SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and MicroStrategy are leading competitors in the business intelligence sector. SAP BOBJ tends to have the advantage with larger organizations requiring scalable and comprehensive solutions due to its enterprise-grade features.
Features: SAP BOBJ is known for its enterprise scalability, tight security, and its extensive toolset including Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, and Live Office which facilitate detailed report and dashboard development. Its Universe Designer connects seamlessly to various data sources. MicroStrategy, on the other hand, excels in advanced data visualizations and analytics with a strong emphasis on mobile integration. Its Intelligent Cubes provide user interactivity and exploration, alongside Visual Insights.
Room for Improvement: SAP BOBJ could enhance its product integration and harmonization to improve user-friendliness, performance, and dashboard capabilities. Moreover, maintaining backward compatibility during upgrades is a concern. MicroStrategy needs to work on simplifying customization and its user interface to reduce complexity for non-technical users. Both platforms should improve community support and the upgrade processes.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SAP BOBJ provides flexibility in deployment across private, hybrid, and public clouds but faces criticism for technical support services with slow response times. MicroStrategy, however, emphasizes user experience and offers more consistent customer service, making it a preferred choice for companies prioritizing integrated customer support.
Pricing and ROI: SAP BOBJ is known for a costly and complex licensing model, which may discourage smaller enterprises. However, the high ROI through efficiency and automation can be attractive for those leveraging its full capabilities. MicroStrategy is perceived as expensive initially, but the reduced staffing needs and fast development cycles could lower total ownership costs over time. Evaluating specific business cases is essential to ensure satisfactory ROI from the investment in both tools.
I have seen a return on investment so far in the form of saved time and resources.
For most of my clients using the on-premises version of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform, the return on investment is positive due to its affordability and ability to handle diverse reporting needs while automating information distribution.
I would rate the technical support from MicroStrategy as nine out of 10.
I would rate their technical support as excellent.
I have experience with SAP technical support and have supported customers, including those in financial services.
Sometimes, they forward my ticket to the technical team, especially when my issue involves technical aspects that basis people may not be familiar with.
I rate the scalability of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as a nine due to performance issues related to optimizing parts.
I would rate the stability of MicroStrategy as nine out of 10.
When they tried upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3, they found it buggy in some reports, which was quite problematic.
Organizations that are well-established and have more money can afford MicroStrategy, but startups and mid-level organizations who do not have this much budget have to opt for other cheaper tools.
MicroStrategy could learn from Power BI's user-friendly interface.
I've worked with other tools, for example, Microsoft Power BI, which is visualization-wise very strong.
I would appreciate integration with Outlook as an additional feature in the future to make it closer to a perfect score.
SAP BusinessObjects is expected to be phased out by 2027 as reports are moving to SAP Analytics Cloud.
The price is very competitive and reliable.
I rate the pricing for SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as a seven or eight.
The MicroStrategy interface is not as good as Power BI, especially concerning the user-friendly aspects.
The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis in my experience are the security, the metadata management, and the administration, along with the options of different workarounds available to accommodate different types of requirements.
For calculations, SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform outperforms all other tools such as Power BI and Tableau, showing more accuracy, reliability, and flexibility compared to all other BI tools worldwide.
The most valuable function of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is the universe, so customers can build their own reports without programming skills.
One advantage of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is self-service capabilities, allowing users to do drag and drop to build their own reports and perform analyses without needing technical know-how.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform | 3.7% |
| MicroStrategy | 2.8% |
| Other | 93.5% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 37 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 26 |
| Large Enterprise | 99 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 32 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 17 |
| Large Enterprise | 65 |
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.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.
The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features
Reviews from Real Users
SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.
A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."
An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."
A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization.
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