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
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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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
(937)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(26-50 of 73)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
December 07, 2018
Microsoft Business Intelligence is a quick and cheap way to start practicing with data visualization.
- Easy to learn the software.
- Allows complex queries to be created ad hoc and ran against databases quickly.
- Gives the users the ability to empower their departments by setting up easy to implement visualizations.
- Understanding the full scope of the software takes a lot of time.
- It doesn't handle very large datasets well, importing can take a while.
- I have not found a way to build scheduled reports.
December 06, 2018
Power BI just works!
- Great for translating numbers in graphics that are easy to understand and manipulate for anyone with no technical expertise
- Additional training and tutorials that exist with Power BI as users are working with it would be beneficial.
- Data analytics features - you can filter the data according to a billion (it feels like) ways and make sure your data is just what you need.
- Graphs, charts, and everything else visual - not only you can analyze your data according to filters and everything, you can also make it look good and understandable without having to look through a ton of numbers.
- It can handle quite large amounts of data input, so this makes it a good addition for the projects that require big data.
- Works well with other Microsoft products (including .NET projects).
- It's not very user-friendly (at least, not if you use it every single day and can tell where a feature is located when you wake up in the middle of the night). It takes some time to get the hang of it.
- Sometimes it feels like there is just a bit TOO MANY features. I mean, they are all awesome, but it's easy to get lost.
June 19, 2018
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.
May 03, 2018
Great Graphics presentations
- The customized colors and presentation
- Introduces Excel data for graphics
- Innovate the way we used the data and new elements for analysis
- Printable graphics is a must
- The whole concept of the presentation for a company is missing
- Is not easy make changes to the graphics
- Self Service Capabilities
- Easy to use
- Integration with MS Office
- Data Quality Capabilities
- Performance issues in Power BI with some source systems
- Data Governance features
October 16, 2017
Microsoft BI - Advanced Surveys
- Easy to use.
- Integration with other systems.
- Quick development.
- More advanced reporting options.
- Reporting tools interface update.
- Drag and drop functionalities improved.
February 03, 2017
Microsoft BI is the perfect Dash-boarding product
- Drill down function from higher level to more granular levels work perfectly, other products do not provide this functionality
- User-friendly graphics
- Data access is almost instant
- Charts configuration are not so easy
- Database table connections are not so straight forward
- Requires too much hardware power
December 15, 2016
Microsoft BI - a complete BI offer at last!
- Relative ease of use of SSAS cubes for end-users
- Versatility of SSRS for creating reports and automating their executions
- Integration with Office 365
- SSRS Report Builder requires more IT skills than other reporting tools
- No SSAS actions available in Report Builder
- Integrated security tools are not readily available; Management Studio works well for SSAS, but no way to keep track of global security attributions unless you build a report on the DB
November 15, 2016
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.
November 07, 2016
Microsoft BI Review
- Variety of graphics and visualizations
- Intuitive to use
- Highly customizatble
- Competence in Excel is necessary to be able to use Microsoft BI effectively
- Integration with data sources should be easier
- Not easy to integrate with our SAP sources
October 24, 2016
Microsoft BI- Multiple sources, One solution
- I like how the dashboard is customizable to your own preference.
- Its a Microsoft tool so it works perfectly with Excel.
- It's an easy to learn and use tool with minimal training required.
- The mobile app works perfectly with the dashboard view of your data.
- More training resources for new users.
- Better integration with SRSS.
- I feel it still has a long way to go as far as Tableau is considered.
October 17, 2016
Clean and Clear Data Analytics
- Great dashboard
- Great integration with other Microsoft programs
- Great visualizations
- It is best for simpler analytics
- Not intuitive to use for first time users
September 26, 2016
Think hard on your BI goals
- Point 1. User defined automation of report execution and distribution. Microsoft SSRS so far is one of the most user friendly report scheduling and distribution platforms available. Our client users, often non-technical business people, can subscribe to any reports they have access to on the report server and make a customised execution by setting up parameter values, export formats, receipients, etc. etc. Many users use this feature to monitor their action lists and risk profiles on a regular basis. They absolutely love it!
