I use MicroStrategy for reporting purposes because I have worked across different organizations in different domains, including retail, mortgage, and banking.

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.

MicroStrategy's data visualization capabilities are great, and I would rate them nine out of 10.

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 mid-level organizations who do not have this much budget have to opt for other cheaper tools.

I have close to 14 years of experience working with MicroStrategy.

The deployment of MicroStrategy used to take hours, but now it takes a few minutes because everybody is using the cloud, so it is already pre-deployed there. We just need to connect with our data and deploy our metadata, and that completes the process.

I would rate the stability of MicroStrategy as nine out of 10.

I rate the scalability of MicroStrategy as eight out of 10.

I would rate the technical support from MicroStrategy as nine out of 10.

Positive

Before MicroStrategy, I used a bit of Power BI and also Tableau.

I find the initial setup of MicroStrategy to be straightforward.

My deployment of MicroStrategy was done in-house, not by using a third party such as an integrator, reseller, or consultant.

I switched from these tools to MicroStrategy because when we evaluated all the capabilities and the feasibility that we got in MicroStrategy, it was way better than the other tools.

There are about 2,500 plus users using MicroStrategy in my organization.

I have experience working with solutions such as MicroStrategy, Power BI, and a bit of Tableau, but not on ThoughtSpot.

My relationship with the vendor is that I am an end user of this solution.

I would rate MicroStrategy overall as nine out of 10.

I am a developer working with MicroStrategy, specifically focusing on tasks related to making cubes and viewpoints. Although I am not involved in solution architecture, I utilize MicroStrategy as an end user, working within its provided framework.

MicroStrategy saves time and money for repetitive tasks, streamlining certain processes within our organization.

The most valuable feature of MicroStrategy is the ability to make your own cubes and, from those, create viewpoints. This is particularly useful in data analytics where cube making goes hand in hand.

There is a need to improve the automatic generation of metrics in MicroStrategy, as currently everything must be done manually. 

Additionally, the hierarchy creation process in MicroStrategy could be improved.

I have been personally working with MicroStrategy for approximately 12 years.

I would rate the stability of MicroStrategy eight out of ten. The product is generally stable.

I rate the scalability of MicroStrategy as seven out of ten. We have faced some challenges, such as a lack of optimization in the data model, which affects its ability to scale efficiently.

The customer service and support for MicroStrategy are satisfactory. We have a certain agreement with them and have consultants available who respond promptly.

Positive

I didn't evaluate other solutions prior to using MicroStrategy.

I am not working directly with the BI architecture aspect of MicroStrategy, so the setup process comes to me already finished. Therefore, I cannot comment on whether it is simple or complex.

Based on my experience, I can recommend MicroStrategy for enterprise-level companies. It efficiently handles around five thousand users.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Our customers use it as a BI tool, and we handle end-to-end project development. We use MicroStrategy for the front end to develop metadata and dashboards.

MicroStrategy's OLAP data site is a significant advantage for BI tools. We are able to manage to get very in-depth and detailed management of the data model on the backend. It makes dashboards more powerful in terms of performance. It also enables more efficient data management.

Data Security and Multi-User Capabilities

MicroStrategy's security management is very powerful. We can use various security filters for role-based security and it has a direct connection to Active Directory, allowing us to manage numerous groups effectively.

AI Capabilities

I haven't had much chance to use the AI capabilities, but I know that only licensed parties can use these features.

There is room for improvement in data visualization. Compared to other BI tools like Power BI, MicroStrategy is stronger in data utilization but could be enhanced in the visualization aspect.

I have over five years of experience working with MicroStrategy as a developer. 

I would rate MicroStrategy's stability a ten out of ten, as it has been reliable for a long duration.

I would rate the scalability of MicroStrategy a nine out of ten.

User Base

We work with various customers, and the number of users varies. One customer has over 600 users, while another has less than 100. We cater to a range of customers, from small to enterprise businesses.

The customer service and support are good.

Positive

I would rate my experience with the initial setup of MicroStrategy an eight out of ten, with ten being the easiest.

