BO vs MicroStrategy

[Mackrel]

My company is considering a swap of BO with MicroStrategy. I know BO pretty well and I think it is a better tool. I don't know MicroStrategy vey well. Can anyone help me with some key points on why BO is a better tool/solution vs MicroStrategy?

Thanks in advance!

 

[skrandel]

Although Microstrategy has some interesting features, BO is far easier to use.

The way I see it, BO is a great tool for a broad variety of users: Power Users to Analysts to Report Consumers.

Microstrategy has a much more limited audience. It has alot of specialty functions that are built in that make it a good tool for Power Users. But it's ad-hoc abilities are hard to use. It's also much more difficult to build reports.

So, BO does Ad-hoc, Analytics and Reporting very well. Microstrategy does Analytics well and is weak with the other things.

JMO Steve Krandel
BASE Consulting Group

http://www.baseconsulting.com

 

[Z3]

I think BO put ease of use as a very high priority. It's really a user's choice. If you are going to have terabytes of data, complexed schema and perhaps many projects running on these data, choose MicroStrategy. Otherwise, choose BO, or even Cognos. Brio is kinda like Access on Web, an easy going tool also. I like them all.

The average warehouse size for BO customer is around 10 GB. Cognos is under 5 GB. For MicroStrategy, 200 GB. Fit yourself into the right category is pretty easy.

 

[nlim]

why did you even consider switching if BO is working for you? It's very expensive to switch so unless you have some really compelling reason like security...

 

[skrandel]

Also, I disagree completely with Z3. Microstrategy is a great tool, but it does not work well with a complex schema. It really wants a perfect star/snowflake schema. Complex schemas simply don't work.

Steve Krandel
BASE Consulting Group

http://www.baseconsulting.com