MicroStrategy 9 vs IBM Cognos 10

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MICROSTRATEGY 9.4.1 VS. IBM COGNOS 10.2

A comparison of key BI capabilities (2014)

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One or more of the following patents may apply to the product sold herein: U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,766, 6,173,310, 6,260,050, 6,263,051, 6,269,393, 6,279,033, 6,567,796, 6,587,547, 6,606,596, 6,658,093, 6,658,432, 6,662,195, 6,671,715, 6,691,100, 6,694,316, 6,697,808, 6,704,723, 6,741,980, 6,765,997, 6,768,788, 6,772,137, 6,788,768, 6,798,867, 6,801,910, 6,820,073, 6,829,334, 6,836,537, 6,850,603, 6,859,798, 6,873,693, 6,885,734, 6,940,953, 6,964,012, 6,977,992, 6,996,568, 6,996,569, 7,003,512, 7,010,518, 7,016,480, 7,020,251, 7,039,165, 7,082,422, 7,113,993, 7,127,403, 7,174,349, 7,181,417, 7,194,457, 7,197,461, 7,228,303, 7,260,577, 7,266,181, 7,272,212, 7,302,639, 7,324,942, 7,330,847, 7,340,040, 7,356,758, 7,356,840, 7,415,438, 7,428,302, 7,430,562, 7,440,898, 7,486,780, 7,509,671, 7,516,181, 7,559,048, 7,574,376, 7,617,201, 7,725,811, 7,801,967, 7,836,178, 7,861,161, 7,861,253, 7,881,443, 7,925,616, 7,945,584, 7,970,782, 8,005,870, 8,051,168, 8,051,369, 8,094,788, 8,130,918, 8,296,287, 8,321,411 and 8,452,755. Other patent applications are pending.

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MICROSTRATEGY VS. IBM COGNOS – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

KEY CONSIDERATIONS MICROSTRATEGY IBM

COGNOS

1. ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY

a. METADATA ARCHITECTURE – Single, reusable and object-oriented metadata vs. multiple metadata silos STRONG AVERAGE

b. MULTI-SOURCE - MicroStrategy’s ability to combine different data sources vs. IBM Cognos’ restrictive multisource STRONG AVERAGE

c. IN-MEMORY ARCHITECTURE – “In-memory ROLAP” architecture vs. “In-memory” or “ROLAP architecture” STRONG WEAK

d. SECURITY ARCHITECTURE - Centralized and easy to manage security vs. decentralized security STRONG WEAK

2. SELF-SERVICE (DATA DISCOVERY)

a. AGILE ANALYTICS – Business friendly self-service analytics and rapid dashboard development STRONG AVERAGE

b. SELF-SERVICE ARCHITECTURE – MicroStrategy’s fully integrated data discovery vs. IBM Cognos’ limited integration STRONG AVERAGE

3. ENTERPRISE-GRADE DASHBOARDS – Powerful design capabilities vs. limited dashboard experience STRONG AVERAGE

4. NATIVE MOBILE BI APPS – Native Mobile apps that users love vs. IBM Cognos’ limited mobile capabilities STRONG AVERAGE

5. PROACTIVE BUSINESS MONITORING AND ALERTING – Proactive monitoring vs. limited proactive monitoring STRONG AVERAGE

6. TRANSACTIONS AND WRITE-BACK – Actionable vs. non-actionable dashboards and mobile apps STRONG NO

SUPPORT

7. ADVANCED INTERACTIVITY – Interact with different levels of data through prompting, drilling, and searching STRONG AVERAGE

8. INTEGRATED MAPPING – Advanced geospatial analysis for the masses STRONG AVERAGE

9. PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY - Superior performance at scale vs. performance limitations at scale STRONG AVERAGE

10. ADMINISTRATION EFFICIENCY – Higher efficiency using administration tools vs. limited administration tools STRONG AVERAGE

11. DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY - BI on-premises or in the cloud STRONG AVERAGE

12. INDUSTRY ANALYSTS – Get unbiased perspective from one of the top industry analysts – BiScorecard STRONG AVERAGE

APPENDIX



ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY – METADATA ARCHITECTURE

MicroStrategy’s single unified architecture vs. IBM Cognos’ multiple interfaces architecture 1.a.

Other BI Tools MICROSTRATEGY

MicroStrategy IBM Cognos

1 Single Unified Architecture: MicroStrategy’s BI platform is organically developed from the ground up without any acquisitions. A single metadata, server, and code base enables centralized security and administration as well as tighter product integration.

