Comparison of 5 BI products

Tableu:

Strength

· Tableau can handle a huge amount of complex data

· It is user friendly software development environment

· Visualization is one of the focus in the product. It has rich interactivity like click-to-filter, formatted and responsive tooltips, and responsive web layouts.

· High amount of user forums

Weaknesses

· Tableau painfully in doing intuitive calculations.

· Tableau has some very basic support for database joins and in-memory joins

· Tableau doesn’t really have a concept of Dev and Production. There’s no versioning and pushing to production

· The Web SDK is pretty bad and effectively useless.

MicroStrategy:

Strength

· MicroStrategy provides an easy drag and drop semantic layer to build reports based on database.

· MicroStrategy has great SQL optimization for a very wide array of platforms which pushes the demand to the database.

· Security, tools, statistics and object management enable administrators to keep everything in order.

· MicroStrategy has the premiere Mobile BI platform in the market.

· MicroStrategy has a great ability to send out what is seen on the web in HTML or PDF form.

Weaknesses

· Development can be done in either a Desktop application or a Web application that doesn’t have parity with Desktop and worse: many options that do exist in both are in different places with different styled UIs.

· They have a poor visualization

· Low amount of user forums

Pentaho:

Strength

· Pentaho is an intuitive platform, where IT as well as business people can access and visualize data easily.

· Easy access to data from diverse sources ranging from Excel to Hadoop.

· Reporting is fast due to in-memory caching techniques. The output can be generated in various formats, as desired.

· Detailed visualization and easy to understand infographics, with drilling and filters available. Seamless integration with third party applications, such as Google Maps.

· The devices supported covers almost every platform: Android, iPhone, iPad, Mac, Web-based, Windows.

Weaknesses

· All the products in Pentaho suite are inconsistent in the manner in which they work. It can be inconvenient to get around, initially.

· The metadata layer is cumbersome to use and understand. The documentation also is of little help at times.

· There is no system of perpetual licensing. The usage rights have to be bought every year, at the same price.

· Advanced analytics and corresponding data visualisation needs more improvement, when compared with the same in Tableau.

Qlikview:

Strength

· Unique technology -- associative search. Using "in memory" processing, Qlik is able to analyze data in a more "brain-like" way than traditional BI solutions.

· Highly differentiated product: The entire architecture of QlikView is built in a way that's completely different from how the traditional BI products handle it.

· Easy-to-use, and everyone can understand analytical tools.

Weaknesses

· Undiversified product portfolio

· Lack of integration with existing business-user software.

Logi Analytics:

Strength

· Wide array of ways to gather data into the tool

· Extremely flexible components that are also easy to use for beginners

· Great support from the company on getting the tool to adhere to your needs

· Able to run on either Windows or Linux systems

· Detailed and highly available documentation within the tool on how to use every piece of functionality

Weaknesses

· Low amount of user forums

· Resulting application file set is heavy

5 Criteria to select a BI product & explanation

· Ease of use – Make sure technology does not get in the way

· Interactivity - Flexibility to explore, manipulate and analyze reports

· Speed of report delivery – no one wants an excessive wait for their report to run. Five seconds max is a good benchmark on the web.

· Security – feeling confident that confidential data will be secure

· Anywhere, anytime access - Mobile BI and Report scheduling

Evaluation & ranking product

	Weight	Tableau	MicroStrategy	Pentaho	QlikView	Logi Analytics
Ease of use	22%	7	4	5	9	9
Interactivity	10%	9	5	5	8	7
Speed of report delivery	15%	8	4	4	7	6
Security	37%	6	8	5	7	5
Anywhere, anytime access	16%	8	6	4	7	5
Points	100%	7.14	5.9	4.69	7.54	6.23
Rank		2	4	5	1	3

· Security is very important for today’s businesses. As a BI tool, the software has to be able to handle and project company’s data. Tableau has been one of the top products that can guarantee a security software

· Ease of use and interactivity become important factors for today’s business solution. It helps businesses to be on top of its own data and information with less time consuming to learn how to use the tool. QlikView and Logi Analytics are doing a very good job to provide a user friendly software

· Anywhere, anytime access is more focus on mobile access. It helps clients to access to their data on-the-go

· Speed of report delivery will be very important for large businesses where number of information and data is huge. Tableau and QlikView are two leading software which can give that solution.