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MicroStrategy

by MicroStrategy | Founded 1989, Tysons Corner, VA

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MicroStrategy

by MicroStrategy | Founded 1989, Tysons Corner, VA

What is MicroStrategy?

Industry Specialties: Serves all industries

MicroStrategy is a data analytics platform that delivers actionable intelligence to organizations of all sizes. It allows users to customize data visualizations and build personalized real-time dashboards. It leverages data connectivity, machine learning and mobile access to offer users comprehensive control over their insights. Due to its ease of use and scalability, it stands out as a leader in the enterprise analytics field.

Users can choose between cloud, on-premise or hybrid deployment according to their needs.

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MicroStrategy Pricing

Based on our most recent analysis, MicroStrategy pricing and cost details are described here:

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Price: $
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Starting From: Still gathering data
Pricing Model: Still gathering data
Free Trial: Still gathering data

MicroStrategy Benefits and Insights

Why use MicroStrategy?

Key differentiators & advantages of MicroStrategy

Maximize Business Insights: Get a clearer picture of your data, revealing efficiencies — and deficiencies. Connect to and blend data from all your sources, leveraging machine learning capabilities, so that you can make key decisions with confidence.
Speed and Performance: Accelerate response times on data queries and increase productivity. Improve performance at a database level, as the platform optimizes resource usage and limits demanding tasks.
User-Friendly: Easily peruse and navigate through insights via a streamlined and familiar interface accessible to users of all skill levels.
Seamless Integration: Integrate into a data ecosystem that has been developed organically, so that every piece works with others seamlessly from end-to-end with a unified architecture that also integrates with leading technology systems and open-source tools.
Improve Communication: Collaborate on insights, discuss data points and generate and share with others. Increase user adoption and encourage a more intelligent enterprise.
Enterprise Mobility: Do more than just access reports on-the-go — build information-rich mobile apps and put BI in the hands of a mobilized workforce.
Scalability: Handle massive datasets without limitations and rapidly scale deployment, whether supporting a small team of users or an enterprise with thousands of employees.
Quick Deployment: Select the deployment solution that best matches your needs: commercial or private cloud, on-premises or hybrid deployment. With pre-configured provisioning consoles for Azure and AWS, launch the platform in minutes with minimal effort.
Free Trial: Sign up for MicroStrategy’s free 30-day full platform trial.

Industry Expertise

MicroStrategy serves clients in a wide variety of industries, including finance, healthcare, government, media, manufacturing, insurance, retail, telecommunications, technology, retail and higher education.

MicroStrategy Reviews

Average customer reviews & user sentiment summary for MicroStrategy:

929 reviews

82%

of users would recommend this product

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Based on an aggregate of MicroStrategy reviews taken from the sources above, the following pros & cons have been curated by a SelectHub Market Analyst.

Pros

Data Visualizations and Dashboards: About 82% of users who mentioned this feature expressed satisfaction with the solution’s ability to visualize data and build dashboards.
Ease of Use: More than 87% of users who commented on the platform’s ease of use found it user-friendly and accessible.
Reporting: All users who mentioned this feature in their reviews expressed satisfaction with the solution’s ability to build, automate, format and distribute reports.
Mobile Access: All of the users who mentioned this feature said that the platform has strong responsive design and features that make it easy to access data on-the-go.

Cons

Speed: About 64% of users who mentioned the platform’s performance and speed said that it can be slow, requiring a lot of hardware memory to function properly.
Cost: All of the users who mentioned the solution’s price tag said that it can be expensive.
Implementation: Over 91% of users who mentioned initial set-up and implementation said that it’s time-consuming, costly and difficult, especially for Linux operating systems.
Resources and Learning: Approximately 81% of users who spoke on the platform’s learning curve said that it’s relatively steep, with available online resources not being comprehensive.

Researcher's Summary:

MicroStrategy is a strong contender in the enterprise BI market that its customers praise for a multitude of reasons: its robust drag-and-drop reporting tool, strong data visualizations and dashboards and accessibility through web and mobile apps. Overall, more than 87.5% of users said that the platform is easy to use, with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that eliminates the need for coding in SQL. However, the solution is not without its drawbacks, most notably a time-consuming implementation process. It also struggles with performance issues, with its reliance on powerful hardware often leading to slow-downs. All of the users for whom the price was an issue said that the solution is expensive, though some of these users said that it offered great value and that prospective buyers shouldn’t shy away from costs. Finally, when it comes to learning how to use the tool, around 80% of users found its learning curve quite steep, and available resources lacking. Some users note that the free online classes were nice, but offered more refresher information than useful, new information, and that the available education and documentation isn’t comprehensive or up-to-date. While the front-end is user-friendly, many users note that the back-end developer mode has an even steeper learning curve and is quite difficult to navigate.

In summary, MicroStrategy is a BI solution certainly worth consideration, especially for companies looking for a web-based tool with strong reporting capabilities and a user-friendly interface.

