Item: Looker
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

The Analytics team at my business uses Looker as a reporting tool for Business Intelligence. Looker allows my team to automate reporting. These reports are then used across the whole organisation by various teams. Although other teams do not directly deal with Looker, their functioning certainly depends on the great features that Looker offers.

Pros and Cons

Automation of reports.
Easy drag and drop interface for most functionalities.
Great variety of reporting options.
Works well with large data in terms of performance.

Setting up looker is quite tedious.
It takes a considerable amount of time to get handy with the features on Looker .
Need to configure database separately every time you want to connect a new database.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle BI

Looker offers significantly better reporting options than most other BI tools in a similar price range.
In terms of performance, Looker can handle much greater amounts of data than similar BI tools.
Although Looker primary works with LookML, you can do everything on LookML that you can do using SQL on other tools.

Data Integration

Looker offers a wide range of database connection options. Your Looker instance can connect to Amazon Redshift, Athena, Aurora, Apache Hive 2, Apache Spark, Cloudera Impala, Google Big Query, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Heroku Presto DB, Snowflake, and Vertica. This diversity in options makes it compatible with most organisations and usable by most teams across these organisations.

Collaboration and Sharing

Access Control - Looker can restrict access based on user as well as based on data.
Report Automation - Reports can be scheduled to run automatically.
Report Sharing - Reports can be shared even to teams and employees that do not use Looker or do not have access to certain data on Looker. Reports can be sent via PDF, Email, dashboard, etc.

Other Software Used

Oracle BI Foundation Suite, Tableau Desktop, IBM Cognos

Likelihood to Recommend

Looker is strongly recommended as a Business Intelligence tool when you wish to work with huge amounts of data. Moreover, Looker capitalizes on the power of your own database, and does not have its own analytics engine. This cuts down cost and makes it more performance-oriented.

On the other hand, if you are looking for out-of-the-box trends or data patterns, Looker is not the right tool for you.

A BI Tool that is powerful and Easy to Use

Overall Satisfaction with Looker