Microsoft BI (MSBI) Reviews & Ratings 2024

Starting at $9.99 per user/per month

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.

Recent Reviews

MSBI : a new boom in the digital world!

9 out of 10

January 04, 2024

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. …

Multiple tools in single package.

8 out of 10

September 28, 2022

Incentivized

In my organization, we are using MSBI to create, maintain and deploy reposts. We use all three component of MSBI like SSIS, SSRS, SSAS. We …

"Microsoft BI is a powerful analytic tool for large data sets."

9 out of 10

December 06, 2021

Microsoft Power BI is a beautiful and powerful data visualization tool that we use. It is a robust business analytics tool with excellent …

In the world of data visualization, this is one of the best virtualization tools

9 out of 10

November 13, 2021

With Microsoft BI (MSBI), we can create our own data sets, goals, and records with no difficulty. We have a wide range of options and …

"Easy To Use BI Platform With Effective Reporting"

9 out of 10

November 01, 2021

Incentivized

I can connect to Oracle, Snowflake, SQL Server, Excel, CSV, text files, and create custom visualizations with Microsoft Power BI Desktop. …

Microsoft BI

9 out of 10

June 03, 2021

Incentivized

Microsoft BI being used by Master Data Management team like Vendors data, Customers data, Sites data, Bank, Bank Accounts, Customer …

Microsoft BI: The only data analysis tool you will ever need

8 out of 10

May 16, 2021

Incentivized

We use Microsoft Power BI for the data management of our projects. Some of our projects include collecting data of users who signup for …

MSBI - Bang for the Buck

8 out of 10

April 26, 2021

Incentivized

The Microsoft BI stack is being used as the enterprise BI software by our organization. The full stack of BI tools (SSAS, SSRS, and SSIS) …

A smart tool for data analysts to generate awesome reports

10 out of 10

April 24, 2021

I dont use it right now but , I used it during my research assistantship to generate beautiful visualizations for big data. At the time I …

Excellent BI Stack for an all-in-one solution architecture, however may need specialized platforms for non-traditional datasets

8 out of 10

April 22, 2021

Incentivized

We implement Microsoft BI solutions to clients across North America. Clients are constantly coming to us having issues gathering their …

Powerful tool for data visualization

9 out of 10

March 05, 2021

Incentivized

We are using Microsoft BI (MSBI) to visualize our data better and provide detailed insights on KPI. It also helps in building dashboards, …

Best when used by larger companies in a predominantly Microsoft environment

8 out of 10

April 26, 2020

Incentivized

We currently use Microsoft BI to power the dashboard and analytics behind our performance management platform. Previously, this was done …

Microsoft PowerBI unleashes the power of your data

9 out of 10

April 22, 2020

Incentivized

We use Microsoft PowerBI to analyze data from our CRM and invoicing system (Connectwise with a SQL backend). Connectwise has a large …

Microsoft BI the killer data analytics and visualization tool

8 out of 10

March 14, 2020

We have deployed the Microsoft BI tool company-wide now. It is very simple to use and better than other tools available. You can easily …

Casual User’s POC

8 out of 10

February 08, 2020

Incentivized

Microsoft BI is being used for report generation to monitor ongoing technology projects and business initiatives. We have two users who …

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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

View all 30 features

Report sharing and collaboration (49)
8.9
89%
Report Formatting Templates (47)
8.9
89%
Formatting capabilities (49)
8.0
80%
Customizable dashboards (49)
8.0
80%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons

It provided correct real time stream analytics which helped us to make necessary business decisions
It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.

Verified User

Administrator in Sales

Information Technology & Services Company, 201-500 employees

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Pricing

View all 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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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.6

Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.7

Avg 8.1

8.9
Drill-down analysis
(44) Ratings
Drill down analysis is the ability to get to a further level of detail by going deeper into the hierarchy.
8
Formatting capabilities
(49) Ratings
Ability to format output e.g. conditional formatting, lines, headers, footers.
8.9
Integration with R or other statistical packages
(39) Ratings
Integration with the open-source R predictive modeling environment.
8.9
Report 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.

8.9

Avg 8.4

8.9
Publish to Web
(44) Ratings
8.9
Publish to PDF
(44) Ratings
8.9
Report Versioning
(40) Ratings
Report versioning is the assignment of version numbers to each version of a report to help in tracking.
8.9
Report Delivery Scheduling
(43) Ratings
Report Delivery Schedule is the ability to have reports delivered to a destination at a specific data and time.
8.9
Delivery 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.

Avg 8.1

8.9
Pre-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.
8.9
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
(44) Ratings
Location analytics is the visualization of geographical or spatial data.
8.9
Predictive Analytics
(42) Ratings
Predictive Analytics is the ability to build forecasting models based on existing data sets.
9
Pattern 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.

Avg 8.6

8.9
Multi-User Support (named login)
(46) Ratings
Named model access means that users have access based on name and password.
8.9
Role-Based Security Model
(43) Ratings
Role-based access means that access to data is determined by job or position in the corporation.
8.9
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
(46) Ratings
Multiple access permission levels means that different levels of users have different rights.
9
Report-Level Access Control
(1) Ratings
Report-level access control means that the type of report determines who has access to it.
9
Single 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.

8.5

Avg 8.0

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.8

Avg 7.9

8.9
REST API
(19) Ratings
REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications
8.9
Javascript API
(19) Ratings
A Javascript API is a type of API
8.9
iFrames
(18) Ratings
An iFrame is an HTML document embedded inside another HTML document on a website
8.9
Java API
(17) Ratings
A Java application programming interface (API) is a list of all classes that are part of the Java development kit (JDK)
8.9
Themeable User Interface (UI)
(18) Ratings
A themeable user interface means that a specific visual them can be applied to it
8
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
(17) Ratings
A customizable, open source API Gateway is a fast and scalable type of API

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Product Details

About
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.

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

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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Comparisons

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Attribute Ratings

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June 02, 2014

Review by a Microsoft BI consultant

Verified User

Consultant in Other

Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employees

Score 9 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I work for Mariner LLC and they are Microsoft gold certified partners specialized in implementing data warehouse solutions in South East United States. We work with lot of clients in manufacturing, health care, automobile, energy and retail, implementing data warehouse and Business Intelligence solutions in Microsoft tools.

Pros and Cons

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

Likelihood to Recommend

Power Pivot can be used to do proof of concept very quickly. This POC can then be easily upgraded to an actual enterprise BI cube and a BI solution. This feature is not available in any other existing BI tools.

Return on Investment

Business users easily learned self service BI with training and what to do and what not to do with self service BI
Learning curve for Powerpivot and other office 365 tools for IT team who already knew about data warehousing concepts is steep

Alternatives Considered

None

Likelihood to Renew

Low Cost and catching up to the market expectations

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Professional services company

Mariner LLC

Implementation Phases

Yes

There are 2 phases implemented
Its based on subject area and the requirement of the business users

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal

The Organization had an agreement for a common vision to implement Business Intelligence to have more insights to data. Leadership team is in favor of the change and they are very much interested in implementing Business Intelligence