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Context
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Microsoft BI Stack
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MicroStrategy BI Stack
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Remarks
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Data Access
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- Any ODBC Data source
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- Any ODBC Data Source
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- Microsoft BI has some limitations when compared to MicroStrategy BI for certain data sources.
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- Small Data sizes when accessing a SSAS cube
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- No data size limits
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- Limted access to SAP BW.
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- Connects to most common data analysis cubes
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Security
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- De-centralized Security: Microsoft requires IT professionals to manually configure security in many places, increasing the chances of human error.
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- Unified Single Sign-On Integration: MicroStrategy provides an automatic single-point of integration for the whole platform with existing security authentication infrastructure such as LDAP, NT, Windows Active Directory, IBM Tivoli, SiteMinder, and database security.
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-Limited Flexibility in Setting User Privileges: Microsoft offers administrators very limited granularity for setting group and user privileges. This limits administrators' control.
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- Does not support all types of security.
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- Supports multiple types of security such as Windows Active Directory or LDAP etc.
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- SSRS does not support LDAP
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Data Access
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- Any ODBC Data source
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- Any ODBC Data Source
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- Microsoft BI has some limitations when compared to MicroStrategy BI for certain data sources.
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- Small Data sizes when accessing a SSAS cube
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- No data size limits
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- Limted access to SAP BW.
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- Connects to most common data analysis cubes
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Security
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- De-centralized Security: Microsoft requires IT professionals to manually configure security in many places, increasing the chances of human error.
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- Unified Single Sign-On Integration: MicroStrategy provides an automatic single-point of integration for the whole platform with existing security authentication infrastructure such as LDAP, NT, Windows Active Directory, IBM Tivoli, SiteMinder, and database security.
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-Limited Flexibility in Setting User Privileges: Microsoft offers administrators very limited granularity for setting group and user privileges. This limits administrators' control.
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- Does not support all types of security.
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- Supports multiple types of security such as Windows Active Directory or LDAP etc.
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- SSRS does not support LDAP
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Metadata Layer
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- Limited metadata layer in PPS
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- Robust reusable metadata layer: MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata defines your enterprise’s business layer in a single repository. Metadata objects can be nested as building blocks to create more complex objects. If a metadata object changes, every other metadata object dependent on it automatically changes.
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Lack of Unified Semantic Business Layer Across Data / Lack of Integrated Architecture:
- Microsoft lacks a common metadata layer. Lack of a common metadata across the platform shows Microsoft BI is still evolving and increases IT efforts, therefore increasing Total Cost of Ownership.
- Need for understanding SQL and underlying datasource structure to build reports: Since within Microsoft Reporting Services there is no business layer that can translate the business question into underlying SQL, report developers need prior knowledge of underlying data structures and specialized skills like SQL for developing reports.
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- Ability to create reusable report objects like Attributes, metrics, filters, prompts, templates, etc.
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- Lack of Single version of Truth: Since a common library of reporting building blocks e.g. attributes, metrics, filters is not used by the reports, each report has potentially its own definition of entities which would be unrelated to a similar entity in another report.
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- Lack of Abstraction Layer leads to Inefficiencies and Overheads: Since the distinction between various architecture layers is missing e.g. report definition vs. presentation layer, several inefficiencies are created at various level. As an example certain functions such as sorting must be done in the query, requiring SQL changes. Changes to the report layout normally prompt to query the database again.
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Ad hoc /Self-Service reporting
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- Self-service is supported using Power pivot and power view of Excel.
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- MicroStrategy provides most robust and user-friendly report objects to build self-services BI.
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-Microsoft BI requires end users to know data modeling and relationships knowledge to build self-service BI.
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- No extra cost required, comes with Office professional plus version of Excel
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- Microsoft self-service BI caches all report data in client system which limits to work on big data sets.
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- MicroStrategy provides centralized definitions of all report objects which promote one version of the data in an Enterprise.
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User Interface & SharePoint Integration
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- Limited web interface which supports to view/run reports, choose parameters, navigate within reports, create folders and subscriptions.
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- Fully Interactive Web Interface: A wide range of controls gives business users the ability to manipulate, format and analyze any report without IT support. Individual columns can be selected quickly, and drill, pivot and perform tasks can be done on-the-fly. Provides ability to create, edit, save, update and view/run reports; choose parameters, navigate across reports, drill anywhere, create folders and subscriptions.
