Skip to main content
TrustRadius
MicroStrategy Analytics

MicroStrategy Analytics

Overview

What is MicroStrategy Analytics?

MicroStrategy Analytics is an enterprise business analytics and mobility platform. Key features include automatic big data analysis and reporting, data discovery and visualization, digital security credentials, and support for mobile devices.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

MicroStrategy Analytics is a versatile tool that is widely used across departments in various industries. Departments such as Accounting, …
Continue reading

MicroStrategy Review

8 out of 10
October 18, 2017
Incentivized
It is being used across our health center in every department, from admin to ops to clinics. We are trying to use it with our scheduling …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Popular Features

View all 30 features
  • Formatting capabilities (24)
    10.0
    100%
  • Customizable dashboards (23)
    10.0
    100%
  • Report Formatting Templates (24)
    10.0
    100%
  • Pixel Perfect reports (23)
    10.0
    100%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is MicroStrategy Analytics?

MicroStrategy Analytics is an enterprise business analytics and mobility platform. Key features include automatic big data analysis and reporting, data discovery and visualization, digital security credentials, and support for mobile devices.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.microstrategy.com/en/go/pro…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

21 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.

What is Qlik Sense?

Qlik Sense® is a self-service BI platform for data discovery and visualization. It supports a full range of analytics use cases—data governance, pixel-perfect reporting, and collaboration. Its Associative Engine indexes and connects relationships between data points for creating actionable insights.

Return to navigation

Product Demos

MicroStrategy Analytics Product Demo v 10

YouTube

Augmented Reality - MicroStrategy Analytics Demo

YouTube

MicroStrategy Analytics Product Demo v10 (With Voice)

YouTube

MicroStrategy - Analytics Desktop (Basic) - Online Training Video by MicroRooster

YouTube

MicroStrategy - Analytics (Visual Insight) - Online Training Video by MicroRooster

YouTube
Return to navigation

Features

BI Standard Reporting

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

10
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

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

10
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

10
Avg 8.4

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.

10
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

10
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

9.7
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

10
Avg 7.9
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is MicroStrategy Analytics?

The MicroStrategy platform differs somewhat from competing platforms in that it does not include a data warehouse.

The platform integrates with a wide range of third-party data warehouses however. MicroStrategy also built a free discovery/visualization tool called MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop, which is not completely integrated with the rest of the platform. MicroStrategy has strong mobile and cloud capabilities which are differentiators for the platform. MicroStrategy's cloud offerings are unique in that they host the software in their own data centers and allow customers to keep their data on-premise to alleviate security concerns. Analytics is a platform for Business Intelligence (BI) and self-service analytics. It enables organizations worldwide to analyze the vast amounts of data stored across their enterprises to make better business decisions.

MicroStrategy currently has 3 versions:

  • MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise: Enterprise-grade business intelligence
  • MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop: Free self-service visual analytics
  • MicroStrategy Analytics Express: Free cloud-based self-service visual analytics

MicroStrategy Analytics Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

MicroStrategy Analytics is an enterprise business analytics and mobility platform. Key features include automatic big data analysis and reporting, data discovery and visualization, digital security credentials, and support for mobile devices.

ibi WebFOCUS, Looker, and QlikView are common alternatives for MicroStrategy Analytics.

Reviewers rate Pixel Perfect reports and Customizable dashboards and Report Formatting Templates highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of MicroStrategy Analytics are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(265)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

MicroStrategy Analytics is a versatile tool that is widely used across departments in various industries. Departments such as Accounting, Finance, and Audit have found the software to be invaluable in pulling policy level detail reports and generating month-end summary reports for the general ledger. This has greatly streamlined their reporting process and facilitated SOX audit testing. Additionally, multiple business units within organizations rely on MicroStrategy Analytics for financial decision-making and direct people impacting decisions.

Users have also found the software to be useful for prototyping, demoing to customers, analyzing functionality, implementing it, and advising customers on its implementation and usage. Its ability to provide a comprehensive view of company data and create live dashboards has made it an essential tool in achieving corporate strategic goals. It has also empowered department financial budget officers to easily view their budget values.

