BI review: Tableau, QlikView, MicroStrategy and Oracle OBIEE

Among the most important buying criteria for BI tools are scalability and performance, usability and UI, ease of development, and mobile/cloud based customization. An effective BI solution should be able to access any data source and provide capabilities for internal and external users from the same platform, as well as provide better integration with other systems (e.g. CRM, ERP).

Four of the top BI tools in the market are Tableau, QlikView, MicroStrategy and Oracle OBIEE, according to online reviews by enterprise users in the IT Central Station community.

But what do users really think about these tools? Here, they give a shout out for some of their favorite features, but also give the vendors a little tough love.

Tableau

Valuable features:

When we need to work a large volume of data, they are developed in Tableau because access to data from Oracle and managing large data volumes is easier than Excel. All the reports that we develop using Tableau are complemented by our directors, as the information is visualized well. — Luiz F., Planning Specialist at a comms service company

Without a doubt the best aspect of Tableau is the data flexibility. — Meghan B., Financial Analyst at a healthcare company

For me, the ability to connect multiple data sources, and display said data in an automated, graphical, format is the key driving factor insuring I continue using Tableau. While there are plenty of other tools on the market, such as Report Builder or Crystal Reports, Tableau is the first I have used that allows for such wide spread data integration and presentation in a visibly pleasing format. — Jered M., Business Intelligence Analyst at a university

Room for improvement:

Expansion of number of visualisations, as well as potential for straight to dashboard function, rather than design individual visualisation – these are, however, genuinely not priority to amend. — BIExpert221, BI Expert at a financial services firm

Where I’m working, we have many reports developed in Microsoft Excel to present results about the business. However, when we need to work a large volume of data, they are developed in Tableau because access to data from Oracle and managing large data volumes is easier than Excel. — Luiz F., Planning specialist at a comms service

Needs a metadata solution plus some enhanced ETL functionality. v9 has some light metadata solutions that are helpful from Excel. — Jonathan F., User at an energy/utilities company

Read more Tableau reviews on IT Central Station.

QlikView

Valuable features:

As a BI professional sometimes you have to tackle projects with poor or no documentation at all, just the data sources and some vague requirements. In QlikView it is quite easy build up a first data model (dimensional or not) and use the first stage to understand the entities and relations between it and the business. — Pablo P., BI Expert and a tech services company

The associative and in-memory technology are the most valuable features. — Marco H., Analytics Application Consultant Manager at a software R&D company

Amazing performance, easy-to-use self-service, and extremely powerful for data analysis. — GP N., Lead Technical at a comms service provider

Room for mprovement:

No auto-scale for different display resolutions/dimensions, but the trade-off here is the much greater design flexibility than one gets with a Grid based product. — Jhornber, BI Expert at a leisure / travel company

They need to improve on the idea, concept and support. — Marco H., Analytics Application Consultant Manager at a software R&D company

Actually, Qlik, has decided to move forward with a brand new product, Qlik Sense, so it seems that QlikView can be deprecated as it follows an older approach that pre-dates data visual. — Kleyn G., IT Analyst at government

Read more QlikView reviews on IT Central Station.

MicroStrategy

Valuable features:

Synchronized drilling, custom display forms for selectors, export a single report in a dashboard. — Pijush C., UI Architect and Senior Operations Manager at a tech services company

Valuable features include advanced SQL Engine, Reusable Metadata, Data Exploration/Viz, Production Grade Report/Dashboard Automation, Mobile, Integration with rich SDK/API, and In Memory BI high performance. — Scott M., Director of BI / Solution Architect at a tech vendor

The best thing I saw was the excellent mobile integration. The interface is very clean and beautiful. The configuration of devices is extremely fast, you just need to click the link that is sent to you with all the configuration. — Leonardo G., Business Intelligence Analyst at a tech services company

Room for improvement:

Data dictionary import would be great. — Sylviane P., Project Manager at a manufacturing company

It needs better EM logging. EM is MicroStrategy enterprise manager which logs usage and stats. It has becomes very difficult over last couple of years to use this feature to have a BI environment rolled out to users. — Anurag C., Consultant at a media company

The developer tool-kit is bit like that of late 90’s and the developer friendliness needs to be improved a bit. — Chirag K., Project Associate at a tech vendor

Read more MicroStategy reviews on IT Central Station.

Oracle OBIEE

Valuable features:

Dashboards, Alerts, BI Publisher. Together these 3 features make this product a great tool to present data. Users can also create ad hoc analyses easily. Integrates very well with a wide variety of data sources making it easy to present data from multiple sources in a single place. — Krishna M., Hyperion Applications Manager at a retailer

Dashboard capability along with tightly integrated enterprise level security are really the most used features for me in OBIEE. It’s also capable of delivering Scorecarding, Geo Mapping & multi source capabilities. — Paresh B., BI Expert at a tech vendor

It provides our customers the ability to build simple or complex reports effortlessly. The existence of the Business Model and Mapping (BMM) layer is critical in providing numerous ways to model our data to fit a given project/set of requirements. — Roosevelt C., Business Intelligence Developer at a tech vendor

Room for improvement:

OBIEE requires a lot of metadata customization that can only be achieved by individuals with very specific skill sets. As the BI space continues to evolve, many business analysts are focusing more on complementary solutions that, although they may not be as enterprise-worthy in scope, are extremely flexible, easy to customize, and can get the analyst the needed insight without having to overcome some of the development hurdles in OBIEE. — Josh K., Director of Statistics and Analysis at a tech company

Some of the legacy BI publisher features have been discarded in the newer versions. Having them would help the product. The ability to provide column description upon hovering on the header would be of real help. — Chandu V., Oracle BI Consultant at a government

Self service BI. It’s clear that Endeca tends to be integrated into BIFS and probably self-service functionality will be covered by Endeca. — György K., Architect at a tech vendor

Read more Oracle OBIEE reviews on IT Central Station.

These reviews of select BI tools come from the IT Central Station community. They are the opinions of the users and are based on their own experiences.