews
(1-9 of 9)MSBI - Bang for the Buck
- Single vendor provides a true end-to-end solution from data storage to end-user consumables.
- Visual Studio provides a single IDE for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development.
- Rich feature set across the tools with 15-20 years of maturity.
- Reunification of installers to simplify the process for both server installs and developer (SSRS now split out, BI tools not all within one package).
- Ongoing Visual Studio instability.
- Better server to server deployment options for SSRS.
- Powerful analytics tools
- Great visualization features. I really liked visualizations based on map
- Ability to connect with multiple data sources
- Tight integration with Microsoft services
- Awesome user interface
- Steep learning curve depending on your background. For me it was easy but I saw some people struggling with it
Outstanding Report Creator
- Makes reports more visually appealing
- Very good variety of formats for charting information
- Good cloud connectivity (most of the time)
- Need to be proficient with Excel before diving into PowerBI
- Only available with a monthly subscription
- Steep learning curve for many users (including me)
Power BI will put an S on your chest
- The layout of Power BI is very intuitive. Someone that is familiar with Excel and working with Charts and Graphs in that environment will find the learning curve a rather short one to start using Power BI.
- I like the way Power BI fits an assortment of users and how the functionality that you engage is replicated in Excel, that being Power Query and Power Pivot. So what you learn in one tool can be readily applied towards the other which allows you to more effectively apply your training.
- I appreciate how Microsoft is working to develop tools that go a long ways to empowering the end user. Prior to Power BI I would have had to consult with a "BI" professional to develop a dashboard. With Power BI I don't have to consult with anyone, I can work to put together the dash board I want and using a tool set that is really robust and allows me to engage an enormous amount of data. It's provides a great deal of flexibility and the types of data I can connect to.
- Updates...Microsoft is working diligently to keep Power BI current with monthly updates. They do a really good job of listening to the end user, if there is functionality not currently present just give them a month or so.
- Just to be clear, even though it's easy to get going right out of the gate with Power BI it provides plenty of opportunities to create some really sophisticated reporting solutions. With DAX in Power Pivot and M language in Power Query, you are provided with plenty of head room to do some really amazing things in Power BI.
- Training...there are resources across the web for learning and growing your skills and Power BI. And what's even better is the majority of those resources are free.
- Data engagement, when presenting the data to the end user Power BI goes a long way to allowing that end user to engage the data and begin to identify root cause by simply interacting with the graph/chart/data set. It allows for really fluid engagement. Prior to Power BI so many times during the presentation of data we often times ended the engagement with that data with more questions than what were answered. With Power BI, more often than not, the end user is able to get answers to the questions by simply clicking on the data in the graph/chart/dataset to see the details. This tool really does have the capacity to make you look like a rock star.
- The desktop version is free, monthly updates, free training resources...what's not to love. I'm sure that someone with a higher degree of technical learning will be able to better articulate some negatives for Power BI, I'm just not that guy. I have nothing but appreciation for Power BI.
Microsoft BI from a Consultant's Perspective
- Database management: Although learning all the features of Management Studio may initially seem daunting, they provide a intricate system to support the entire database environment.
- Data flow and process management: SSMS and SSIS work together seamlessly to automate processes, allow users to create jobs to kick off their processes, and provide users a log of runtime variables, errors, and warnings.
- Data modeling: SSAS provides a feature-rich environment to develop both multidimensional and tabular models.
- There seems to be a slightly different language for every need: T-SQL, MDX, DAX, Excel formulas, Access DB SQL, C#, etc. While there are a wide variety of needs these meet, it would be helpful to have a more common base-language between languages with similar functionality (SSMS's T-SQL and Access' SQL, Excel formulas and DAX).
- Reporting Services in Visual Studio tends to be a little buggy, especially when dealing with parameterized reports.
- It would be helpful to have processing time displayed when processing tables from SSMS. I'm often forced to decide between the detailed error log that the processing dialog box displays (with no start/end times) or scripting out the job to XMLA for the gain of process start/end times but a loss of the detailed errors.