Furthermore, MicroStrategy Analytics is not limited to specific industries but is used across various sectors like finance, healthcare, and retail. It excels at creating web-based dashboards and mobile reporting, helping solve issues related to turnaround time, staffing, and tracking by utilizing data from scheduling programs and electronic medical record systems.

Overall, MicroStrategy Analytics serves as a full business intelligence enterprise solution by sourcing data from various database technologies, solving the problem of data silos organizations may face. Its versatility makes it a trusted tool for analyzing large datasets and providing valuable insights that drive informed decision-making.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 47)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I use MicroStrategy Analytics for data analysis in my organization. MicroStrategy Analytics is data analytics tool that help my organization for making better decisions to enhance organizational performance and growth. MicroStrategy Analytics make things easy to do work. Through this product it is quite easy to handle large and complex data with ease. It provides wide range of integration with wide range of data sources.
  • Data visulaizations
  • Security feature works well
  • Wide range of integration with data sources
  • Complexity in use for begginers
  • Advance features are tricky
  • Costly product, need to work on it
  • Interface may be more attractive
MicroStrategy Analytics is well suited for data analytics, data visulaizations and due to its wide range of integration with various data sources. Its all features work well. It is well suited for handling large and complex data with ease. It is less suited as there is complexity in use for new users. Its advance features are tricky and trainings required. It is less suited for cost factor that may be reduced.
November 01, 2021

Strong and Easy Reporting

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using for all data reporting. My some financial data reporting in MicroStrategy Analytics. For department financial budget officer can see their budget values.
  • Visualization
  • Speed of access to reports
  • Easy report implementation
  • Visual diversity
  • New graphic interfaces
  • Some mathematical functions
Some big data reports, some financial functionality.
Jeff Harris | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We made the decision to centralize all of our reporting from all of our systems into Microstrategy Analytics. Moved off of multiple older systems which included Microsoft BI, Alteryx, and some product specific reporting.
  • They sell the product well, and make promises you will actually believe
  • "checks the box" for most features a company would need. Doesn't actually deliver them though
  • They answer the phone in a timely manner. Can't answer your questions or provide support, but the queue time isn't bad
  • They have online documentation. It's not up to date, and likely doesn't reflect the version of software you are using, but hey... they can point to it.
  • [I feel like] compared to it's peers, this product is not ready for primetime. Has almost no capabilities "out of the box" good luck finding ANY canned reporting capabilities
  • Almost non-existent ecosystem for finding trained help. Relative to the 'big guys" there are not consultants or candidates you can find on the open market to actually help you implement
  • [I feel like they should] stop answering feature limitations by saying "go to the cloud product". If we wanted a SaaS solution, [there] are MUCH better ones than MicroStrategy Analytics. Your primary value proposition is it can be installed locally. I didn't realize that meant we would be limited in functionality to the dark ages.
If you need an on-premise solution in your own data center, [I feel like] the options are starting to become limited, and MicroStrategy Analytics is one of them. Just don't expect it to be good, or supported.
Dharmesh Shah | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MicroStrategy is being implemented for our customers. I'm doing consulting assignment to plan design, architecture, blue prints and best practices to be followed
  • Strong semantic layer to define all the business rules and tightly coupled
  • MicroStrategy Analytics cubes are easy to create and deploy
  • MicroStrategy Analytics cubes performance is best in the industry from performance point of view
  • Slice and dice features are awesome
  • You can define hierarchy, drill up and drill down within data set
  • SDK for Customizing Analytical Applications means you can leverage metadata
  • Embedding Analytics with MicroStrategy REST API
  • Data Mining and Predictive Analytics
  • MicroStrategy Analytics desktop support waterfall model
  • Modern BI tools prefer agile methodologies
  • Correlating unstructured data sets gets challenging
We are delivering MicroStrategy Solutions since 2007. MicroStrategy Analytics is the enterprise reporting tool.
[We are a] MicroStrategy Global Consulting Partner, dedicated CoE for MicroStrategy and project Implementation across multiple domains.
Innovations:
Periscope: Retail Analytics Solution
Geolytik: Our framework for Geo Spatial Analytics
Galileo Machines: A ready to deploy dashboard
Lendics: Security Lending Analytics

