Business Intelligence & Analysis Products Scan & Evaluation

MIS 587

Blog 1

Due: 2/03/2015

Rui He

Business Intelligence & Analysis Products

Scan & Evaluation

The figure below is called “Magic Quadrant”, a scatter plot developed by Gartner to show how the major players in the current Business Intelligence and Analysis market perform.

Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms

In this figure, Gartner analysts set two rules, which are ability to execute and completeness of vision, as their judge criteria.  From the figure, we can easily capture a rough idea about how those major players perform according to the two criteria.

Today, I will choose five BI analysis products (not top 5 products) from the figure to compare their overall performance from 5 criteria.

The five products I will examine today will be

Tableau,

QilkView,

MicroStrategy,

Information Builders,

and Jaspersoft.

The five criteria used for judgment will be

Functionality,

Ease to use,

Performance,

Productivity,

and Cost.

Below is the table that displays my evaluation of the five chosen products according to my criteria.

	Weight	Tableau		QilkView	MicroStrategy		Information Builders		Jaspersoft
Functionality	25%	8	9		9	9		8
Ease to Use	15%	8	10		8	8		8
Performance	30%	9	8		7	8		8
Productivity	20%	8	8		7	9		7
Cost	10%	7	8		7	9		9
Points	100%	8.20	8.30		7.40	8.30		7.90
Rank		3	1		5	1		4

What does each criterion mean here?

1.      Functionality

Functionality means capability and extensibility. Capability refers to the range of BI functions that the BI product can support. The more functions that the product has, the higher score it will get for this criterion. Extensibility mainly stands for integration ability in this scenario. For example, the easier that the product can be integrated into web portal, the higher score that the product will achieve. Or the more applications like R, Java, and etc. that the product can be embedded into, the higher score that the product will achieve.

2.      Ease to Use

It includes three aspects. Difficulty level of installation of the product, intuitive level of the GUI/user interface design of the product, and the convenience level of the future and upgrade/maintenance. The easier to install, the more intuitive to explore and use the product, and the easier to maintain and upgrade the BI product, the higher score that the product will get for this criterion.

3.      Performance

It includes aspects. First, the level of business functions that it can support. This is a different requirement than the functionality. Functionality puts more focus on the BI analysis technology perspective like ETL and OLAP, which are standard features. On the other hand, performance concentrates on some plus features or special points, such as ad-hoc slice and dice and some other embedded insights between its product families. Second, stability is also one of the important features in performance. The more stable that the product is, the higher score it will obtain.

4.      Productivity

This criterion focuses on the soft technologies that enable users can effectively improve their productivity. Business dashboards and data visualizations are very good examples that reveal the meaning of productivity.

5.      Cost

Cost is also a very critical factor to evaluate when consider which BI tool to choose, regardless the size of organizations or companies.

Detailed Evaluations and Explanations

Tableau

 Tableau is often the first supplier that comes to mind when businesses consider data visualization tools. While the product is easy to use, and produces very attractive visuals, it is not particularly sophisticated and may prove inadequate as needs mature. It is still a classic choice between ease-of-use and sophistication. However, Tableau must lose its market share when more competitors entering into the market in the future.

QilkView

The QlikView BI platform has the ability to be all things to all people, and will satisfy business users, developers and enterprise needs. It sets the right balance between ease-of-use and sophistication. Great extensibility and the ability to create new chart types and BI apps make QlikView win the game.

MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is in many ways a meeting of the old and new in business intelligence, and takes the positives from both. It is truly an enterprise solution meeting the less glamorous demands for regular reporting, complex dashboards and extensive admin, while offering up the sexier self-service BI users now expect from a BI solution. It is expensive, and for organizations with less demanding requirements other options will be more economical.

Information Builders      

Information Builders is a long established supplier of BI, analytics and integration technologies.

The integration of BI and data mining is quite unique and puts IB ahead of the crowd. The maturity, sophistication and value for money, is very hard to beat.

Jaspersoft

Jaspersoft does not particularly distinguish itself in any way, but neither does it have any striking inadequacies. This BI suite will address the BI needs of many organizations without a great deal of fuss, and can be extended to meet bespoke requirements.

Conclusion

Overall, I will recommend either Qilkview or Information Builders for your BI Analysis Tools.