Popular BI/Analytics Tools
The software industry today has a
lot of Business Intelligence & Analytics tools available in the market. The
number has shifted to hundreds as compared to the late '90's where there were
just a bunch of them. The product differentiation and features have added on to
the growing popularity of this technology. This has not only helped the big
industries in effective decision making but also the small ones. Almost all
established industry units with even slightest capabilities in IT aim at
utilization of benefits that these tools have to offer.
Whereas a general discussion on the
best tools available would attract the factor of popularity, there are
certainly many other factors that are certainly important to analyze from the
perspective of right choice of the BI suite. One of the prominent ones being
that of investment required. Whereas, a fortune 500 company would not have
issues with expensive software suites, small and medium sized companies would
want capabilities that would just suffice their business needs and not be heavy
on the pocket at the same time. Another view that would support this is the
technologies that a product would support. All the industries would of course
not look at the products from big data analytics view for at least a decade
from now.
Based on above cited factors and
other prominent ones, the following comparison matrix highlights the rank of
the popular BI tools available in market today based on certain important
criterion and their importance to industry units globally.
|
Criteria
|
Weight
|
TIBCO
|
TABLEAU
|
QLIK
|
SAP BW
|
MS Power
|
|
Big Data
Analytics
|
30%
|
9
|
8
|
7
|
5
|
6
|
|
Investment
|
30%
|
5
|
4
|
2
|
5
|
7
|
|
Collaboration
|
20%
|
8
|
9
|
7.5
|
6
|
7.9
|
|
Mobile BI
|
10%
|
7
|
9.5
|
8
|
6.8
|
7.5
|
|
Visual
Standards
|
10%
|
5.5
|
9.5
|
8
|
7
|
8
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Points
|
100%
|
7.05
|
7.3
|
5.8
|
5.58
|
7.03
|
|
Rank
|
|
2
|
1
|
4
|
5
|
3
|
The popular BI suites are ranked according to the weighted mean of the scores assigned to them on various criterion listed on the left. The descriptive explanation for each one of them is as follows:
1.
Big Data Analytics
The
advent of Big Data and its analysis over the years has made its use quite
ubiquitous. Today, the use of Big Data is not limited to large size industries.
Even the small and medium industries are attracted towards the benefits offered
by bigger, diverse data structures that have a fortune of useful information
embedded in them. For this, the BI tool in use should have in built features
that could handle terabytes of data, process them and put them into useful,
easy-to-understand visualizations. For this important fact, it’s been assigned
a weight of 30 %. TIBCO ranks the best amongst the tools analyzed due to its
state-of-the-art abilities to handle big data. The prominent features of this
product include:
Visualizing
Data: quick to analyze and view caliber that offers interesting insights
Big
Data Connectors: availability of in-memory, in-data source, and on-demand data
access methods
Distributed
Computing: In addition to query processing, statistical and machine learning
algorithms can also be run easily
2.
Investment Per User
This
criterion reflects the cost of purchasing a single-user license towards the
concerned BI tool. It also reflects the Return-On-Investment (ROI) that the product
suite has to offer based on user consensus and public forums. This feature is
again a prominent one as it’s one of the major deciding factors for firms on
the lookout for a BI suite. The extent of this factor magnifies when its cost
is calculated organization wide wherein licenses need to be procured for
hundreds or thousands of employees.
On
this factor, QLIK is the most expensive whereas MS Power BI is the cheapest.
(Low scores indicate that the tool is expensive as compared to ones with a
higher score).
However,
the exact cost could not be calculated or known without direct contact with the
officials. Other products, such as TABLEAU, SAP and TIBCO rank moderately in
this criterion.
3.
Collaboration Ability
Just
like other technologies and their sharing abilities, today’s business user
demands sharing ability on BI Platform as well. This feature comes into
large-scale use especially in large organizations where there are large number
of people involved in the decision making process. The collaborating and
version feature on BI platforms ranks quite high in terms of criterion to
choose a product.
On
this criterion the product from TABLEAU ranks the highest. This suite includes
sharing ability as well as the power to get the analyzed data and visualizations
online. These may then be made public to be viewed by all or hidden from
general public viewing.
Moreover,
the collaborating feature by posting comments to be viewed by another user from
the organization is access permission based thus ensuring security. SAP ranks
the lowest on this one.
4.
Mobile BI
Mobile BI can be elaborated as the ability of mobile
workforce to peep into business insights through use of BI and analytics on
applications over mobile devices. This is not only an inherent advantage but
also a kind of necessity these days. With the advancement of technology and
more reliance on the use of mobile devices and applications, it’s almost
inevitable that everyone around demands this functionality in the near future.
Tableau ranks at the top on this criterion. It has all the
abilities that one could think of with respect to mobile technology. The
drag-and-drop feature for almost every feature analysis makes this product in
sync with the mobile requirements. Other products in comparison do have some
capability but are definitely not at par with the offerings from Tableau.
5.
Visual Standards
This
feature is a self- explanatory one that refers to the presentation standards of
the BI product. Though one would think that this might be the decorative or
finishing front after the in-depth analysis, yet the appeal to human mind comes
only when they see what it is all about. The senior management in almost all
the organizations today don’t want to exercise their brains and put in time
understanding the charts and graphs provided to them. What is expected is that
they should be able to make out and distinguish the trends and patterns just by
a glimpse at it. Though this demands a great designing skill set on the analyst
part. Here again, Tableau ranks the highest from our list of products being compared here. It has got nearly all the kinds of charts, graphs, maps etc.
that can be manipulated by just a small strike-through by a mouse. Other
products like Qlik also have competitive visuals and can be thought of as
emerging leaders on this front.
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