Key Features

Data Connectivity: Connect to over a hundred databases, including enterprise directories, data warehouses, cloud databases, physical access systems, information assets and more through out-of-the-box gateways and drivers. Pull data from web-based reports and queries from other BI systems as well as ERP, CRM or web applications. Extend access to even more third-party sources with a software development kit that can allow users to build custom data connectors that integrate with R advanced analytics, Python, JavaScript, D3, GIS providers and more.
Data Preparation: Wrangle and parse data in a process that automatically recommends, profiles and transforms data without needing to export it to a spreadsheet. Save data transformations for repeatable data preparation workflows.
Federated Analytics: Leverage existing investments in trusted data sources like Tableau, Qlik and Power BI, blend information from multiple systems and build reports and insights without giving up any self-service BI solutions. Supercharge Excel sheets to analyze spreadsheets from within the interface.
Enterprise Semantic Graph: Establish an index of all data assets that integrates and embeds everywhere, enriching data silos with location intelligence and real-time telemetry, enabling greater organization-wide data visibility and integrity.
Data Visualization: Deploy data visualizations through branded, interactive user experiences, with customizable, user-friendly dossiers and dashboards, data discovery and personalized reports. Quickly build meaningful dashboards through prebuilt grids, graphs, charts and map templates combined with advanced user controls and third-party integrations.
Big Data: Leverage existing big data investments through MicroStrategy’s open cloud architecture, including sources like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as SQL, MDX, NoSQL and Hadoop technologies. Operationalize data lakes with the power of analytics, resulting in greater flexibility and greater visibility into your organization’s insights as a whole.
HyperIntelligence: Let relevant and contextual insights find you right where you look — you don’t have to go looking for them. Find smarter answers to your questions in a flash, via zero-click extensions that integrate with websites, applications, Excel, email inboxes, Slack and more.
Machine Learning: Drive intelligent, automated data discovery with advanced and predictive analytics powered by machine learning. Maximize the value of your data with AI-driven recommendations, voice-enabled assistant integration, natural language processing and more.
Collaboration: Ask questions, ping colleagues with notifications in discussion threads, highlight patterns or call attention to specific data points by commenting directly within the UI. Share direct links via email, chat or directly invite others to a personalized view of a dossier.
Personalization: Apply slice-and-dice filters to a dossier to find answers, then share that personalized view with others. Schedule and automate delivery of personalized reports across their enterprise through user preferences and security roles, ensuring that users see only the data relevant to them.
Real-Time Alerts: Receive in-app, browser and mobile notifications that keep you up-to-date on KPIs, with native push notification functionality on the mobile app.
Embedded Analytics: Extend the reach of their analytics with embedded analytical functionality in browsers and applications. Integrate into custom offerings with branding and white label tools. Enhance MicroStrategy with third-party capabilities.
Digital Credentials: Ditch security vulnerabilities through plastic ID cards, passwords and tokens — digitize and modernize enterprise authentication with mobile role-based identity badges tied to users’ smartphones.
Web and Mobile Apps: Access data from anywhere with an internet connection through cross-compatible mobile, web and desktop apps. Build, test and deploy your own apps that accelerate workflows.

Limitations

Some of the product limitations include:

Does not apply machine learning techniques
Does not support portal integration
Is not able to point out issues in data
Costly training modules
High licensing fee in case of on-premise solution

Suite Support

MicroStrategy offers four different levels of support: Standard, Extended, Premier and Elite, with Elite subscribers receiving all the benefits of the lower-tier packages in addition to weekly case management and dedicated support engineers. All account levels receive access to platform updates and patches, as well as phone, email, portal and liaison support, though this support may not be 24/7. Support hours are from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday EST, except holidays.

Premier and Elite subscribers receive accelerated resolution time through Enterprise Support benefits, which allow them to optimize their platform implementation and usage with the assistance of a dedicated consultant. Premier users have access to up to 200 hours of support and Elite users up to 400 hours of support, with additional hours available on at a fixed hourly rate.

Email: Email support@microstrategy.com. Access is on-demand for Standard support customers and 24/7 for Extended support tiers and above.

Phone: Call 703-848-8700 for support in North America. Similar to email support, Standard customers can receive on-demand phone support, while subscribers to Extended tiers and above can receive 24/7 phone support.

Training: There are a number of training options for individuals and teams, including instructor-led classroom or online training, interactive eLearning modules and video recordings. MicroStrategy offers 12-month subscriptions for unlimited access to online courses and certifications through a role-based Analyst or Architect Education Pass. These online courses and certifications can also be purchased individually through the MicroStrategy Education Center. MicroStrategy experts can also deliver private training that can be customized or built from scratch for an organization’s specific needs.

Tickets: Submit tickets by logging into the support portal.

Top Competitors

Here are the other software most often considered with MicroStrategy in actual selection project*

*Data derived from SelectHub's Jumpstart & Decision Platforms

Cost of Ownership

License/Subscription Cost	On-Premise: It includes an upfront fee of the server software installation. Cloud-based: User-based pricing for web-based and mobile-based platform
Maintenance Cost	On-Premise: An additional cost over and above the upfront cost has to be paid for ongoing support and maintenance Cloud-based/SaaS: Upgrades and add-ons are managed directly in the cloud at no extra cost
Installation/Implementation Cost	On-Premise: Included in the upfront license cost Cloud-based: Included in the subscription cost
Customization Cost	Dependent on functional requirements and specific needs of the organization. Quotation is dependent on level of customization required
Data Migration Cost/Change Management/Upfront Switching Cost	Dependent on your current software, amount of data to be migrated, availability of migration tools, complexity of data and gaps between the existing system and the new system.
Training Cost	Online training and video tutorials are available free of cost. Enterprise can choose from in-center training, live online lectures, on-demand learning, and private on-site engagements to meet their training requirements. Each day of training costs $700 and most courses are two days in length.
Recurring/Renewal Costs	On-Premise: Includes cost for updates, maintenance, upgrades, and patches Cloud-based/SaaS: Renewal cost is equivalent to the fees paid monthly or annually

Pricing Details

Category	Description	Price/Details
Subscription Cost	What is the cost of the software?
Deployment Options	What options are available for product deployment?	On-premise (architecture-based) Cloud-based/SaaS
Pricing Model	What is the pricing model?	Licensing model Subscription-based Architecture-based
Minimum commitment	Is there a minimum monthly or yearly commitment required for purchase?	Minimum yearly commitment is required for purchase
Custom Quote	Is there an option for requesting a custom quote?	Available
Free Trial	Does the solution provide a free product trial option?	Available