As more and more companies incline to explore the power of BI reporting and Analytics, what reporting tools are leading the market by providing most beneficial solutions to the organizations. Let us try to examine few of the well-known BI reporting tools and the features they offer to users. The views expressed in this blog are my personal and does not relate, in anyway, to the tools/companies mentioned in this blog and any other tools in the same domain.
Firstly, let us have a look at the features of a reporting tool that we consider in this post.
Reporting from multiple sources: Ability to import data from multiple sources and generating reports easily. This means to be able to connect variety of data sources like flat files (e.g., CSV file, TXT file), most stand alone databases like Oracle® SQL and recently evolved semi-structrued or unstructured (big data) databases like Postegre® SQL and MongoDB® alike. It also considers the convenience of generating reports for a moderately knowledgable reporter.
Accessibility: The availability of reporting tool for a wide range of users including small, medium and large companies, data enthusiasts, researchers and students.
Interactive reports: The reports and dashboards gives the opportunity to the user to change the inputs and modify the reports to their needs. A reporting analyst or a developer is not required to customize the report and generate, what I call, sub-reports - reports generated from the subset of data represented/visualized.
Value for price: In business terminology, ROI (Return On Investment) is the equivalent of this feature. It refers to the value the user gains for the price of the product/service. Please note that the value in blog is my perceived (subjective) value.
Security: In a BI reporting environment, it is evident that security is of high priority as the data might be related to the entire organization and most of the times, contain the financial, marketing strategic information. So, we will consider security as one of the features we are reviewing in the list.
As the BI industry emerges rapidly and with new tools introduced at a gallop, It will not be feasible for us to review all the tools. We will consider 5, as the blog title suggests, BI tools for our review which have established their footprint in the domain. We will talk about each of the features listed above with respect to each of the tools.
Tableau
An intuitive BI software for any user irrespective of the technical knowledge of the user. The platform is simple and easy-to-use with drag and drop convenience. It also lets the user connect to a variety of data sources including flat files, relational databases and semi structured databases. Tableau comes in different versions, namely Tableau® Public is a free version for everyone while Tableau® Desktop is a version capable of generating all kinds of reports and available on purchase of license. There is a Tableau® Server version which runs in a cloud environment and accessible to multiple users within an organization. An interesting fact about Tableau® Desktop is it’s availability of 1 year free subscription for students.
With it’s novel design, Tableau® has created an easy-to-use software with the capability of interactive reports and simply customizable dashboards. Tableau’s online tutorials on the website makes it easy for anyone to be comfortable with product within few hours. With the features Tableau has to offer, I believe it is more than full value for the price it comes with. It also comes with a nice set of security setup including Access, Object, Data and Transmission security for the Server version.
OBIEE
A well-established name in the BI industry will be the Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition from Oracle®. The platform is robust with many components including BI Server, BI Publisher and Hyperion interactive reporting. OBIEE also lets you connect to multiple sources of data, primarily structured. OBIEE can also work with semi-structured and unstructured data with some complexity added at the Business Model layer (a.k.a logical layer). Few universities has access to Oracle Software Delivery Cloud which may offer a license for free making the software accessible to students. Unlike Tableau®, which can run on an average desktop machine, OBIEE might need higher configuration to run without glitches.
Oracle delivers multiple elements along with OBIEE (suite) making the interactive reports part of the package. Along with visually appealing reports generated by OBIEE working on BMM and Presentation layers, Hyperion SQR reporting component works directly on the ERP databases to create text and small graphic reports. However, OBIEE might need a BI reporting analyst or a programmer analyst to create the logical layer and making data ready for presentation in presentation layer.
MicroStrategy
As per the company’s website and few users, MicroStrategy Business Intelligence’s goal is to leverage data to help organizations find timely. The software supports connectivity to wide range of data sources which are mainly relational databases and flat files. It provides less support for the semi-structured and unstructured data, if not 'No support'. I did not learn about a student license for MicroStrategy software apart from the standard license for enterprises, which makes MicroStrategy less accessible to researchers and students.
The software’s ability to connect to multiple transactional databases including ERP and SCM systems makes it convenient for the user to generate dynamic reports with latest of the data represented. It’s also possible to generate interactive reports, what the company calls MicroStrategy Web reports. A distinguishing feature of MicroStrategy will be it’s pad and mobile apps that makes enterprise level reporting software available on-the-go. With the latest release of MicroStrategy9s, the company takes the security of data to the next level.
Pentaho
As the website boasts of it’s capability to blend any data, Pentaho® offers connectivity to many data sources including big data tools. It’s visual tools to do any task eliminates the necessity for coding and complexity. The software’s capability to generate reports from basic reporting to predictive analytics makes this one of the best BI reporting tools in market at present. As the company does not offer any free licenses to researchers and students, the tool is accessible across the communities. Like many other BI tools, it’s capacity to generate interactive reports makes it easy to use by less technically-knowledgeable managers.
As the company offers the product at a competitive price, and the product’s capability to work with big data sets make it valuable and profitable for the user. Though company provides the security as a separate product Pentaho Security for the server, it does not come with the default product.
Tibco Spotfire
Spotfire is one of the self-discovery BI tools in the market that helps users consume data, even big data, conveniently. Spotfire’s ability
to connect to structured data and unstructured data alike makes it a one of the BI tools choices for working with big data. Similar to Tableau®, Spotfire comes in Desktop, Cloud and Platform versions. According to onthehub.com, Tibco® provides a free license for students making the software accessible by researchers and students along with corporate companies that use an enterprise license. Spotfire also provides the flexibility of generating sub-reports/interactive reports on your fingertips.
With competitive price and feature-rich software, Spotfire also provides significant returns for the investment. Spotfire’s ability to provide security at row level even takes care of security for your data.
Finally, let me try to quantify the importance of features and how well the above mentioned softwares will fulfill each of the features.
Here is a pictorial representation of weightage for the features included in this report.
With the weights for each feature considered, the total score for each tool will be:
Considering the features we discussed, it seems that Tableau® has more to offer for its users. However, this may not be the right solution for your industry and organizational needs. It is advised to research on more tools before choosing the right BI software for your organization.
References:
http://www.tableausoftware.com
http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/business-analytics/business-intelligence/enterprise-edition/overview/index.html
http://www.microstrategy.com/us/
http://www.pentaho.com
http://spotfire.tibco.com
http://www.docurated.com/all-things-productivity/50-best-business-intelligence-tools
http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1QLGACN&ct=140210&st=sb
http://onthehub.com/download/free-software/tibco
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