We generally use on-premises deployment for MicroStrategy.

Deployment time: The deployment time varies. Installing MicroStrategy takes longer, but developing a dashboard or metadata can be done within a few hours. Developing from scratch would naturally take longer.

Integration Capabilities:

MicroStrategy's integration capabilities are also good. We can get data from APIs and other sources. There is also a library section. We can integrate with that kind of thing. Only the admin part can be challenging.

The deployment is handled in-house by our team, without the need for a third party.

Overall, I think MicroStrategy has positively impacted business efficiency.

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

I would recommend MicroStrategy because it is very powerful from the backend modeling side.

Overall Rating:

Overall, I would rate MicroStrategy an eight out of ten.

I just maintain the platform and develop the reports.

MicroStrategy does have just standard reporting on them. Not more than that. A few mobile reports.

Learning curve: 

From the end-user perspective, it depends on how the report is designed. It's very easy to handle, like a regular website. 

For end-users developing self-service, the handling itself is easy as well, but the end-user has to have some knowledge of data, I mean data wrangling and stuff like that. Otherwise, you wouldn't know what to do. It's the same, like in Excel, for example. 

For developers, if someone already has some knowledge of data warehousing, it's not a big problem. It's just another content that you can learn.

I wouldn't recommend it if you have no data warehouses; for example, you would need to find a lot of knowledge to transform the data in MicroStrategy itself. So that could be quite challenging.

We have MicroStrategy in place for a couple of years, actually more than 15.  

It's quite stable, actually. We don't have a lot of issues with the platform. So it's good.

The data volume is not a problem because we have data warehouses. We only point to data warehouses where we have the data stored. 

So it's actually the distinct count of current users that would be necessary to scale up. But we don't have to cope with that right now.

We did have some issues over the years. One or two issues a year. We changed servers to the Unix platform. We had some troubles there. It was actually hard to find someone who has Unix experience with MicroStrategy. Because most of the staff had good knowledge with Windows, but not with Unix. So this was actually quite challenging. Once we had all the issues closed, it was stable then. But it took at least a few weeks.

We have different products like Oracle. We are trying to harmonize and switch to only one technology.

We are not developing something. We are just defining the target architecture. And after that, we will create a project for the transformation.

We already have a lot of experience, so for us it's not a hassle.

I was part of the in-house deployment. 

Not for all the deployments, but for the reports that we develop, we deploy them.

I wouldn't recommend it if you have no data warehouses; for example, you would need to find a lot of knowledge to transform the data in MicroStrategy itself. So that could be quite challenging. 

If you have data, it is not that complex. It's manageable even for end users. But most of the time, some source systems have a lot of tables. And so if you have to make some matrices, you need to know what to do and how to do it. So you need a little bit of experience. It really depends on which source systems you're reporting from and which users you have.

In our case, with our purpose and the skills we have, I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We use MicroStrategy for reporting on retail analytics, platform analytics, and tracking user usage.

Since it's an enterprise tool, MicroStrategy gives an end-to-end understanding of the system. The solution's platform analytics gives us real-time analysis of how a particular user uses the report and how the systems behave. At times, MicroStrategy comes in very handy to invoice the overall infrastructure. On the user adoption side, our business users find it very easy to use. The solution's dossier functionality comes in very handy.

The solution's licensing could be improved because its cost is heavy on the pockets. MicroStrategy's visualization is a little on the lower side as compared to Power BI and Tableau.

I have been using MicroStrategy for nine years.

MicroStrategy is a very stable solution. Even if there are any bugs, the support team is quite knowledgeable in resolving those usual product bugs.

The client that I'm working with has around 3,000 users for MicroStrategy.

The technical support team resolves all our queries, but they don't provide 24/7 support. I'm working from India, and my customer is in the US. Whenever I raise a ticket, I get the response one day later. The only area of improvement for the technical support team is they should provide 24/7 support.