Galileo Machines – Advance Analytics Solution for Manufacturing benefits
-Enhanced operational efficiency
-Precise machine failures predictions
-Faster ROI through reduced implementation cycle
-Improved quality of yield and throughput
-Increased profitability of the plan
-Reduced equipment downtime
-Reduced production cost
-Long-term strategic management of production assets

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it in multiple business units within our organization, from [making] financial decisions to direct people impacting decisions. We are able to pull from multiple data sources and provide dashboards or report analytics from patterned data to make efficient and intelligent decisions to our business model and direction. It helps to provide a pathway to achieve our corporate strategic goals.
  • Dashboards
  • Reporting Analytics.
  • Initial configurations
  • Support costs
The product provides great tools and reports that enable you to look at holistic data to see patterned goals. Gathering multiple data sources from mining, this product achieves just that pretty easily. Its very customizable and enables the executive team to see the weeds in metrics that are understandable.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We went with MS analytics to create internal operational efficiencies and Improve business process outcomes through enhanced decision making using better data points and metrics available at hand. Mainly the team was looking at using the data from the last 12 months or 52 weeks to create dashboards and have a meaningful representation of that huge amount of data. The team liked the options available with filters for using important data. We were able to save the templates with various parameters, filters, and rules which were easy to update with a refresh in a click. The visualizations also looked good as they had different color themes to separate out different parameters. We could also save the widgets and export them as excel sheets, pdf to extract data in shareable files. We intend to use this across a department.
  • Filters and their customization to make meaningful widgets and have multiple widgets in one dashboard view.
  • Ability to save templates that can be later refreshed without having to recreate them from scratch.
  • Takes a little longer to configure initially and is a big load on the data server.
  • Doesn't have a unified interface and has two separate interfaces for lots of features.
  • Support team could be more efficient and have documentation ready to share after helping out with issues.
MS Analytics is really helpful in the visualization of large data, after initial problems in loading, performance and functionalities are really good. MS Analytics is also useful in driving innovation with quick insights from large data sets. The Customer Support team has a scope for improvement—they could have better SDK documentation ready, they could do with shorter turn around time for bug fixes. We should be informed about updates beforehand and there are feature updates that make things a little confusing sometimes like a timeline feature update in the bar diagram was messed up once.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use MSTR organization wide to track KPIs for our brands. We have several dashboards set up based on brand and channel. MSTR allows for real time monitoring of KPIs and provides views of performance over time. It eliminates the need to constantly run queries to check results, saving countless hours of employee time.
  • Visual representation of data
  • Ease of use for setting up and modifying dashboards
  • Intuitive UX for non-experienced users
  • Sharing custom dashboards
MSTR is great for any organization that is looking for a way to deliver complicated data in an uncomplicated way. From business teams to marketing and finance, several departments benefit from using MSTR to keep track of KPIs enabling teams to make optimizations along the way. MSTR provides great visual representations of data enabling team members to distill thousands of data points into easily digestible charts and graphs.
Rishi Bavishi, CSSGB, CAPM | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microstrategy Analytics is widely used in the company across all departments. Different level of access can be provided to different level of responsible persons. It is a very easy tool to get access of past data with different reports and presenting it with the help of variety of dashboard and VIs. Data collection and analysis is an essential function of it.
  • Data collection/data access- The tool uses different attributes and metrics to generate data for you in a required format with required filters.
  • Data Visualization- The tool has great function of creating Dashboards which are specially useful for higher management to review it.
  • Data Analytics- With great amount of functions, it does most of the excel work within itself. Eliminates excel in most of the fronts.
  • Better user interface- The only thing that comes out is there is a high scope of modifying user interface. Currently it is not as good as Tableau in terms of user interface.
Well suited for: Creating Dashboards- This can handle high amount of data that too good amount of data manipulation flexibility. Dashboards can be modified pretty quickly and addition of data is also easy. Mirroring same dashboards is also easy where new view can be created and can be saved. There are lot of other benefits as well in terms of accessing data easily.
Gonzalo Segarra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are trying to use it across all the organization as the only tool where you can find all the data of the company, making all kind of dashboards for managers and final users. We've also made "live" dashboard showing the status of the company.
The major problem is to make end users move from Excel to MS. The company leaves all this effort to the IT Team and does not make this a strategic decision.
  • Easy of use
  • Has improved a lot the visualization of data
  • Fast
  • For use it take a lot of time to prepare the correct data. I don't know it there is some MicroSrategy magic solution to make it faster
  • Better comunication with client
  • Improve dashboards, losing with competitors
Very well suited for corporate reports, centralized info.
I don't find it very easy for end users not involved in the transformation of reports.
October 18, 2017

