Microsoft Power BI Reviews

Since its integration into SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has made a number of improvements and added many new features. It had a big overhaul in 2008 and acquired a bunch of new features with 2008 R2: KPIs, maps, sparklines, new functions, published Report Parts, and more.

Let me highlight some of the advanced features that keep people on the platform:

1. Drill-through reports. These are ones where links in the data presented take a report viewer to related reports. Information Builders is another BI platform where this is available, but not as customizable as in SSRS.
2. Highly customizable charts. The data-driven custom colors. The fact that almost every attribute of a component of a chart can be tweaked. Try doing some of those customizations on your flashy new cloud BI platform. Reports within reports. Sub-reports within tables of data and sophisticated charts within tables within sub-reports within reports. Go as deep as you want. See as much detail as you want.
3. User-accessible parameters. Reports can offer report users parameters like no other platform. This makes linking to and from reports easy and allows you to integrate SSRS reports into other business applications. Try sending parameters to an Excel spreadsheet, a Power View report, or a cloud-based dashboard – impossible.
4. Extensible. Programmers can extend the tool’s functionality. Custom data sources can be coded. Custom delivery extensions can be built. External DLLs can be referenced from within reports. Many companies do take advantage of these features.

The few things I mention below constitute very strong reasons why Microsoft has essentially abandoned the platform and why I agree with them.

• Lack of mobile support. Reports look terrible on mobile screens. They don’t have the ability to redraw themselves as with responsive UIs. Security remains a hassle on mobile because SSRS relies heavily on Active Directory.
• Speed of development is too slow. To be fair, each SSRS report has the potential to be its own business application, aware of who is viewing the report and customizing the output accordingly. Those that take advantage of the advanced features are in for a surprise – developers will spend countless hours squinting at the screen getting every pixel to fall exactly where they want it. Setting up data sources is still a thing for advanced SQL developers. It’s not like other modern BI platforms where stores of data sets are easily converted to dashboards.
• Antiquated IDE for code developers extending it. I really wish that the custom code windows provided richer programming assistance (like auto-complete, object-oriented constructs, Intellisense…) and support for other programming languages.

I have used it for two years.

We have not encountered any deployment issues.

• Long-running queries could take your system down. The desire of "I Want It All In One Report" should be avoided. All users should tune their reports and use parameters to get their reports in a light way.
• Internet Explorer could be tricky sometimes.

Customer service is 7/10.

Technical support is 7/10.

I switched from 2005 to 2008 in order to get more features.

It is easy to install and to integrate in an enterprise setting.

An in-house team implemented it.

The SQL Server Reporting Services works as a part of SQL Server license. If we have a licensed copy of SQL Server, we can run Reporting Services on the same server for no additional license fee. However, if we run Reporting Services on a separate machine that is not yet licensed for SQL Server, such as a Web server, we will need to purchase an additional SQL Server license.

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SQL Server Reporting Services is one of the most popular components of SQL Server, but it has always been surprisingly difficult to get from one place all the basic facts you need to get up and running from scratch, to the point of producing reports. My overall experience with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is that it is easy to install and to integrate in an enterprise setting. Developing sophisticated reports, however, can be slow and tedious. Ultimately, getting information to business users is the name of the game. Doing it fast and doing it intuitively trumps fancy features.

Firstly there was the wow effect, as when I saw the number of connectors which were made for this product/service. It is quite fantastic to have the ability to connect separate services like CRM, NAV, Facebook, Exchange etc. and make data integration and transformation based on these data connections in a few clicks. Also, the ability to download new visuals is quite nice. The effect of new graphics for higher management is magical and this is the good way not only for a pre-sale/sale or up-sale, but also for good impressions. Another great feature is, for example, the collecting of data in concrete folder on disk. If there is, for example, 100 csv files from other information systems, these should be automatically merged, analyzed and transformed into great graphical report.

Because the product is based the ability to quickly produce BI insights and reports, it’s really useful on a daily basis. Another improvement is definitely the possibility of browsing the dashboards on smartphone using an app, and another is the ability to quickly produce reports.