- Point 2. Extensive programmability. Programmability has always been a great strength of many Microsoft products. Adding to my point 1, take Microsoft SSRS for example, it comes with a great deal of programmability. This means what client users need do in point 1 to set up the report execution and distribution by themselves, can now be programmed and completed automatically. One trick we often do is to program on SSRS for automatically executing and distributing a report using different parameter values to generate different results and then send to the email boxes of tens, if not hundreds of line managers within client organisations. Every line manager will only receive the results relevant to his/her own business unit(s). Once set up, a client organisation can save hundreds hours of work on Excel spreadsheets each month. Clients are willing to pay you a fortune for such a level of automation in reporting process!
- Point 3. Flexible integration with SSAS. Instead of praising the more techinical features such as partitions and actions shipped with SSAS, I'd make my point 3 to be more business user friendly by emphasising the integration options of SSAS. Excel, Power BI, SharePoint, and third party tools such as Tableau, can all be easily and nicely integrated with SSAS objects. Not to mention since MSSQL 2012 you also have got the choice between Tabular models and Multidimensional models. Your business analysts will love the flexibility SSAS can provide!
- Point 4. Stability of the IDE. Of course this one is to me when I'm in a BI developer mode. Using Visual Studio to develop SSAS, SSIS, and SSRS objects is a relaxing experience and will be good to the longevity of your developers. Why? Because VS is stable enough to not crash your developers' computers. As a matter of fact, VS has never crashed my OS since 2008...I mean it.. though a few times before 2008...Unlike some other seemingly simpler IDEs which may freeze or overpower your OS while processing your design changes... VS is a powerful yet stable tool and your developers will love it.
- Report Builder 3.0 shipped with MSSQL 2012 is a nice free tool but our client users sometimes encounter problems such as the tool automatically shut down without saving the changes being made. We haven't implemented the new RB with MSSQL 2016 yet thus cannot comment on the latest version.
August 07, 2016
It's Excel for Big Data. So easy, so cheap, so fast, and powerful enough most everything.
- EASY visualization of business data. Excel is the killer app so anybody remotely good at basic office tools knows how to make PivotTables and PivotCharts. If you don't, it's really easy to learn; give it a try... People think big data visualization is hard but it's not for most business use cases.
- FAST visualization of business data. There are BI/Analytics tools out there, some of them beginning with the letter S, that are slooow. I do my taxes waiting for them to run basic queries/filters/charts. Microsoft BI (and Tableau, etc.) create compact data models to allow for pretty fast data loading and slicery.
- FREE or at least REALLY CHEAP visualization of business data. Who has MS Office on their business computer? Oh, everybody. If you don't have Office Pro, pony up for that or get the monthly license. The bigness of data you can run on your own machine is fairly big; don't use cloud if you don't need it. By comparison, who enjoys throwing thousands of dollars away on bloated legacy BI software? Well, too many companies, apparently.
- More than two dimensions. Yes, I know that 2D is the core of Excel's DNA. However, we're starting to deal with higher-dimensional arrays here in analytics land so better visualization support would be cool.
- UI weirdness. By default, you are flipping back between regular Excel tabs and super-top-secret BI tabs. You create charts in one place, but look at them in the other. That kind of stuff. I know there are a couple of other ways to interact with Microsoft BI, but please figure out the main way.
- Better hookups to other analytics tools including Microsoft's. Microsoft BI has a good variety of data connections, and I don't expect it to bloom into a full-fledged analytics tool, but it may be a good idea to keep hammering at connectivity with "hardcore" analytics. In my case, Python stuff.
- Connections to third parties is really nicely done.
- Graphically it is a clean experience with nice color screens
- Integration with Microsoft products is tight.
- They need a lot more tutorials. Using the application is not very intuitive so better training would help greatly.
- Real Time Reporting - Very useful when all of the connections are made correctly and you are able to simply build a report that will help you achieve your results and present them in a professional manner.
- Customized reporting - The ability to write your own complex equations to input into your reporting is amazing, it allows true customized reporting for your company and individuals.
- Expanding your data mining - When you work through all of the importing connections correctly you can data mine so much valuable information for your business and campaigns.
- Style - Presentations are everything in the business world these days and I feel a huge improvement would be to make the charts and reporting sleeker.
- Connectivity - as with all complex reporting systems if there is even one connection that isn't correct it can throw all of your reporting off which can be frustrating.
