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Microsoft BI (MSBI) Reviews

841 Ratings
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Score 8.2 out of 100

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Reviews (1-9 of 9)

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February 04, 2015

Why is Microsoft BI Right for Me?

Steve Wake | TrustRadius Reviewer
Steve Wake
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Breadth of Deployment

I have implemented Microsoft BI in small departments with less than 10 people all the way up to full enterprise deployments with multiple IT groups and 1000's of users. The only difference will be what of the provided Microsoft BI tools will you use and how many servers will it all be installed on. Once it is setup it is very easy to keep up-to-date and even expand in the future. Some of the tools do need more IT involvement to get up and running, but once it is setup and working it can easily go into a hands-off setup and just works. I have been oncall support for an enterprise SSRS deployment that was on multiple servers across multiple data centers and only received calls of issues once or month or less and most of time those were cause by human error and not following the procedures that were established.
Read Steve Wake's full review
February 03, 2015

Microsoft BI -- Say GoodBI to the Competition for the Moment.

Lee Cullom | TrustRadius Reviewer
Lee Cullom
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Breadth of Deployment

It's deployed in departmental and company-wide implementations through our customer base. In the global 2000, we typically find either Microsoft or SAP as the corporate standard. There is probably a bit more SAP than Microsoft out there, particularly for ROLAP implementations. When MOLAP is leveraged, there are more Microsoft customers.
Read Lee Cullom's full review
September 14, 2014

Microsoft BI - A good all around suite of products for the traditional data environment

Mashhood Syed | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mashhood Syed
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Breadth of Deployment

It was the main reporting tool used by all the different departments. It was used by the Executive level, operations, marketing, sales. Number of users were probably around 50. Types of users: VP's, Directors, Managers, Analysts.
Read Mashhood Syed's full review
September 19, 2014

Microsoft BI

Michał Becker | TrustRadius Reviewer
Michał Becker
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Breadth of Deployment

Everyone uses it around my company. Mostly as BI professionals that use it to create BI solutions.
Read Michał Becker's full review
September 12, 2014

Useful but reporting could be more sexy...

Frederic Freyermuth ☁ | TrustRadius Reviewer
Frederic Freyermuth ☁
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Breadth of Deployment

Poorly adopted by users. Mostly caused by project priorities focused on technical aspect and not on reports and dashboards for final users.
Read Frederic Freyermuth ☁'s full review
November 04, 2014

Best TCO but many layers to the overall solution

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Breadth of Deployment

Microsoft offers a wide variety of editions, features, and licensing scenarios for any number of users in any size organization.
Read this authenticated review

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (841)
8.2
Likelihood to Renew (25)
8.0
Usability (9)
9.0
Availability (4)
9.5
Performance (4)
7.0
Support Rating (16)
8.7
In-Person Training (3)
6.9
Online Training (2)
8.5
Implementation Rating (14)
9.6
Data Sharing and Collaboration (48)
8.1
Data Sources (47)
8.3

Feature Scorecard Summary

BI Standard Reporting
8.3
Pixel Perfect reports (42)
8.0
Customizable dashboards (49)
8.8
Report Formatting Templates (47)
8.2
Ad-hoc Reporting
7.8
Drill-down analysis (44)
8.3
Formatting capabilities (49)
7.8
Integration with R or other statistical packages (39)
7.1
Report sharing and collaboration (49)
7.9
Report Output and Scheduling
7.5
Publish to Web (44)
7.2
Publish to PDF (44)
8.2
Report Versioning (40)
7.5
Report Delivery Scheduling (43)
7.5
Delivery to Remote Servers (23)
7.3
Data Discovery and Visualization
7.8
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.) (47)
7.6
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization (44)
7.8
Predictive Analytics (42)
8.0
Access Control and Security
8.4
Multi-User Support (named login) (46)
8.4
Role-Based Security Model (43)
7.9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete) (46)
8.8
Single Sign-On (SSO) (28)
8.5
Mobile Capabilities
8.1
Responsive Design for Web Access (35)
8.3
Dedicated iOS Application (27)
8.1
Dedicated Android Application (27)
8.2
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile (36)
7.7
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
7.4
REST API (17)
7.3
Javascript API (18)
7.5
iFrames (17)
7.8
Java API (16)
7.6
Themeable User Interface (UI) (16)
7.1
Customizable Platform (Open Source) (12)
7.1

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.
Categories:  Full-Stack Business Intelligence,  Business Intelligence (BI)

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Competitors

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Pricing

  • Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
  • Has featureFree or Freemium Version Available?Yes
  • Does not have featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?No
  • Entry-level set up fee?No
EditionPricing DetailsTerms
Power BI Pro9.99per user/per month
Power BI Premium4,995per month

Microsoft BI (MSBI) Technical Details

Deployment Types:SaaS
Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

What is Microsoft BI (MSBI)'s best feature?

Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete) highest, with a score of 8.8.

Who uses Microsoft BI (MSBI)?

The most common users of Microsoft BI (MSBI) are Enterprises from the Information Technology & Services industry.