Positive

MicroStrategy's installation is easier for the developer or the administrator but not for the IT person from the infrastructure team. If anyone knows MicroStrategy, they can install it. For someone who doesn't know about the solution, it's not a ready-to-be-installed tool, just like Power BI or Tableau. For MicroStrategy, you need an understanding of the product it comes with.

Organizations using MicroStrategy are seeing a return on their investment.

The solution’s licensing cost is expensive.

MicroStrategy is deployed on the cloud in our organization.

The client I'm working for already had MicroStrategy as a license. Secondly, MicroStrategy provides enterprise-level support. If I have a big enterprise, my choice of tool will always be something that is very stable.

Many analyses can be easily done on MicroStrategy, which is currently not possible in either Power BI or Tableau. Also, users are not ready to shift from one tool to another.

I would recommend that users analyze their requirements before choosing the solution. I would not suggest MicroStrategy to someone with just a visualization need. I would recommend MicroStrategy to users who want reporting and some analysis done on the fly. MicroStrategy is not just a visualization tool. It's a very powerful data analytic tool as well. Users with both data analysis and visualization needs should go for MicroStrategy.

The support team addresses all the problems that arise from MicroStrategy, including product bugs. The only downside is that it is heavier on the licensing cost part. Recently, MicroStrategy has brought AI features, which are also very costly on the licensing side. MicroStrategy is trying its best to match the current trend that we see in the market.

Overall, I rate MicroStrategy an eight out of ten

I use its Discovery Analytics feature, particularly in the context of KPI analysis for management.

It plays a vital role in establishing a connection with predictive continuous improvement. This approach proves highly valuable for teams involved in continuous improvement efforts, especially in early production and industrial settings, as it contributes to enhancing overall performance and productivity.

What I need are clear pricing details and a better understanding of the licensing policies. There might be opportunities for reporting or data analysis, perhaps even in the realm of simulation.

I have been working with it for more than five years.

It offers excellent stability features. I would rate it nine out of ten.

I would rate its scalability capabilities eight out of ten.

When I first started working with it, I started with the basics and attempted to reach out to customer support, but the assistance I received was limited.

Neutral

I have prior experience with tools like Cognos and Microsoft Analysis Services, which are proprietary solutions. I am exploring a range of open-source alternatives such as Pentaho, Power BI, and to some extent, Tableau.

The initial setup was straightforward and I haven't faced any issues.

The deployment process was completed promptly, we are talking about a matter of minutes.

I'm interested in finding a cost-effective way to introduce MicroStrategy to my customers. I've noticed that the workstation and desktop versions are free, which is great for development purposes, but not for customer deployment. Additional costs are associated with maintenance.

I need some reliable references or resources because it's proven quite challenging to obtain information about MicroStrategy in Italy. It's frustrating not to have access to pricing details because, when discussing analytics tools in general and specifically mentioning MicroStrategy to potential customers, I can't provide them with essential information about pricing, licensing, cloud options, on-premises solutions, and more. Overall, it is a good product and I would rate it nine out of ten.

It's useful if you need to create dashboards that you check every day. Also, we can create a queue, but it will be updated every day with scheduled updates. We use MicroStrategy as an architect to call some tasks and procedures to update data or delete data. 

I am the user to check data in dashboards.

It's a good tool.

There is room for improvement in customer support. 

Another area of improvement is stability of this solution. 

I've been using MicroStrategy for one year.  

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. Sometimes Power BI is better than MicroStrategy.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. We have a small team, so we have around two end users using this solution. We use the solution regularly. 

We had some problems. We have technical support for my clients because it's a big company. So, our technical service connected to the technical service of MicroStrategy, and they decided how to fix some problems. For example, we needed to add the time sort MicroStrategy to update the end date of the full time, top dates view from a specific time.

We evaluated Oracle BI and Power BI.

We saw a return on investment.

It is not an expensive solution. We need to pay for a license.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We used the solution for reporting and data visualization. We used Google BigQuery to collect data and build dashboards and reports about production, manufacturing data, HR, people, positions, and headcounts. MicroStrategy was the platform where we built visualizations on dashboards, created standard reports in table format, and allowed some users to analyze the data.

