IBM Watson Explorer vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

The compared IBM and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #9 in DM , and holds a 2.6% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 9.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

IBM Watson Explorer

Read 10 IBM Watson Explorer reviews

614 Views
147 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 327 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,037 Views
13,663 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM Watson Explorer

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Watson Explorer and Microsoft Power BI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Data Mining solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Watson Explorer vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: March 2020).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2020

Download the complete report

Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson Explorer

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Mining (9th)

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

327

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Watson Explorer is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, up 0.7% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 9.4% mindshare, down 21.5% since last year.

Data Mining Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Watson Explorer	2.6%
IBM SPSS Modeler	20.2%
IBM SPSS Statistics	19.4%
Other	57.8%

Data Mining

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	9.4%
Tableau Enterprise	6.7%
Amazon QuickSight	3.7%
Other	80.2%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820

Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality

The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…

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James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The ability to easily pull together lots of different pieces of information and drill down in a smarter way than has been possible with other analytics tools is key. Watson is all based on a set of AI and deep learning, machine-learning capabilities, and it is looking behind the scenes at some relationships that you likely would not have spotted on your own. It's pulling things together, categorizing some things, that are not something that you might have seen on your own."

"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and to see the hidden insights from within unstructured data."

"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."

"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."

"For me, as a user, the most valuable feature is the ability to ingest and then retrieve information from a range of separate sources; the ability to dissect questions in context and actually answer them."

"Ease of use is pretty good as is the standardization of not actually having to have my own natural learning algorithms, just to use the Watson APIs."

"The solution makes it easy for me to develop reports and publish them."

"The product is stable."

"The most valuable feature of Power BI is its ability to provide customized visualizations and insights tailored to specific business needs."

"Microsoft BI is very easy to set up and use."

"We have found the product very stable and reliable."

"The fact that you can visualize items is great."

"The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources."

"One of the key factors why I use Power BI is because it's very flexible with other Microsoft tools."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough. Setting Explorer requires experts, but also the underlying platform is not that stable. So it really needs a good expert to keep it running."

"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"

"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary"

"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great. But I would just like to see more... innovation done with the Watson platform."

"I would say, give some kind of a community edition, a free edition. A lot of companies do, even Amazon gives you some kind of trial and error opportunities. If they could provide something like that, it would be good."

"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."

"Not having to login again after a mobile app upgrade. A simple login on mobile would be great."

"I would like it to be a little bit more secure when I'm using the design feature on my desktop. For example, to have the ability to set up security passwords for opening the file. Currently, they don't have that. Tableau, for example, has a visual way of doing data processing steps, whereas the Power BI system still has some code, although it is very low code. It would be great to have the kind of view that Tableau has."

"There are some connector-related issues in their MSBA solution."

"The solution could use a faster speed on certain interactions and a refresh of the dashboards."

"More connections with other systems should be added, which would allow for other integrations."

"It could have more of a hold on big data. Manipulating big data on this solution complicates things. This needs to be improved."

"It is not the right tool to do deeper analysis or predictions. When you have some data and you want to do some deep analysis, there is no feature to help you with this."

"The solution could improve by simplifying the user interface and adding integration or compatibility with APA."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"The cost of the solution is more flexible for us because the desktop is free and we pay as we use it in the cloud."

"Microsoft BI requires licenses."

"There is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price."

"Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it."

"We have premium licenses, but you can use it for free. You can share the content with anyone else, so you can use it for free."

"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."

"For my primary use case, i.e. teaching students, the free version of Power BI is adequate."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 4, 2015

Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho

1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Performing Arts

12%

University

10%

Educational Organization

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	135
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Seeking lightweight open source BI software

There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?

Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...

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How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?

Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...

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Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 17% of the time

Salesforce Einstein Analytics vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 13% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 12% of the time

IBM SPSS Modeler vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 11% of the time

SAS Analytics vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Watson Explorer Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 15% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 4% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer

January 2026

Download IBM Watson Explorer product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

January 2026

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

IBM WEX

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

IBM Watson Explorer is a cognitive exploration and content analysis platform that lets you listen to your data for advice. Explore and analyze structured, unstructured, internal, external and public content to uncover trends and patterns that improve decision-making, customer service and ROI. Leverage built-in cognitive capabilities powered by machine learning models, natural language processing and next-generation APIs to unlock hidden value in all your data. Gain a secure 360-degree view of customers, in context, to deliver better experiences for your clients.

IBM

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda

Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2020

Free Report: IBM Watson Explorer vs. Microsoft Power BI

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.

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We monitor all Data Mining reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.