Multiple User Interfaces: IBM Cognos has different interfaces for different tasks (Cognos Workspace for dashboards, Cognos Workspace Advanced for advanced data exploration and Report Studio for reports with corporate data). IBM Cognos has no single consistent metadata. IBM Cognos and TM1 cubes require their own unique set of metadata.

2 Highly Object-Oriented Development and Object Reusability: Reusability of metadata components ensure that the same analytic object is used over and over at many different places across many reports and dashboards, and also as building block to create other analytic objects. Any change made to the reusable metadata components automatically propagate to all dependent objects ensuring easy and automated change management. MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata contains the most reusable objects including but not limited to attributes, metrics, filters, prompts, consolidations, custom groups, reports and templates.

Redundant Changes Result in Maintenance Nightmare: Report developers cannot create report objects such as metrics and filters as stand-alone and reuse them across different reports/dashboards creating redundant work and too many objects that serve the same purpose to maintain.

MicroStrategy offers a much superior metadata architecture as compared to IBM Cognos



ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY – MULTISOURCE

MicroStrategy’s ability to combine different data sources vs. IBM Cognos’ restrictive multi-source


1 Self-service Data Blending Capability: MicroStrategy provides the option to either create a enterprise-wide logical data model or the ability for business users to easily combine data from different data sources on-the-fly. This provides high degree of data analysis flexibility.

Limited Data Blending Capabilities: Cognos Insight allows joining multiple data sources into a single cube and a single visualization. However unlike MicroStrategy it cannot join data between different cube data sources into the a single visualization.

1.b.

Create a unified enterprise-wide view from all your data assets




1 Superior Scalability and Performance Through In-memory ROLAP: MicroStrategy’s in-memory ROLAP architecture provides the best of both worlds by combining the speed of in-memory processing with the scalability of direct database access. In-memory cubes exist within the virtual data model that spans the BI application and give users fast response times while maintaining full access to the entire enterprise data warehouse. Developers have the flexibility of selectively accelerating response times of the most frequently accessed reports by creating in-memory cubes, while maintaining a single enterprise-wide view of information.

Dynamic Cubes Require Additional Schema Design: IBM Cognos Dynamic Cubes require a data warehouse structured in a star or snowflake schema in order to maximize the performance characteristics of the solution. In addition they are only supported on a limited list of databases as compared to MicroStrategy. Cognos Dynamic Cubes are modeled with a built-for-purpose modeling tool called IBM Cognos Cube Designer thus requiring additional schema work instead of directly leveraging the already-built schema model.

ARCHITECTURAL EFFICIENCY – IN-MEMORY ARCHITECTURE

MicroStrategy’s In-memory ROLAP architecture vs. IBM Cognos’ In-memory or ROLAP architecture

Database

Enterprise-wide

data model

Database

Cube Cube

Database

ROLAP

Architecture

Cube

Architecture

MicroStrategy In-Memory ROLAP

Architecture

Database

Multiple Subject-oriented

models directly accessing

database

Multiple subject-oriented

models held fully in-memory

OR

Cube Cube

MicroStrategy’s Superior In-memory ROLAP Architecture Vs. IBM Cognos’ Either/Or Architecture

1.c.



Enterprise-Class Security at Every Level of the BI Architecture

ARCHITECTURE EFFICIENCY – SECURITY ARCHITECTURE

Centralized and easy to manage security infrastructure vs. decentralized Security management


1 Centralized and Pervasive Security: MicroStrategy provides centralized security administration across the entire platform. Security can be managed for all reports and documents from a single location.

De-Centralized Security: IBM Cognos security is manually configured in many places, increasing the chances of human error.

2 Object-Level Access Privileges: Administrators can assign access control privileges (read, write, use, delete, execute, and browse) on individual metadata objects like attributes metrics, filters, custom groups, and others.

Limited Flexibility Setting User Privileges: IBM Cognos offers administrators very limited granularity for setting group and user privileges. IBM Cognos offers column level security through manual coding from Framework Manager(architect tool) for user groups only. The process is tedious and has to be repeated for each column. In addition, a separate group has to be created for each security setting even if the requirement is for a single user.

3 Reusable and fine-grained setup for platform-wide user authorization: MicroStrategy employs over 160 privileges to assign application functionality to user groups, user roles, and individual users.

No Reusable Security Setup: Security settings cannot be reused across the entire deployment and have to be defined redundantly for every user group.

1.d.



