Microsoft Power BI Reviews

With the out-of-the-box Data Platform and Business Intelligence ecosystem, you get the entire platform with a single license.

Previously, I was working for a retail company and when I got there, there weren't any analytics implemented yet.

So, what I did was, firstly, I implemented an EDW solution so as to gather all the possible data in a single repository.

After that, I developed a self-service model so the company could take advantage of their ad hoc analysis.

Then, I implemented some standard reports to understand some basic indicators, together with the delivery subscriptions so that all the organization's levels could receive this valuable information, i.e., for more than 500 users.

Lastly, I connected this platform to the cloud (Power BI) together with a top BI solution (QlikView) so as to take full advantage of the second data insights' step journey.

The Windows OS dependency needs to improve. There are some bugs with the new features that have released.

It is getting better but still, there are opportunity areas in some aspects, especially the Windows OS dependency.

I have used this solution for 10 years and still counting.

There were no stability issues.

Technical support is very good.

I was using Oracle before, we switched to Microsoft because Oracle is very expensive for the benefits that they offer.

The setup was easy, actually, a single instance installation can be installed by clicking next and next. Maybe a cluster installation could be a little more complex, but it is still easy.

This is one of the best out-of-the-box solutions on the market. Microsoft has to improve their Data Governance solution, but for a data platform and BI solution, it is very good.

We evaluated products such as Oracle, MySQL, and Postgres.

It is very straightforward. Maybe you won't like the Windows OS dependency, but, in the 2017 version, you can install the engine on Linux.

Microsoft BI Stack's best features are as follows:

SSRS – Self-service reporting and powerful subscription service

PowerBI – Self-service BI

MDS – Master data management

SSAS – OLAP Cube

Microsoft BI Stack improved the way our clients in the beverages (manufacturing and distribution) and the agro industrial sectors manage their financial reporting and board pack preparation, from one week to five minutes.

The following areas could be improved:

Publishing and sharing data using PowerBI.

People without private emails cannot publish and, frankly, this doesn't allow for easy training.

It's not always easy to speak directly with a MS Power BI expert.

You have to sign up to the Power BI service using an email address to share and view Power BI reports and dashboards, but Microsoft doesn't yet support personal (.cox, .gmail, et.) or government (.gov, .mil, etc.) email addresses.

I have been using the Microsoft BI Stack solution for over five years in the beverages (manufacturing and distribution), agro Industrial, and telecommunication sectors.

I have not yet encountered any issues with stability.

I have not yet encountered any issues with scalability.

I would rate the level of technical support as 7/10.

I did not previously use a solution.

The initial setup of the Microsoft BI Stack environment is complex, has many moving parts, and you need to know what you want for outputs to make effective use of it.

All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights.

• QlikView
• Dundas

If you want to dazzle your audience and, at the same time, show meaningful insights, then this is the best tool.

It is good for highly formatted reports.

It helps to create the board report pack for financial reporting.

There is need to improve the graphical and dashboard reports; they must have tabs. This gap is usually compensated by QlikView.

I have used this solution for five years.

The product is stable. At times, it is slow when you use relational database as a data source, however it is fast when you use multidimensional cubes for high volume data.

It’s easy to integrate with the other Microsoft products. However, it is not as easy when connecting to other data sources like SAP ERP.

Technical support is good, I would give it an 8/10 rating.

As implementors or consultants, we use different tools.

The setup was straightforward.

It’s free if you have MS SQL database license. It comes together with SSIS, SSRS, SSAS and other tools.

We looked at other solutions, namely Crystal Reports and Oracle BI Publisher.

It’s cheaper to implement in terms of the licensing.

It works well, especially when implementing the whole stack of Microsoft BI solution including SSAS for data modeling and SSIS for ETL.

Pivoting is the most valuable feature.

It is good for users who have experience with Excel but are looking to work with larger than Excel data sets. For experienced users, it is more of a hassle because of its lack of usability; it is not very intuitive to find a given functionality.

Its ease of use feature is not very intuitive and needs to improve.

I have used this solution for six months.

We often experience stability issues.

There were scalability issues. It does half the work like any other product in the market.

This product was used during tests.

It is easy to set up.

We looked at Tableau and Qlik; we are using Qlik.

It seems to be good for extending the capabilities of Excel but I wouldn't recommend it as a standalone setup.

