Business Intelligence Products Analysis

Hi All,

This blog describes various Business Intelligence & Analysis products present in the market and their features. The blog also provides a weighted analysis and compares various products. I hope you all find this blog interesting and provides more insight to you on the various BI products.

Below are some criteria that I think companies should consider when choosing BI tools. However the criteria can change based on the companies requirements.

1. Data Compatibility - Business Intelligence tools are used mostly for visualizations and understanding the data quality and quantity to take the appropriate actions. In-order to gain perspective on the data and visualize it the BI tool should be able to consume the data in the format stored inside the organization. The BI tool should be able to support multiple data formats and must be easy to integrate to the existing tools.

2. Performance and Scalability - When using the BI tool you will be accessing data using queries and a large number of queries will be running simultaneously. The BI tool should be able to handle the load and provide the results without a large delay in the reporting. Further, in future the amount of data being processed will increase gradually. BI tool must be scalable to handle that amount of data. If handling large data and the tool's inefficiency to process the data can cause issues and frustration in future. 

3. Modeling and Analytics - The BI tool must have the right power and must also be easy to use to obtain analysis the business people need. The tool must perform analysis and also prepare the data so that the user can perform adhoc analysis. The tool should also support accessing Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) cubes and enable Pivot-style analysis.

4. Usability - This is one of the important criteria that companies should consider. Most of the BI vendors will provide other capabilities but the tool must be easy to use. Having n number of features but not providing a guide on how to use the tool and improper UI can lead to frustration for users. The tool should have an interactive and flexible dashboard with the capability to add reports with informative visualizations.

5. Cost Effectiveness - All the BI tools must be cost effective for an organization. The cost analysis must be performed on the needs of the organization, the gains earned from the BI tool with respect to the spending done. Must of BI tools provide similar set of features, hence cost will one of the important decision factor. Organization must consider following cost factors 

• License Cost
• Maintenance Cost
• Open source tool or not 

Below is the table that mentions all the important criteria's considered and weight assigned to each criteria. Based on these criteria we have ranked each tool.

	Weight	Tableau	QlikView	Tibco	Pentaho	SAS
Data Compatibility	25%	10	9	7	8	8
Performance & Scalability	20%	8	7	7	7	7
Modeling & Analytics	30%	8	7	9	8	8
Usability	15%	10	8	7	6	7
Cost Effectiveness	10%	8	7	6	8	9
Points		8.8	7.7	7.4	7.5	7.8
Rank		1	3	5	4	2

Based on the analysis and weighted score I have ranked Tableau as the number one and ranked Tibco as last best Business Intelligence tool. Tableau, most promising features are the data compatibility and integration with a variety of data files and databases, and the easy to use and interactive dashboard & visualizations. These capabilities make it easy for the business users to quickly grasp the insights and for IT personnel to integrate with existing systems.

Tableau is followed by SAS and other tools that have a small difference between the weighted score analysis. SAS sets itself apart from QlikView because of the costs effectiveness factor. This is important factor if two products have similar features and same capabilities. In case of a tie, organizations will go for the cost effective product and hence I have rated SAS above QlikView. Other than this criteria, SAD beats QlikView in the Modeling and Analytics capabilities provided by the tool.

The last to positions are taken by Tibco and Pentaho. Although Tibco beats Pentaho in the analytics capabilities but is not as cost effective with respect to Pentaho. Along with this Pentaho provides good data integration and compatibility capabilities. Though Tibco ranks last, it provides good usability and is easy to use as compared to Pentaho.

In conclusion, I would like to mention that Tableau ranks as the top BI tool. Also, Tableau has released its latest mobile application, providing users capability to work on mobile devices. Please find below market share of Tableau till Feb,2015.

References - 

www.google.com 

www.docurated.com

www.gartner.com

www.searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com