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Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
329
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Microsoft Power BI and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Microsoft Power BI is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 9.3%, down 21.8% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.2% mindshare, up 1.1% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI9.3%
Tableau Enterprise6.7%
Amazon QuickSight3.7%
Other80.3%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase1.2%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials4.5%
Spotlight4.0%
Other90.3%
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group
Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards
Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.
Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Infosys
Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements
The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My primary use case is for the performance, compared to MS Dynamics NAV, and flexibility in data and dashboard building."
"Connectivity, installation, and configuration are pretty fast and seamless compared to Cognos."
"I think the visualization part is valuable."
"The product is easy to use and simple to navigate."
"The Microsoft Power BI app is very good; it's also very flexible."
"With Power BI, you're able to store your data within spreadsheets and SharePoints, and then have Power BI pull the data out and report on it."
"Most of the clients I am interacting with are looking towards Power BI because of the cost and simplicities, as it provides an entire feature set and a complete solution with tight integration with Office 365, Dynamics 365, the Microsoft Technology Stack, and datatypes like R and Python."
"The solution is a wonderful tool overall, very powerful and very easy to use with a very nice user interface that makes everything easy to navigate, and it can easily extract data and put it into any format, making it a very good data analytic tool."
"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."
"The solution is scalable."
"It provides for faster and more assertive forecast cycles and enables businesses to improve their process since with this tool, you can do things easily and quicker as the business can create more complex models than were possible before."
"Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."
"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."
"The solution can handle a large volume of data."
"The solution is quite scalable, which is the most useful aspect for us."
"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."
 

Cons

"While support is okay, they need to improve it a lot."
"Performance can be an issue when there's too much data, and getting data into Microsoft Power BI via APIs can be slow."
"Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan."
"The cost of the solution can get high."
"The maps in Power BI could be improved. You deal with many maps over the years, like maps of America and Saudi Arabia. The maps aren't detailed enough, and there aren't enough visualization tools. Whenever I want to use a map, I struggle with choosing the right visualization."
"We identified a couple of issues in the reports. Some reports took too long to load, particularly at the end of our data refresh."
"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."
"Adding paginated reports to this tool could be of great help for users who want to move away from SSRS."
"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."
"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"The initial setup is pretty complex."
"It's not a very scalable solution."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"Sometimes, the current program is slow. They may have to consider the storage and the RAM, increasing the speed and performing the queries at a faster speed."
"Variable attributes functionality needs to be incorporated in Planning, though it is available in Essbase I believe it is still not in Planning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is priced well for what they offer. However, the premium version is very expensive."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually."
"Its price is very low. It is like $10 per user, per month. The clients pay for their own licenses. It is not on us. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. That's the beauty. With other systems, you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars just to get started, and then you need to spend $500 per year for the license, which becomes much more costly. You have a system here where for $120 to $140 a year, you can start with two people and start developing and deploying. You can see why the cost difference is huge, especially when you are on a low scale, like us, and you're not building something very huge."
"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."
"If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database."
"No comment on pricing."
"The price for this solution is reasonable. However, there is an additional cost if you want to publish the dashboard privately."
"The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"Essbase is competitively priced."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise166
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?
It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.
What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?
A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.
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