The interactive reports, DirectQuery and integration with the other Microsoft services are valuable features.

There needs to be support for more data sources in DirectQuery.

DirectQuery is a method of connecting your data directly, i.e. any changes in data source will reflect in report immediately. (This is very great feature if you are doing live analysis of your data). As of now there are limited number of Data Sources such as SQL, SQL Azure, which are supported by Power BI with DirectQuery. Although Microsoft keeps working on adding different data sources in DirectQuery (currently only six data sources in this method and three more in Preview), that's why I feel that still DirectQuery (method of connecting your data) has more room for improvement because there are many other data sources that are commonly used by different organization like (MySQL, Access, etc.)

I have used this solution for two years.

In the beginning, we did encounter some stability issues; now, Microsoft is doing great things to make this product more stable and enhanced.

We were using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS reports), now we are moving towards Power BI due to its Publish on web part, as well as the interactive cross-filtering throughout all the visuals (i.e., if you need).

The setup is easy. It is very easy to use. If you are an Excel and SQL user, then it is very easy to get a grip on this product.

We tried Tableau. Although Tableau itself is a great product, we chose Power BI due to its pricing and Microsoft's focus to make it a better product.

• It provides easy integration with Office tools.
• It is easy to understand BI architecture.

Microsoft SQL Server BI made data correlation between the agencies so fast, that the simple POCs for the dashboards let the decision-makers to migrate our so-called enterprise architecture. Enterprise architecture is the integration of ETL, CDC, DWH, reporting, and forecasting tools.

Our expectation is putting BI to work in real-time data collection systems in the maritime environment.

The Automatic Identification System is a great source of data regarding the ships from around the world. From kinematic to static including some commercial data, it streams to the maritime monitoring stations. So, collecting and processing of this data and also, creating useful information are the key factors for our government entity. However, this data is real-time data which means that the process should be done in seconds for thousands of ships. We are forcing the boundaries of the Microsoft BI product right now and wish to see some stream data processing methodologies in the future.

I have used this product for a year and a half.

The product was pretty stable but when it comes to collecting real-time data we encountered some data dropping issues.

Sometimes, the scalability becomes an issue; instead of horizontal scaling, we always need vertical scaling.

The technical support in Turkey is very good.

We were using some open-source BI tools. It was very difficult to get support for open-source and that is why we switched to Microsoft.

The setup was okay because Microsoft integrated BI to the SQL product. Instead of using a special product, you get the sense of using native add-on libraries for BI. It is a part of the database process. Training is the key here.

I don't want to speculate but there is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price. So bargain wildly with Microsoft.

We evaluated other open-source alternatives.

You will need training personnel and powerful servers.

MS SQL & SQL Server Analysis Services.

We provide BI solutions to the users at every level in order to monitor business. We can deploy DWH, cubes and reports from scratch within weeks of implementation.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is not user friendly, requires development. Power BI will surely provide a huge boost to MS BI in terms of self-service BI. Then again, SSRS developers are plenty, thus not so expensive.

Ten-plus years.

Stability issues are due to bad hardware sizing, bad forecast of volumes, or bad data modeling.

Only when data models were faulty of when the infrastructure was not compliant to MS recommendations.

Tech support from Microsoft, when needed, is as efficient as can be.

Worked in different technical environments but never saw a switch from MS BI.

Developers and architects are easily available for this technology.

MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution.

Watch your data model, use data marts when possible, set your archiving/purge policy from the beginning, size your hardware well (unless on cloud).

Power Query and Power Pivot are the most valuable features. You can easily manage your data on Excel. İf you have a professional version, you can do it. However, if you don't use Power Query and Power Pivot, then your raw number is limited. The Unpivot specialty is useful because you can't do it in the front-side of Excel.

If you don't have any analytical tool and you don't have any budget, then Power BI can be the best product in terms of the price-quality index. This is because you can work easily on big data; you can upload and model it.

Performance can be better; of course, it depends on your hardware but it can also be improved.

Once I tried to upload 5 million rows on Power Query from a CSV file but I got an error about my personal computer, i.e., my RAM was not enough for uploading. Also, sometimes this process takes a long time.

I have used this solution for about three years.

There were no stability issues.

The product is scalable.

Once I asked a question to the technical support team and they answered clearly. I would give them a 9/10 rating.

It is a user-friendly tool, but the data size is important, i.e., you have to check your data size and how you can use it effectively.