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Power BI Embedded Analytics vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 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

Power BI Embedded Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
27th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (19th)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

VishnuReddy2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consulting Enterprise Architect at R2V2.ai
Embedded analytics has unified diverse data sources and supports real-time operational decisions
I find Power BI Embedded Analytics to be a fairly good reporting tool and dashboarding tool. The color palette and everything about it is good. It would be beneficial to have reporting on top of a data warehouse, a lake house, or directly on an Excel-based solution. If Power BI can come as a full stack similar to SAP Analytics Cloud, it can embed with Azure very quickly. However, the full suite provided by SAP, starting from ERP through reporting, is somewhat loosely coupled, which can be helpful for some clients. Overall, Power BI is a very good tool for reporting. Embedded analytics may lack some features from the modeling perspective, such as dimension modeling, and there are multiple factors that lead us to prefer analytics on top of the warehouse rather than going for embedded analytics.
Declan Dempsey - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at Keyrus
Provides efficient data reporting while needing easier deployment and improved interface
Users tend to put everything into Excel, though I try to discourage this. The best feature about it for me, and for them, is the fact that you have a universe that is well made. This means you don't have those months that get assigned. You can just get to the point and get a report very quickly. Unfortunately, in some ways, it's a double-edged sword because it becomes more of a self-service ETL, even for the reporting team. If you have a decent universe and you just want to quickly get something together, it's very usable. Compared to Click, you can drop those reports very quickly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I appreciate most about Power BI Embedded Analytics is that it is tightly integrated with Microsoft, which is a strong feature."
"The reports are most valuable. If it is a single-source universe, based on only one database, the performance, and the reporting tool is user-friendly, and users are very familiar with the tool and are comfortable using it."
"The setup is pretty easy. It's not hard at all."
"First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are mature."
"If I were to compare it with Power BI and I wanted to build proper well-formatted reports, BusinessObjects Business Intelligence does that much better. Power BI is just getting into that space. They've concentrated more on visualization, which is what the SAP Lumira does. With Web Intelligence, you are able to build reports that users can interact with. They can also do a lot of querying themselves. It is robust in terms of security and integration. It is also quite scalable."
"The solution's user security is extremely effective. You can profile very well. All the users and all the functionality is protected and that includes information and data segregation."
"Way of creating reports."
"The planning and dashboarding features have been useful. Additionally, the fixed-format reports are good."
"I have seen improvement in our work after using the solution."
 

Cons

"Embedded analytics may lack some features from the modeling perspective, such as dimension modeling, and there are multiple factors that lead us to prefer analytics on top of the warehouse rather than going for embedded analytics."
"Currently, we can use Explore to do data discovering, but cannot generate charts."
"I would like to see their data visualization products enhanced and made more robust and easier to implement."
"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform can be improved by developing another module of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform to integrate with the existing system."
"The financial area in the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"Tableau was easier for me to use because the interface is more similar to Excel which I was used to using."
"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"There is an annual license to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
"SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an expensive application."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
BI Expert at a transportation company with 51-200 employees
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise67
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
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