IBM Watson Explorer vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

The compared IBM and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #11 in DM , and holds a 1.9% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 14.1% 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

556 Views
95 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 326 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,361 Views
13,864 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 868,759 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 (11th)

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

326

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 1.9%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 14.1% mindshare, down 21.7% since last year.

Data Mining Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
IBM Watson Explorer	1.9%
IBM SPSS Modeler	20.6%
IBM SPSS Statistics	20.0%
Other	57.5%

Data Mining

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	14.1%
Tableau Enterprise	10.3%
Amazon QuickSight	4.9%
Other	70.7%

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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Shoury Priyanshu

Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd

Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal

Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"My understanding is that the initial setup is pretty easy."

"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."

"Microsoft BI is better than most solutions we have. It's pretty easy to conduct analysis with it."

"The solution is quite scalable."

"In the early stage of an implementation, it not only helps decision making, but it allows people to have insight into problems with data so that they can go and get it corrected."

"The dashboard is very nice and it is very simple to understand every single component."

"What I like most is that I can do everything in Power BI that I can do in Excel."

"Being able to transfer data with the Power Query feature is great for teaching with about one to two hundred rows of data. I am also able to see the relationship between multiple tables and create various sheets and dashboards."

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."

"The solution is expensive."

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

"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"

"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."

"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"

"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."

"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 product could have better analytics capabilities."

"From an improvement perspective, I think if the Power BI developers of that platform would really focus on being more detailed and specific on the error messages, it would help a lot of developers troubleshoot and maintain the report ECT or the dashboard ECT."

"The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau."

"BI is scalable, but there are some problems with limited online storage."

"Areas for improvement would be the construction of reports and the dashboard budget."

"Integrating it with the physics build model or the engineering model should be included."

"The dashboard could be simplified."

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

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"We view it as an expensive product."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"I have not had a customer suggest the solution is too expensive. There are licenses to use the solution."

"The pricing is good. It's pretty competitive because I have worked on a few other tools as well, and Power BI is on the cheaper side."

"This product offers good value for the money."

"Its cost seems to be unreasonable if you have many users, but for a lesser number of users, it is reasonable. It is $10 per month. Clients easily accept this option, so they must think it is reasonable. It is quite cheap as compared to other tools, such as Tableau. One of the best things about this solution is that it has a trial version."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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

Educational Organization

14%

Performing Arts

12%

University

10%

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Manufacturing 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	134
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...

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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 31% of the time

Salesforce Einstein Analytics vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 25% of the time

Izenda vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 14% of the time

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Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 11% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer

September 2025

Download IBM Watson Explorer product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

September 2025

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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