SELF-SERVICE (DATA DISCOVERY) – AGILE ANALYTICS

Business friendly self-service analytics and rapid dashboard development


1 Integrated Self-Service over the Web: MicroStrategy Visual Insight is Web-based, thus, requires no separate installation before use. It is a drag-and-drop interface that supports advanced visualizations like Google map, network visualization, waterfall, heat map, and micro charts, thus, helping users efficiently display trends and anomalies in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

Self-Service available as stand-alone desktop tool: IBM Cognos Insight is a Desktop client, which was released in May 2013 and currently only supports a single visualization at a time. The only way to have multiple visualizations is to create a story board.

2 Data Blending Capabilities: MicroStrategy allows the definition of a single visualization with attributes/metrics feeding from multiple datasets (reports/cubes) from within Enterprise Dashboards and Visual insight. In addition, it allows joining modeled and un-modeled datasets.

Limited Data Blending Capabilities: Cognos Insight allows joining multiple data sources into a single cube and a single visualization. However unlike MicroStrategy it cannot join data between different cubes into the a single visualization.

3 Built-in Best Practices for Visual Exploration: A number of visual exploration best practices embedded within the product. For example, visualization suggestion engine, auto geocoding, auto time hierarchy creation, multiple shelf's like color-by, and size-by for easy multidimensional analysis.

No Built-in Best Practices for Visual Exploration are Supported: Cognos Insight does not have built-in best practices for ad-hoc analysis of data and does not support a visualization suggestion mechanism.

4 Mobile Accessible Dashboards: Interactive visualizations created in Visual Insight can be viewed in any mobile device, thus, allowing the users to interact with data on the go.

No accessibility to visualizations on Mobile Devices: IBM Cognos Insight dashboards are not supported on Mobile.

Rapid data analysis and dashboard creation

Graphical Query Builder for easy data preparation

2.a.



SELF-SERVICE (DATA DISCOVERY) – SELF-SERVICE ARCHITECTURE

MicroStrategy’s Fully Integrated Data Discovery vs. IBM Cognos Insight’s Limited Integration


1 Fully Integrated Data Discovery Utilizes Platform ACL’s: MicroStrategy Visual Insight is fully integrated with the MicroStrategy platform and provides the option to utilize the existing schema layer. This ensures reusability of datasets and a single version of the truth for all users. As a result, MicroStrategy enables a managed self-service environment free of spread-marts and data siloes. MicroStrategy Visual Insight automatically utilizes users’ object-level access control privileges from the platform security setup.

Partially Integrated Data Discovery: IBM Cognos Insight is not integrated with IBM BI platform. While it supports publishing dashboards into the enterprise and connecting to Cognos report data and package data, it does not use Cognos’ platform schema, security, privileges, permissions etc. This is not even on the roadmap. Thus users are left with multiple versions of the truth and very slim visibility into where Cognos Insight is heading.

2.b.

Agility and single version for business

Manageability & Consistency for IT Enterprise-wide data model

IBM Cognos Insight IBM Cognos

Environment

Dashboard 1 Dashboard 3 Dashboard 4 Dashboard 2

Publish

One way



ENTERPRISE-GRADE DASHBOARDS

MicroStrategy’s powerful dashboard creation vs. IBM Cognos’ limited dashboard experience


1 Fully Integrated Dashboards with Powerful and Flexible Design Experience: Developers have exceptional flexibility to create highly interactive, pixel-perfect dashboards. A number of design capabilities such as WYSIWYG interface, multi-tab and multi-layered layouts, large number of selector controls for filtering flexibility and performing targeted filtering, information windows for contextual pop-ups, dashboard linking and screen designing for building workflows, fine-grained formatting capabilities, and wealth of interactive visualizations and widget controls provide a flexible and powerful design experience.

Multiple Dashboarding Tools with Limitations in Design Experience:. IBM Cognos has too many different tools to create a single full dashboard. IBM Cognos reporting consists of Query Studio, Analysis Studio, Report Studio, Workspace and Workspace advanced which creates a lot of confusion. Each tool has some capabilities and some limitations and not all of them allow you to create a report once and edit anywhere. In addition all these tools do not provide and self-service capabilities, users have to download a separate product (IBM Cognos Insight) for that.

2 Automatic Drill-Anywhere: Users can automatically drill through the full depth and breadth of the data warehouse and obtain detailed information.

No Automatic Drill Anywhere: Users can drill up and down within a pre-defined hierarchy. Users cannot drill outside a hierarchy or data source to explore the entire DWH, thus, limiting the drill experience.