- Usability - The reporting for someone who knows it is awesome, but for someone who has no idea what they're doing it's a little bit hard for them to know how to make simple changes which can put more work on the Analyst.
March 10, 2016
Microsoft BI - A Brand Trust worthy
- It enables to create dashboards which gives an overview on the current standings in terms of revenue, sales etc. Some dashboards can also provide current risks in the system which needs immediate attention. Moreover it can provide overview of the health of their organization.
- The Reporting services in Microsoft BI can be used for creation Operational Reports and some custom reports. The drag and drop features enables the end user to customize the report based on the data points available. The data cubes which are strategically designed is an enabler to the end user to create some meaningful and useful operational reports for decision making.
- Sharepoint services can be used to collaborate data and share across users in the organization with ease.
- The authorization process is not simple for a naive user. It requires complete understanding of the system for someone to give authorization to an user.
- Data Mining within BI is not a powerful tool as compared with its competitors. There are additional features which are found missing with Microsoft BI.
- Integration of BI with other system is also an challenge and not straight forward.
March 08, 2016
A personal exprience with Microsoft BI
- Microsoft provided us with an easy and flexible platform to build our data warehouse with very good performance for our medium size databases.
- We used SSIS to seamlessly orchestrate a daily ETL load of around 5Gb in less than two hour.
- Visual Studio was used as our main development tool and allowed us to integrate our solution for deployment into TFS as well as track defects and meet milestones within our project.
- I would like to have a simpler, better integrated solution for reporting in which we can easily integrate all SSRS, Performance Point, Powerview and Porwerpivot forms into Sharepoint or any other custom reporting portal
- Also I would like MS BI to have better integration with other products for example SSIS with Cloudera Hadoop or SSRS with Cognos cubes.
February 20, 2016
Intelligent big boy Microsoft BI
- Wide variety of tools : Microsoft BI possesses a wide variety of tools to cater needs of presentation, performance caching, integration and ease of use.
- Popular online and location communities : Online and local communities around Microsoft BI is very popular. You can find a lot of resources and helpful information online and within your communities more efficiently and effectively.
- Tighter and broad integration options : Microsoft BI tools are very well integrated with other Microsoft products (Office 365, SharePoint, .NET Apps, Project Server etc...) and Line of Business (LOB) applications. Being a large player in BI domain, there are various third party components available which compliment MS BI.
- Visualization and presentation is an area that may need some improvement. I have used a competitive tool Tableau which has better visualization capabilities against Pivot Charts/Power BI.
- For ultra large organizations, certain BI solutions require more volume of data to be processed. Although Microsoft Windows Azure, HDInsight and various other big data mechanism can cater to this need, other MS BI tools like Power Pivot, SharePoint etc... need to be more performance oriented.
- Licensing is one aspect which is relatively more complex as compared to its competitors. Microsoft is now following subscription-model approach in a lot of areas but still there is a scope of improvement in providing more clarity and simplicity when purchasing MS BI tools.
February 15, 2016
Simple, snappy, flashy
- Easy to use and understand
- Powerful but not confusing
- Logical interface
- Typical Microsoft product
- A wider variety of templates
- A tutorial walkthrough for new users
February 12, 2016
Microsoft BI platform good for Reporting but always changing for the rest of the toolset so use caution for your needs.
- SSRS Reports allows browser based access on multiple mobile devices to reports and dashboards quickly
- Focus their strategy on what is offered for the toolset. I believe they are starting to clarify this.
- Creation of and deployment of new reports is difficult for your average end user who doesn't use Visual Studio.
February 10, 2016
Microsoft BI Review
- Pivot tables
- Charts
- Dashboards
- Interactive mapping
- Web publishing of dashboards
- USer access
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.
June 10, 2015
"MS BI" = $$$
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Some of the rolling metrics calculations are performed using SSAS cubes. Eg: YoY, YTD, etc
- Slicing and Dicing of reports becomes increasingly simple with the SSAS cubes.
- ETL operations are made nimble with SQL server 2008 R2
- Some of the newer aggregation functions that are used in advanced analytics are missing. Eg: lastNonEmpty ()
- SSAS (from the BI Stack) adapters to interact with MPP are not entirely nimble