MicroStrategy Review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used across our health center in every department, from admin to ops to clinics. We are trying to use it with our scheduling program's data feed to solve TAT issues, staffing issues, and tracking issues. We've implemented several new policies around appointment cancellations due to findings in Microstrategy data. We also take in a feed from our EMR system for patient data research.
  • I think the dashboards are quite helpful to visualize on the spot data.
  • Creation of facts and attributes is simple - I have no programming experience and was still able to create and modify these items.
  • Scheduling reports to be run on a daily, weekly, or hourly basis is simple. It provides updated data on a timed basis with no need to go back into the program.
  • The graph options are not as robust as an Excel user might want.
  • The metadata layer can sometimes be slower, and it takes a long time for reports to run.
  • Viewing the data feed entered can be cumbersome at times, in terms of validation with reports.
It is appropriate when wishing to show big data to a group that needs to make informed decisions quickly, and that does not have a technical background and cannot get bogged down in percentages and technicalities. For those that want it, however, Microstrategy provides gridded reports that make detailed examination of data easy. Both are simple to create.
Brandon Fitzpatrick | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use MicroStrategy to provide a business intelligence solution for our clients. We use it to create reports and dashboards that our clients can use to analyze their business.
  • Customized dashboards between the desktop and web applications.
  • Shared objects which allows reusability in a number of different reports.
  • Web tool still doesn't have all the customization possible in the developer application.
  • Rigid star scheme requirements creates complications in unstructured data.
  • I would love to see out of the box "what-if" scenario functionality.
Great if you have a data warehouse built as a star schema. Less useful with unstructured data.
Vineet Rai | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microstrategy is extensively used within my organization and other retail and finance clients I have worked with. MSTR is an efficient tool with numerous analytical, reporting and visualization features all clubbed in one - helps deliver grid reports, dashboards and mobile reports. We have used this for dynamic sourced reports and self analytics as well widely.
  • Integrated solution for delivering different types of reports through multiple mediums like web, mobile or distribution services.
  • Unique Schema and public objects concept saves development costs by allowing reusable components and maintenance across.
  • Having end to end MSTR implemented eliminates the need to look at different tools for in memory and visualization.
  • Version control and parallel development limitation- I understand it somehow conflicts the architecture specialities but point to be thought over.
  • Visual Insights capabilities to compete with Tableau like reports.
  • MSTR services and technical support teams response time - not always a concern but can definitely be improved.
Better suited for: For high volume and large number of reporting fields. For requirements where multiple modes of report delivery is required for ex: web, mobile and emails. Dynamic sourcing and self analytics with existing objects avoiding redevelopment efforts. Less appropriate: For small scale analytics considering cheaper options of analytics tools available. Creates complexity for a uncoordinated and distributed development team considering version control and Schema integration issues.
Mark Szymula | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MSTR is being used by approximately three departments w/in Casey's. We plan on having MSTR be an enterprise-wide solution
  • MSTR Analytics does visualization very well.
  • Ad-Hoc analysis
  • As w/ any tool - the data underneath MSTR has to governed and structured correctly to use in a self service environment
  • MSTR almost demands that you have an MSTR Administrator on staff to keep the semantic layer fresh
MSTR is suited for a well-governed, solid data environment. While I believe that MSTR, and the rest of BI as a whole, wants to move towards a more self-service business user environment - MSTR still needs a technical staff to support that self service
★Alex Khamudis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microstrategy is currently being used by several different departments within the organization. It makes our reporting easier, where it provides the flexibility to automate much of it, as well as provide an easy to use interface for non sql savvy employees. It solves many of our reporting needs
  • Central location for reporting, makes it easier for several different departments to access different information
  • Automated reporting - allows us to schedule customized reports
  • Well formatted reports that are easy to run
  • My organization is on an older version of the tool with a lot less bells and whistles
  • If an employee is familiar with SQL enough, they can avoid using microstrategy
  • No other major cons
Microstrategy is great for organizations that are looking to empower all types of employees with the ability to retrieve relevant data for their business functions.
Pablo Tempone | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Microstrategy is used in one of our banking clients. It's used by different areas, some use it for alerts. Others use it as a dashboard solution or for ad-hoc reporting.
  • The governance and security layer, with the metadata layer.
  • Easy ad-hoc reporting creations.
  • Strong dashboard options.
  • Merging data from different sources has been improved a lot but it's not easy to create a query manually.
  • Training metrics - it's not easy to use for users. But the new method of R integration could change that.