3 Custom Dashboard Output: Powerful object prompting capability generate custom outputs depending on the selections made by the end users during run-time.

Limited Custom Dashboard Outputs: Object prompting is not supported. As a result, Cognos is limited in terms of generating custom dashboard output at run-time.

4 Actionable Dashboards: Users can not only consume information but also initiate appropriate actions (write-back) from within the dashboards.

Not Actionable from the platform : Users cannot initiate write-back actions from within the dashboards interface. Only Cognos Insight supports write-back to the underlying cube.

Gain superior insights from content rich enterprise dashboards

3



MicroStrategy Mobile Ranked #1


1 Mobile Ready Reports and Dashboards: MicroStrategy allows users to run reports and dashboards directly on their iPad, iPhone, or Android devices. Because reports and dashboards in the BI application do not have to be re-authored for the mobile device, minimal additional IT investment is required for mobile deployment.

Limited Dashboard Features on the Mobile Device: Only Reports created in Report Studio and Cognos Workspace can be viewed on Mobile. In addition, these reports have to be specifically formatted for Mobile devices creating multiple silos of information. Furthermore, only active reports (reports created in Report Studio) are supported offline from IPADs only. Cognos Mobile for Android does not supporte Offline reporting because the app is not a native app.

2 Deliver Multimedia Content Through Mobile App: Deliver multiple forms of information (PDF, Videos, ePub, Presentations, etc.) within the same App.

Limited Capabilities to Deliver Multimedia Content: Cognos does not provide a multimedia widget control like MicroStrategy. As a result, the capability to deliver multimedia content is limited.

3 Actionable Mobile Apps: Implement transactional capabilities into the information driven mobile apps.

Non-Actionable Mobile: Cognos does not provide transactional (write-back) capability from Mobile.

4 Create Workflow-Driven Apps: MicroStrategy Mobile provides high degree of design flexibility to build multiple screens and combining them into a single workflow-driven app or dashboard.

Limited Flexibility to Create Custom Workflows : Cognos mobile apps provide limited development flexibility to build intricate workflows of multiple screens and combining them into a seamless and intuitive dashboard

5 Deliver Rich Apps on Small Screen Devices: Ability to do screen design and workflows provide powerful capabilities to build apps for small screen devices.

Limitations on Small Screen Devices: Due to the smaller screen and lack of mouse-over capabilities, certain components and dashboard features are not supported on mobile devices.

NATIVE MOBILE BI APPS

MicroStrategy’s Native Mobile apps that users love vs. IBM Cognos’ limited Mobile capabilities 4



PROACTIVE BUSINESS MONITORING AND ALERTING

MicroStrategy’s proactive monitoring to improves business efficiency vs. IBM Cognos’ limited proactive monitoring

MicroStrategy Distribution Services acts as a proactive information radar for the enterprise MicroStrategy IBM Cognos

1 Mass Distribution of Personalized Content (Report Bursting): Ability to deliver personalized slices of information from a single report to a large number of users

Limited Report Bursting Capability: IBM Cognos has very limited dynamic distribution list capabilities across the product set. Therefore, Administrators have to define fixed distribution lists and cannot use conditions to dynamically conform the recipient list. Scheduling/Distribution of dashboards is extremely limited.

2 Personal Exception Thresholds: Business users can define personal exception thresholds, for example, send me the report when inventory level falls below “x” units. This capability allows users to set up information radar to proactively monitor their business processes.

Limited Exception Based Thresholds: IBM Cognos does not support proactive notifications based on threshold or exception condition.

5



Transaction Services is fully integrated into MicroStrategy’s organically grown platform

TRANSACTIONS AND WRITE-BACK

MicroStrategy’s Actionable dashboard and mobile apps vs. IBM Cognos’ non-actionable dashboards


1 Data Written Back to the Data Source: MicroStrategy Transaction Services can not only write back to the data warehouses, datamarts, and ERP/Operational Systems, but also to Web Services Applications (like Salesforce.com).

Limited write-back availability: Write-back functionality is not supported from Web and Mobile, only from Cognos Insight and TM1. Data can only be written back to the underlying cube and not to the data source out of the box.

2 Multiple Formats of Data Input Supported: Multiple control styles for data input are supported such as – text/numeric fields, calendar dates, time, binary values, drop-down lists, slider, steppers, switches, and camera.

Not Supported: Write back from TM1 to the source file is a complicated process and has to be coded via the TurboIntegrator tool (ETL engine).

