MicroStrategy vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared MicroStrategy and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. MicroStrategy is ranked #7 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.3, and holds a 2.8% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #11 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of MicroStrategy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

MicroStrategy

Read 161 MicroStrategy reviews

4,464 Views
3,214 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 18 Oracle Essbase reviews

1,850 Views
130 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

MicroStrategy

Oracle Essbase

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between MicroStrategy and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

August 2025

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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

MicroStrategy

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

161

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (7th), Embedded BI (3rd)

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (11th)

Mindshare comparison

MicroStrategy and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. MicroStrategy is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 2.8%, down 3.7% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 0.9% mindshare, down 1.1% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

AJIN S L

Technical Analyst at Allianz

Experience has shown effective features for analysis, but needs interface improvements

The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis are those that cater to user needs. However, I find Power BI to be more useful when comparing some features, but my company does not choose Power BI due to certain code restrictions. The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.

Read full review

Bhavya N

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.

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 create aesthetically pleasing information by providing dashboards."

"The architecture is very solid."

"The most valuable features are ad hoc reporting and the ability to create dashboards."

"We prefer having our analytics capabilities in a single platform, which MicroStrategy's offers."

"It drives us away from Excel. For what it is for, it is good. You can't run a business on Excel."

"Technical support is knowledgeable. The right person gets back to us whenever we email them."

"The implementation was fairly straightforward."

"I usually recommend MicroStrategy to my customers."

More MicroStrategy pros

"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."

"Oracle's capability to define custom hierarchies and dimensions has helped my organization in performing nuanced data exploration and advanced modeling because we use Oracle Essbase for dimension definition and also to define the properties of these members, such as dynamic members, stored members, shared members."

"The solution is scalable."

"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."

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."

"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."

"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"Sometimes, it has become too complex to upgrade and adjust to the ecosystem."

"MicroStrategy is dragging behind other tools on the self-service visualizations, like Tableau. I would rate Tableau as a 10. For the same visualizations, I would say MicroStrategy is an eight, maybe nine. They're still behind on the self-service visualizations,"

"We have the mobile server. We have not used it. That is because the people on our team have not been trained on it yet, but that is something that we want to do."

"If you compare it with Power BI with the DAX language, it would be great to put that into MicroStrategy."

"Our data warehouse is sort of static; negative load and that is it. It is not as real-time as we would like. We are working on building that out first to create more real-time, at which point we will work on some potential integrations with other applications, but I don't think we are there yet."

"It needs row-level security, column-level security, on attributes. I want to be able to handle full-scale security model from the semantic layer, flat out."

"The UI seems klutzy with its manual entry."

"I want to be able to have one report that's delivered to 30 different people and all 30 different people see something different. Now, you can do that today with metrics. You cannot do that with attributes. There's a component of that which, if an attribute is on granularity-one and another is on granularity-two, and you remove granularity-one, you're now going to be summing to a level that you did not expect before."

More MicroStrategy cons

"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."

"The initial setup could be simplified."

"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"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 include the financial consolidation module that is available in EPM."

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"MicroStrategy's licensing cost is higher than that of other tools in the market. My company uses the enterprise edition of the product."

"They gave us a good deal."

"They made a change in the licensing module some time ago and we can now use all the enterprise tools for free."

"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."

"Additional costs are associated with maintenance."

"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."

"It is expensive. We would like to extend it to many users, but we are currently restricting that because the cost is a constraint. If we are given a chance, we would love to expand it."

"I am unsure what the licensing costs are for this solution however, development costs are around $100,000 per year."

More MicroStrategy pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"It is a costly solution."

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Retailer

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?

The stability of the product is good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?

For larger businesses, I think the pricing is logical, but for smaller companies, it can be a bit costly.

See all answers

What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?

Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly. Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mi...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

Improvements for Oracle Essbase could be made, as there are many tools available now, such as FCCS, TRCS, and ERCS. I find managing the database difficult, especially regarding optimization and dat...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

I have been using Oracle Essbase for the last thirteen years and I am into this space for thirty years. I am working on the sales-based platform where I work with different clients for GE, Thomson ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs MicroStrategy

Compared 16% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs MicroStrategy

Compared 16% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs MicroStrategy

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs MicroStrategy

Compared 7% of the time

More MicroStrategy Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 24% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 11% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 7% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 3% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MicroStrategy

August 2025

Download MicroStrategy product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

August 2025

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Also Known As

No data available

Essbase

Overview

Company: Founded in 1989, MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) is a leading worldwide provider of enterprise software platforms. With direct operations in 26 countries worldwide and approximately 2,000 employees, our mission is to provide enterprise analytics, mobility, and security platforms that are flexible, powerful, scalable and user-friendly. To learn more, visit MicroStrategy online, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Product portfoilio:

MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise™ empowers leading organizations to analyze vast amounts of data and distribute actionable business insight throughout an enterprise through two distinct offerings: MicroStrategy Analytics™ and MicroStrategy Desktop™. MicroStrategy Analytics delivers reports and dashboards, and enables users to conduct ad hoc analysis and share insights anywhere, anytime, via mobile devices or the Web. It also combines the agility and productivity of self-service visual data discovery with the security, scalability, and governance features of enterprise-grade business intelligence. MicroStrategy Desktop is a standalone, on-premise visual data discovery tool designed to enable business users to analyze and understand their data. MicroStrategy Mobile™ enables organizations to rapidly build custom business applications that deliver analytics combined with transactions, multimedia, and custom workflows to mobile devices. MicroStrategy Secure Cloud™ combines all of the enterprise analytics, mobile, and security features in MicroStrategy 10 Secure Enterprise with powerful and scalable data integration, validation, and warehousing services — all delivered in an environment where organizations can deploy transformational analytics applications in minutes.

Usher, MicroStrategy’s breakthrough security solution, is a powerful mobile security platform designed to dematerialize traditional forms of identity verification (such as passwords, tokens, and physical badges) and replace them with a single mobile identity badge that is cryptographically linked to its owner’s smartphone and dynamically linked to an enterprise’s existing identity repositories. Usher works on standard Android and iOS smartphones, and also boasts an Apple Watch™ integration.

MicroStrategy

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

Oracle

Sample Customers

Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo 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.

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

August 2025

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