The solution is a very good enterprise tool with excellent enterprise functionality for security and user access. It also works perfectly in distribution, with everyone getting their own reports. It is very complex, so you can do whatever you want. If you want to make some data limitations, you can do it. I also like the internal in-memory engine with the Symantec layer. This makes the solution pretty powerful.

The solution has a very non-logical user usage part. It has a library mode where users can access all the data, reports, and dashboards, but they also can be accessed from a platform. They have to log into the platform. The user experience is confusing for the users. MicroStrategy needs to define which one they will use. Some functionality isn’t available in library mode but is available in the portal. 

There should be Office integration. For example, if I do a presentation, then I should be able to add a chart to my presentation.

I have been using MicroStrategy for two years actively. Our company is using the latest version of this solution.

The solution is stable. We haven’t got into any trouble.
 

The solution is scalable. We have used the solution with 100s of users, and it has been good. We never saw any logging or problems.

We connected and wrote a question to them, which was answered in a few days. We checked the problem together and finally figured out it was something misunderstood.

I previously used SAP BusinessObjects BI, and it was not as fast as MicroStrategy with the same data set size. The solution moved smoothly and quickly based on the in-built engine and some queries. SAP BusinessObjects BI can be used if you have an SAP environment because they have the connectors. However, SAP BusinessObjects BI is not up to date today. SAP is using Elastic Cloud. Both tools are very similar, but SAP BusinessObjects BI has some limitations and graphical queries. It's not as beautiful as Tableau or Power BI, but it is good. In some cases, SAP BusinessObjects BI is slower than MicroStrategy, but it has more features and tools. MicroStrategy is better for SAP environments.

It is important to have a good user security strategy. When building a model, take some time to consider how you want to secure it; limited or accessible. The goal is to build a Symantec career, but it may be in the early stages. It's a good effort. However, step by step, over time, it will pay off. It is a good investment.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I'm working in a company, so we need to do the visualization for our client. Therefore, we are using MicroStrategy.

MicroStrategy's best feature is that it is a user-friendly tool.

There needs to be better visualization. It could be good to add new visualizations. Some of the visualizations are not there in MicroStrategy.

I have been using MicroStrategy for a year. I am a developer and user of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

In my company, our team consists of around 100 people. Though there are not so many members in my company, my team consists of around 100 members. Out of all my team members, around 70 people are using it.

I have contacted the technical support team of MicroStrategy. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial setup was easy.

I recommend the solution to those planning to use it.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The feature I found most valuable is the drop and drag functionality available for the relevant stuff you can use to link the relevant data.

The areas that have room for improvement in MicroStrategy are mainly related to building additional tools. Specifically, the embedding process has been a bit of a struggle. It's crucial to correctly populate the embedded components, especially considering my work in the banking environment. For instance, in the banking environment, there are branches in different regions. If you don't necessarily do it in the necessary SQL operations to populate the data, it becomes difficult to build an embedded React app or any other application. So, that's definitely an area for improvement.

So, we can list additional customization options as one of the improvement areas.

Additionally, I feel that the pricing is a little bit too expensive. That is the main reason why people are not using MicroStrategy in South Africa.

In the next release, I believe the additional customization options can help the product. Also, the pricing is too costly currently. Even that can be worked upon.

I have used MicroStrategy for about a year. We currently use version 11. 

We did not have any stability issues. So, I would rate MicroStrategy a ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. Within our banking organization, around 300 plus users are using MicroStrategy.

When it comes to technical support, we did have some issues. We waited a long time for someone from the support team to get back to us. 

Neutral

The deployment process took less than a month. However, being in the banking environment, there are numerous processes involved that can impact the actual deployment timeline, etcetera.

We are waiting to switch to Microsoft Power BI because MicroStrategy is too costly. So, as for the pricing, I would rate it three out of ten, where one is high price, and ten is low price.

MicroStrategy is a nice tool to have. The support, the visualization, and everything else are very nice. In fact, it is more enhanced than Microsoft Power BI.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.