Well definitely the connectors, which is always a huge space for improvement in configurations, especially the amount of connectors etc. Also, the graphic designs of the reports needs work as they are still really strictly defined, and with the amount of output, there isn’t space for such a design realization. 

I have used this solution since it was released (a few years ago) and I am using it on a daily basis at work and at university where I work as a researcher and am a PhD student. I use it on mobile, laptop and tablet as well. Also, it has its own app for viewing the reports and dashboards, own app for creating and editing.

There have been no issues with the deployment.

There was no issue with stability.

We have been able to scale it for our needs.

Personally, I used Excel Services/Visio Services.

Really straightforward. The most complex part is defining the data gateways between the cloud part and the on premises part of the infrastructure. Another bigger task is to define security model of all the datasets and reports with correct audience, data refresh etc.

It's too soon to calculate. I think, that for the correct ROI value, you need to have it in place for more than three years. But, it saves a lot of time and not only developers time, but also management time etc. Things are easier when there are functionalities like “quick insight” for auto-creating of data based on machine learning algorithms, or Q&A for using natural query language. 

I played with Tableau. I see many similarities in Power BI to other products, so there is no reason to combine many different vendors/third parties to build such a complex BI solution.

It's a tool for a new kind of business intelligence from Microsoft. Tool for quick modeling of data structures and for visualizing almost everything you have in mind at the moment. There is still a lot of room for improvement and there is also a huge space for new functionalities. But it’s a simple and great tool for everyday use. 

You should get it and implement it. However, you should get a trial version, and contact a partner who can provide some sales presentation with the live session (CIE for example) and show, what the possibilities are of Power BI.

Microsoft SQL Server Report Publisher

Microsoft SQL Server Report Builder

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (Web Portal)

SQL Server 2016 delivers built-in mobile BI capabilities.  The above tools give professionals the ability to deliver business insights quickly and easily as well as enabling a quick way of presenting the data/charts/reports over a web portal.  The portal is compatible for cross platform, from desktops to major mobile devices.

Overall a great way of delivering your insights to your data.

Works with data, systems and tools we already have. They are "additional" tools rather than complete replacement software.  Easy to upgrade / install.  The new SSRS tools in particular give us an easier way to share insights and reports to our clients and within our own teams.  Security is easily managed within SharePoint.

License fee structure.  Mobile reporting Services is only available for the "Enterprise" addition of SQL Server 2016.  This comes with a hefty price tag.  Would be better if you could pick and choose the features you require and then the price tag is set accordingly.  Rather than paying for the full Enterprise addition and getting a lot of features we do not need/use.  

We have been using Microsoft's extensive software library for years.  But at the time of writing this review, SQL Server 2016 Enterprise is pretty brand new.  We knew of the latest reporting services offering and were eager to trial it.

Deployment isn't rocket science, but it isn't child's play either.  There were a fair few standard issues getting everything to talk to each other.  Nothing to worry about though.  Microsoft has worked well to make sure the latest SSRS is an "add-on" feature that integrates seamlessly. 

Straightforward easy setup.  Typical Microsoft software (familiar).

The ease of implementation and reliability of SQL Server Reporting Services far exceeded the solution originally implemented with Crystal Report. The Crystal Report Servers (3 of them) were crashing on a weekly basis at one of the companies where I worked.

We were able to reduce costs by consolidating the 3 Crystal Report Servers down to just one server running SSRS (with one backup just in case). The time it took to run some reports in Crystal were exceeding 5 minutes. The same report in SSRS not only was significantly faster (down to 30 seconds) and the licensing cost savings allowed for a quicker return on investment (less than one year).

The build in Report Builder for end users needs improvement. But for someone that has some training on SSRS, its very straightforward.

The solution was implemented and still in use to this day to my knowledge.

No. Following the installation guide was a help with setting up SSRS to use single sign on as well as SQL accounts. The overall setup of the server took about an hour. The conversion of over 200 Crystal Reports to SSRS took some more time but was done with one user and completed within 3 months.

No. SSRS has been rock solid and the server never needed rebooting unlike the Crystal Report Servers.

No. In fact we were able to decommission servers and switch to using a virtual server for SSRS.

Never had to use their support. But, the few times I have had to contact Microsoft, there were very knowledgeable and able to resolve the problem quickly.