Is well suited if an organization needs a centralized and strong BI solution for data exploration.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MicroStrategy Analytics is currently being used by Accounting, Finance, and Audit. It is being used to pull policy level detail reports, month end summary reporting for making entries to the general ledger, and MTD as well as YTD/ITD reporting with various views to support month end variance analysis. It is also used to perform SOX audit testing on an annual basis.
  • Automated reporting
  • Interactive dashboards
  • Large amounts of data
  • Formatting of reports
  • Moving data around on a report at the user level
  • Creating applications
It supports the web very well. It also supports desktop interfaces as well as mobile interfaces. It is well suited for on site staff as well as remote users. It is well suited for new users and well as experienced users. You can set up reporting to be like canned reporting or with variables that need to be changed from time to time.
Abanish Mishra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microstrategy is used as a reporting solution in my work environment. Microstrategy is used to interact on Hadoop, Microsoft SQL Server Tables, and SSAS MDX Cubes. Microstrategy's Visual Insight is used as a self service tool replacing Pivot tables & graph building in Excel.
  • Visual Insight is a very good tool for data discovery and for create quick dashboard presentation. This is is basically a online web based portal where you have capability to quickly slice & dice the data . Also it provides you options to create derived metrics & derived attribute (MSTR 10) with various mathematical or statistical functions. One of the major mention would be the map based data visualization where you can plot data based on Latitude & Longitude.Also with MSTR 10 following limitations were removed i) using hyperlink ii) HTML 5 is implemented instead of Flash ,so easy to be rendered in mobile too iii) Adding images is possible for hardcoding company logo & symbols
  • Drilling Capabilities. This requires some good backend data modeling. Once you bring in all the facts and dimensions you are supposed to establish relationship between them & create hierarchies. Then it would be easy to drill more & more. For example - Device hierarchy - (Device Used by User--> Browser-->Operating System)
  • Data Source Connectivity.
  • Enterprise Manager is basically BI to BI environment which is used by administrators or executives to track reporting usage, report performance,developer efficiency or frequency of usage & thousands of other statistics which proves to be very helpful in monitoring the efficiency of the whole environment. Once you set up Enterprise miner( which is a bit tricky) you will be able to access all the in built documents or you can custom built dashboard based on your usage
  • Visual Insight have multiple limitations. Few of them are listed here - i)Cannot change default graph colors ii) text/graph formatting are very very limited iii)Add metric to Color by / Thresholds is not possible iv)one of the worst limitation of the VI in older versions is that it is not possible to create filters that apply only to a specific visualization. For example if there are 4 graphs in one dashboard & if you have filters then those filters would be applicable for all of them
  • Some formatting options are not there either on Web or Developer especially while dealing with a document. We have to use both Web & Developer to solve issues.
  • While connecting with MDX cube reporting loses a lot of features.
MicroStrategy Analytics is not only a visualization layer but also data modeling tool itself. So you can bring in all your facts and dimensions and define the relationship in architect mode to build intelligent cubes. It shouldn't be mixed up with a visualization tool like Tableau which doesn't have any other capability (data architect and mining). Companies who need to use it only as a visualization layer tool shouldn't use MicroStrategy.
Tapan Jain | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MicroStrategy Analytics is used by our organization to create highly interactive dashboards and reports with cutting edge visualizations. Currently, the front end and dashboards are being developed by only a single department but reports and dashboards are consumed across the organization and even clients.
The main advantage of MicroStrategy Analytics is that it can be accessed online through a web browser which eliminates the need to carry heavy Excel files. Also, the reports and dashboards are updated in real time which was not possible with Excel based dashboards.
  • It helps create dashboards that are personalized to a particular type of user. The access to the specific sections of dashboards and reports can be controlled and only the intended audience can access that information. This helps with distributing the same dashboard to different departments and even competitors.
  • The reports are completely responsive to different devices and can be accessed via any device of any resolution. Also, MicroStrategy offers a vast range of power visualizations like heat maps and can also connect with third party applications like Google Maps for additional functionality. Also, this functionality is present even on mobile devices.
  • With its Online Analytical Processing capabilities, users can modify the reports by slicing and manipulating the data as per their needs without executing the SQL query in the backend. This helps in saving a lot of development time as individual users can modify the report online by using filters and slicers without requiring the coding know how.
  • ESRI ArcGIS maps can only be integrated and accessed with internet connectivity which becomes a limitation when using only with LAN connectivity.
  • The community/forum is not very active with a limited number of users and low quality content.
  • Some functionalities are missing from the web version and are only present in the desktop version. Also, dashboards over the web still lack integration with HTML5.
MicroStrategy is well suited when reports have a wider audience but some parts need to be hidden from a specific audience. When there are very stringent deadlines to develop a new report or a dashboard, MicroStrategy should be avoided as it has a longer development time when compared to alternatives like Tableau. Also, when the reports are to be consumed while on the go, MicroStrategy has an edge over other alternatives.
March 04, 2016