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- Microsoft lacks a user-friendly web authoring environment. Most report design tasks must be performed by IT using desktop programming environments.
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- Seamless SharePoint integration.
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- WYSIWYG Design and Edit of Any Report at Runtime: Business users create and edit highly formatted reports using a zero-footprint WYSIWYG design paradigm that drastically shortens report development time.
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- MicroStrategy integration with SharePoint needs some extra effort whereas Microsoft BI is seamlessly integrated in SharePoint.
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- Need to deploy MicroStrategy WSP solution to for SharePoint integration / Use URL API integration with some limitations.
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Alerts / Notifications / Distribution
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- SSRS allows report subscriptions in various formats to a network shared folder or a SharePoint document library.
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- Supports most of the types of alerts and subscriptions.
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MicroStrategy provides most robust Alerting /Subscription options.
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- No direct email alert or report delivery is supported
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- Users can subscribe themselves or co-workers to receive all reports available in the MicroStrategy environment on a wide range of output devices.
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Development efforts / Reusability
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- Building the first report may take less time when compared to MicroStrategy as it does not require to build metadata layer.
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- Single Development Environment: MicroStrategy’s single Web interface, single server and single code base provide a unified development environment for the whole platform. No need to learn multiple SDKs.
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- Multiple development environments: Microsoft BI requires multiple development environments and multiple IT skills resources as Microsoft BI spanned across multiple products
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- KPIs or objects built in PPS cannot be shared to SSRS as they work independently. Microsoft dashboards require IT to create most of the dashboards logic from scratch, increasing design time.
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- MicroStrategy technology requires far fewer IT personnel for a given amount of BI users because its metadata is easier to maintain and end users have more self-service capabilities, offloading work from IT staff.
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- Microsoft technology requires far more IT personnel then MicroStrategy for a given amount of BI object and users because Microsoft report developers cannot reuse the metadata across reports.
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- Microsoft does not allow users to easily author reports at run time, mainly because Microsoft lacks dynamic prompting. Lack of user self-service requires IT to create and maintain an unnecessary number of reports.
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- MicroStrategy object prompts allow users to choose from all reporting, analysis, and business logic objects to author their own reports at run time. This reduces user dependency on IT and the number of reports for IT to maintain.
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-MicroStrategy requires some initial time to build its metadata layer and later saves lot of time to create a self-service BI using the same metadata layer.
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- Dashboards are created using all reports and objects from MicroStrategy’s single metadata. MicroStrategy Intelligence Server provides its sophisticated processing, security, caching, and analytical capabilities.
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Maintenance & Administration
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- Multiple Servers: Microsoft requires several administration points for its BI platform components including: SQL Server, SharePoint Server, PerformancePoint Services. These multiple servers dramatically increase complexity of administration and prevent Microsoft from allowing centralized distribution of all administrative tasks. Microsoft requires administrators to install and administer several different servers. Multiple, overlapping products contain overlapping functionality, which increases administrative complexity.
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- Single Server and Centralized Administration: MicroStrategy’s single BI server provides efficient, centralized administration for the IT administrator. A single server with fewer moving parts and processes translates into less downtime.
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-Microsoft BI platform's Maintenance and Administration require more IT effort and skills span in multiple technologies.
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- Limited Monitoring and Administration: Microsoft provides very limited out-of-the-box dashboards, reports and KPIs to perform impact analysis, auditing and tuning of the BI application.
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- Single Point of Monitoring and Administration: MicroStrategy provides a single centralized console for real-time user and system management and an out-of-the box BI environment monitoring application.
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-Lack of Object Reusability and High Administrative Maintenance: Since the subcomponents cannot be shared across reports, maintenance of the reporting application becomes intensive. As an example, if a “Revenue” metric definition changes from Sum(Amt1) to Sum(Amt2), within MicroStrategy only the definition of one metric object needs to be changed; the changes are automatically committed across all the dependent reports that use the metric. Within Microsoft Reporting Services, each report using the Revenue calculation would need to be modified. Lack of Object Reusability limits the ability for the application to scale in terms of number of reports leading to slower development turn around, especially important when the reporting needs grow at an enterprise level.
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Cost
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- Varies by requirement and tool set needed
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- Relatively very expensive than Microsoft BI
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