Microsoft BI Review
- Pivot tables
- Charts
- Dashboards
- Interactive mapping
- Web publishing of dashboards
- USer access
Neudesic is a Microsoft Gold-Certified partner. One of our practices is Business Productivity, which includes SharePoint and SQL BI. The Microsoft Business Intelligence "stack" includes
- SQL Server for data management, including ETL (Integration Services), storage (SQL Server RDBMS engine) and a business semantic model (Analysis Services)
- Office 2013 and higher, specifically Excel 2013, for data presentation, management and analytics
- PowerBI Developer for data presentation
- PowerBI for Office 365 provides a nice open security repository for Excel and Power BI data views.
- SharePoint 2013, as a shared portal platform, using included Reporting and Analytics site templates.
- SharePoint includes PerformancePoint, which is a very useful data analysis tool for Analysis Services cubes.
- One Stop Shopping: Single solution provider provides tight integration between data storage, data manipulation, data processing and presentation. Instead of buying an RDBMS from one provider, data processing tools from another vendor, and presentation tools from yet another, the entire application stack is provided by Microsoft.
- Value: Compared to other RDBMS vendors, Microsoft BI tools are more cost-effective because all the tools needed are included in the purchase of Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint and Office. SQL Server even has a Business Intelligence Edition!
- Performance: The SQL Server RDBMS is a top-tier data management solution. Ancillary tools like Integration Services (SSIS), Analysis Services (SSAS), Reporting Services (SSRS), PerformancePoint are mature, full featured and include lots of performance monitoring and high availability options. The newer Power BI tools have made tremendous strides in stability and usability since their introduction last year.
- HDInsight and Azure BLOB storage offer a new paradigm for storing and querying data sets of all sizes. Flat files are stored in inexpensive storage, and HDInsight Hive allows "schema over file" table structures and near-ANSI SQL queries. This provides an inexpensive, very fast way to process data from web logs, large call center logs, and other large data volume data sets without importing into a database. Once the processing is complete, the HDInsight cluster (up to 64 nodes) is dropped, leaving the data intact.
- Azure Hybrid Scenarios: Microsoft is rapidly migrating their business offerings to Azure. Business Intelligence is no exception.
- Many new features in SQL Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 are designed to allow seamless management of both on-premise and cloud-based data,From Infrastructure As a Service (IaaS) options like virtual servers for development and test to Power BI for Office 365 sites that revolutionize how data is shared and accessed, Microsoft is making significant investments in the next generation of cloud-based solutions.
- Power BI maturity: Power BI is a combination of add-ons for Microsoft Excel and a special Office365 hosting site. However, the primary presentation tool, Power View, has a long way to go to catch up with such competitors as Tableau and even Microsoft's current analytics platform, PerformancePoint. To address these concerns, Power BI releases are being scheduled out-of-band from normal version upgrades in order to address requirements of the user community.
- Office 365: There are currently size limitations, like a 250GB max for PowerPivot worksheets, which might cause issues with organizations who want to utilize very large data sets with Power BI.
- Messaging: Some of the marketing and best practices around the new cloud-based solutions are unclear, making it difficult for someone who doesn't work in the BI world to understand the benefits and the architecture for such solutions.
- Multiple data manipulation languages: Currently there are four or five distinct query languages in the Microsoft BI stack: T-SQL for SQL Server, MDX and DAX for Analysis Services, and the Power Query Formula Language for Power Query. In Integration Services, there is yet another language used in some of the tasks. That seems to be a lot to keep abreast of!
Thoughts on MS BI
- 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.
Review by a Microsoft BI consultant
- Low cost and easy to learn and use
- Microsoft user community is very wide and its easy to identify resources to implement the solution in Microsoft technology
- With the introduction of Self service (in-memory) platform - Office 365 (Powerpivot, Power view, Power maps and Power query) helps end users do their own ad-hoc reports using these easy to learn and implement tools
- Parallel data warehouse (with polybase connector to connect to hadoop) will be a suitable replacement for expensive enterprise database tools like Teradata and Oracle
- Power Pivot is a very good tool to do self service BI but there is no direct way to implement row based security to the model. There has to be a mechanism where the owner of the book can lock the model within the book to be read only or hide the model so that other users will only see the reports and not the underlying data model
- Many to many functionality is simple in multi dimensional cubes but there is no direct and efficient way available in SSAS Tabular model and Power Pivot
- Even though Power Pivot is a easy to use and fast to implement BI solution, without proper training, end users can't utilize all the functionality of Power Pivot and common mistakes and misunderstandings will be expensive in long run