From zero to hero.

Davide Moraschi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Build a complete Business Intelligence solution from the ground up. They provide desktop, web and mobile interfaces.
  • Analyze and report on large volumes of data from an extensive number of source databases.
  • Provides a full Software Development Kit (SDK) to personalize, customize and write your own BI applications and web sites.
  • Support for HTML5 is still at the beginning. The latest features were developed with Adobe Flash, which sometimes is not the best and fastest solution. HTML5 with CSS and SVG would probably be more portable and a smoother experience to the user.
  • I personally would like to see native OAuth 1.0 and 2.0 Support. And the ability to directly attach JSON data feeds like Google provided data.
  • Web Services documentation could be improved and expanded with more examples.
Be sure to grasp the basic concepts from the very beginning. A complete and updated ER Diagram of the data warehouse is needed. Read the manuals, as MicroStrategy is a very complex product and cannot be learned by trial and error. There is a book, which was recently published by PACKT, about the whole Business Intelligence development process: http://amzn.to/1by3HAO
Randy Kirschner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
MicroStrategy is currently being used throughout the organization to address various ad-hoc requests.
  • Ad-hoc analysis
  • Dashboarding and visualizations
  • There's no clean tree/hierarchical display of attributes that allows me to see the entire tree on one screen. This also translates to a report with one column showing the indentation for nested categories.
  • The interaction and user interface with dealing with a prompted report is less than desirable. Many users hate the interface and find it difficult to use.
  • Not all features are available in web when designing dashboards. You often have to bounce back and forth from Desktop to Web in order to get to the option you're looking for.
MicroStrategy is good for dashboarding and mobile. The software offers a lot of functionality right out of the box and provides the users with many options to easily get at their data.
Frank Bluemke | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • User Friendly
  • Abillity to manage large volumes of data from multiple sources
  • Narrowcast Reporting & Dashboard options
  • Creating documents is very technical and requires training
  • Graphing tools are difficult to use
  • Setting up alerts and email distributions could be easier
I would make sure you understand what information the users will need and what level of detail is needed to ensure that the integration and setup process is configured with the end use in mind. Having examples of reports and information you already produce, where it is coming from and how it is used will help set you up correctly from the beginning avoiding timely changes later on.
Shawn Stephens | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The Microstrategy web front end is easy to navigate which makes it even easier to train our users on.
  • Microstrategy Visual Insight has added a new dimension to our content which allow for a story to be told about the data.
  • Microstrategy Mobile allows our executive team to analyze key KPI's at the swipe of a finger.
  • I think that although Visual Insight is a new tool that it probably has the most upside to it. Adding features that are available on the Report Services side would be great for VI.
MicroStrategy is well suited for companies that have at least 100+ users with varying skill sets. It is a very versatile tool with many access levels from Pro to Analyst; depending on your experience. Features such as subscriptions, visual insight, and mobile are very well received across departments for reporting. Transactional services is useful for light collaborative needs such as notating certain records. In my opinion MicroStrategy isn't suited for companies looking for heavy financial reporting or collaborative efforts.
