Best TCO but many layers to the overall solution
Updated November 04, 2014
Best TCO but many layers to the overall solution
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- SSAS, SSRS, SSIS, SharePoint, Excel
Overall Satisfaction with Microsoft BI
We are using Power BI in our organization for dashboards, for exposing flaws in our data, and for telling presentation ready stories about our firm's sales and profitability.
- Microsoft's BI stack is a set of widely implemented products used in various capacities including operational reporting, ETL, and self service BI. This product stack has been successfully implemented in a wide range of verticals including health care, insurance, and banking.
- Power BI is an agile and low cost solution to an organization's analytics needs. Power BI is tightly coupled with other Microsoft products, enabling companies to have a single firm wide solution with a single vendor.
- If you want a straight forward and simple BI solution, there are better products for this. To take full advantage of Microsoft BI, you also need SharePoint, SQL Server, and Microsoft Excel/Office. Other software vendors offer BI solutions that consist of only a single software product, but if you are looking only to create fancy dashboards, this is not for you. This is a longer term strategic solution. Features are a bit slim now in Power BI, but expect that to change in future releases.
Tableau is a very feature rich tool, but it is also a pricey tool relative to Microsoft BI. Tableau's visualizations are very nice, but those features don't necessarily give us a strategic advantage or allow us get our work done any quicker. The monthly fee that you pay for PowerBI and Office 365 is a tiny fraction of the Tableau solution.
Evaluating Microsoft BI and Competitors
- Price
- Vendor Reputation
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Total cost of ownership is a relevant consideration. We didn't have to take on much additional cost to use Microsoft BI and Power BI. We didn't have to go to another vendor and we didn't have to re-train our staff.
Involving your CIO in the selection process is important.