9, see above.

Yes. We used Crystal Reports, see above.

• It's a user-friendly tool
• Very stable
• It always helps us to achieve organizational goals

It's been stable for over eight years, and all the latest products/versions have backwards compatibility, or an upgrade facility. It has helped to fetch many projects, and to deliver them on time, as well as helping to resolve complex business challenges. The product has continual updates so we can stay on top of the market.

• Data warehousing manager is not available, which can be introduced
• Reporting or SharePoint needs a lot of learning so you can build reports

I've used it for 10 years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Microsoft has a great level of customer service.

There are great public forums available for tech support.

• Straightforward - installation, development, deployment, and maintenance
• Little complex - Learning the tool

We did it in-house.

I am not sure how to calculate this. The solution significantly improved BI and reporting capabilities. Without this solution, the business can’t think of successful operations.

It is not costly when compared with other competitor products. This is a rock solid solution for any BI organization.

We didn't do much evaluation as our dev teams experience is with Microsoft BI.

This product is hassle free to utilize for your BI environment.

All the features are valuable.

We empower users with Enterprise BI and Self Service BI by Microsoft BI.

Microsoft has poor support for XML.

I've used it for four years.

There were no issues, and it has good integration with other Microsoft products.

We do have issues, but we can solve them ourselves.

We do have issues, but we can solve them ourselves.

It's good.

We are more expert than they are.

We used Infobeacon and then we added Microsoft BI to Cognos. We are currently looking for a better product and are evaluating Tableau.

It is easy to implement Microsoft BI.

Several projects we implemented through vendors and most we implemented in house. We are more expert than they are.

We didn’t have another option.

Quality of data, flexibility and the performance of the tool(s) are the critical aspects of BI. Test the critical aspects by doing a proof of concept using a huge amount of data.

The integration tool in Microsoft BI stack is one of the best in terms of understanding and together with the script component can make most data imports pretty simple and accurate. Also, the ease of use of the product.

Prior to using the Microsoft BI stack the organization was using a lot of Access and Excel applications which became cumbersome as the organization grew. These tools helped us to streamline the reports and data integration.

The robustness of the stack could be improved as it fails when we import/extract large amounts of data.

Four and a half years.

No issues encountered.

Yes, when the volume of data is large.

Yes.

Excellent with online social help and customer care from Microsoft.

There is a lot of room for improvement in technical support.

I used other reporting platforms along with the Microsoft BI stack, but never switched.

The initial setup is pretty simple for most starting users.

It was an in house implementation.

Very high, as it is a very cost effective application compared to any BI tools in the market.

It is setup by the organization, so I am not sure about the exact cost and renewal cost.

No, I did not have an opportunity to do any evaluations.

It is a great, cost effective solution if the size of the organization is only medium and easy to use and cost of finding a resource is low.

• SQL Server Integration Services
• SQL Server Management Studio

There have been occasions when a certain application would work very slowly on other DB platforms and once we migrated to SQL Server the response times improved dramatically. For example, I recently migrated an application from TeraData to SQL Server and the response times for some functions were cut down from 90 seconds to about less than 1 second! This obviously speeds up the work that gets done within a day.

The SQL Server Reporting Services can certainly use some more help. Within SSIS, I see room for more connectors and easier debug messages that would speed up the process of development. The biggest hurdle that any developer comes across is vague error messages.

About eight to nine years.

No. The installation and deployment process has always been smooth and simple.

No. Product is very robust and reliable.

Adding extra machines to the cluster environment is not difficult but certainly needs experienced developers/implementers to do that.

Excellent. They usually turn around within good time and you can also request new features directly from the group that is responsible for the product.

9/10

A different solution was not used previously.

I have been to many projects and usually the setup is pretty straight forward. But even when it comes to complicated setups such as multiple clusters, the product still seems easy once understood.

In-house implementation.

It varies from place to place. But a typical license would cost anywhere from a few thousand bucks to the upper $20k-$30k range.

• MicroStrategy
• TeraData
• Informatica.

Look at the amount of data that you have and the amount you anticipate in the future. If you have multiple sources of data and multiple applications consuming it, sticking to a single solution might not be the best idea.