Overall I have been using MicroStrategy for a little over 10 years and it has proven to fit most all of my reporting needs.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We created a new tool from scratch for our clients to be able to view their spend across all regions. MicroStrategy Analytics was brought on to help power the analytics portion of the tool.
  • Dashboards - MicroStrategy creates some very nice and visually appealing dashboards.
  • Data - The amount and volume of data that MicroStrategy can crunch is impressive, and it's a flexible tool to be configured and used how we want.
  • Speed - Despite the massive amount of data collected, it runs quite quickly.
  • Cost to implement - since they use partner firms to do many of their implementations (perhaps all, not sure?), the implementation is quite pricey if you want a full featured product.
MicroStrategy Analytics is well suited for companies on a budget.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
MicroStrategy Analytics is being used as a full BI enterprise solution. We use MicroStrategy's full set of products, sourcing from an array of database technologies, but mostly from Microsoft SQL Server, Hadoop, Spark, and Storm. MicroStrategy Analytics solves the business problem of company wide data silos. In conjunction with an enterprise data warehouse, we can create a single source solution.
  • MicroStrategy Analytics has the best mobile BI on the market right now. The level of efforts (LOE) is very low for this type of development.
  • MicroStrategy Analytics's self-serve BI is very valuable to our business users and can cut development for BI developers by enabling business users to find business answers themselves.
  • The caching of Intelligence Cubes in MicroStrategy Analytics is a game changer. I have I-cubes with billions of rows stored in memory, ready at any moment.
  • The developer desktop product could use some UI enhancements. It's been the same for many years.
  • The world would be a better place if custom groups and consolidation were supported in Visual Insight and I-Cubes.
  • A more simplify licensing model.
  • It's expensive.
MicroStrategy Analytics can pull in just about any data source and answer meaningful business questions. I also believe MicroStrategy Analytics is the leader in providing a big data solution for BI. Tableau would not be able to handle the loads of data I throw at it. I do not think MicroStrategy Analytics is recommended for any small scale solution, but rather a large one.
Mario Ferrer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We're building a new data warehouse and reporting system. MicroStrategy will be at the forefront of our strategy, providing a robust, multi-language, multi-tenant architecture for our customers and internally. It replaces our Excel, CSV based reporting company-wide.
  • Without a doubt, it scales, it is robust and the performance is great.
  • The latest enhancements for version 10 (like replacing Flash with HTML 5) address some previous issues and concerns.
  • They've closed the gap they had with Tableau and similar products with the introduction of Desktop, while still providing governed, data discovery. Something Tableau lacks.
  • It is hard for me to point out room for improvement. Version 10 just came out and I haven't had the chance to fully experiment with it, but it looks very good so far.
For us, multi-language, multi-tenant were some key features, but obviously many questions come to mind, depending on the needs, such as platform, big data support, data-blending, data-mashups, language, customizations, etc.
Return to navigation