3 Transactional Mobile Intelligence: MicroStrategy supports business process to be performed from a Mobile transaction app without using any traditional format.

Not Supported

6



ADVANCED INTERACTIVITY

Interact with different levels of data through Prompting, Drilling, and Searching


1 Dynamic Report Personalization: Object prompts enable users to dynamically select which report objects they want to see by authoring the report set at runtime. As a result, a single report can span hundreds of possible data combinations tailored to different user needs. MicroStrategy displays prompt values and report content that are permitted by the user's security profile. MicroStrategy prompts enable different users to personalize the same report and give them significant ad hoc capabilities.

Limited Dynamic Report Personalization: IBM Cognos offers limited options for parameterized reports. Object or column prompts such as selection of attributes, metrics, and filters on the fly are not supported. This limits end users in terms of generating custom dashboard output at run-time and causes an unnecessary number of reports to be created and maintained for end users.

2 Drill Anywhere: MicroStrategy users can drill anywhere in the entire data warehouse or across multiple data sources for boundary-free investigative analysis. Users can automatically drill within or across hierarchies without pre-defining drill paths. They can also modify report contents on-the-fly and further deepen the investigation by drilling outside of an Intelligent Cube to perform OLAP analysis.

Lack of Automatic Drill-Anywhere: Users can drill up and down within a pre-defined hierarchy. Users cannot automatically drill across reports. All drill paths across cubes and across reports have to be manually defined by IT or report developers. Users also cannot drill outside a data source to explore the entire data warehouse. The data source typically only holds a subset of data warehouse tables, further limiting the drilling capabilities.

3 Google-Like Search for Quick Data Access: MicroStrategy users can not only search for reports and dashboards but also any other metadata objects using auto-complete, suggested matches, and instant search results with multi-level Google-like search capabilities. Granular object-level search allows users to locate analytical objects easily, preventing redundant object creation and promoting object reuse.

Limited Search Functionality: Users cannot search for metadata objects other than reports and dashboards. Cognos also does not have auto-complete, Google-like search capabilities.

7

Powerful Personalization Automatic Drill Anywhere Multi-Level Search



INTEGRATED MAPPING

Advanced geospatial analysis for the masses 8


1 Free Esri Maps out-of-the box: MicroStrategy provides a free out-of-the-box connector to Esri ArcGIS online. As a result, advanced geospatial analysis, including place data points or shaded geographic areas on a map, as well as the ability to create clusters, density maps, and other spatial visualizations is accessible to all users. MicroStrategy also incorporates several Esri basemaps, including street views and satellite imagery.

No free offering for ESRI: Customers interested in ESRI maps have to purchase the add-on directly from ESRI whose maps can be directly integrated with Cognos. In addition, the ESRI add-on can only be defined in Report Studio, it is not supported from any other reporting tool.

2 Out-of-the-Box integration with Google Maps: MicroStrategy also provides out-of-the-box with Google Maps and Esri On-premise. MicroStrategy also integrates with a variety of additional Geographical Information System (GIS) partners to meet any specific needs which extend beyond out-of-the-box functionality.

Limited offering for Google maps integration: Google maps is not available out of the box in Cognos, it requires SDK customization using JavaScript API. Because of this google maps do not work on mobile properly because Cognos reports on Mobile do not support JavaScript.



PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY

High scalable BI platform with superior performance 9


Push-Down Architecture: MicroStrategy is widely recognized by industry analysts & customers as a highly scalable enterprise BI platform. MicroStrategy leverages the database to its fullest extent by pushing data joins and analytic calculations to the database whenever possible.

Mid-Tier Centric Processing: Data joins across multiple sources, and many calculations are performed at the mid-tier level resulting in unnecessary data movement and poor utilization of database processing power.

High Performance Multi-Pass SQL: Multi-pass SQL queries provide greater analytical power and minimize the amount of data that is pulled back to the mid-tier. MicroStrategy’s SQL engine is one of the most sophisticated in the industry and leverages multi-pass SQL in order to increase performance.

Limited Multi-Pass SQL Capabilities: IBM Cognos does not dynamically generate multi-pass SQL. Therefore, it has limitations answering complex questions in an efficient way by leveraging the database and analytical engine in the middle-tier. Multi-stage calculations such as percentage to total, and contribution metrics needs to be created at the report level.

Clustering and caching create superior performance: Asymmetric clustering, shared caching, and cluster-wide synchronization of in-memory cubes and metadata are all supported by MicroStrategy

Limited Clustering: IBM Cognos is limited in the extent to which resources can be optimally shared across a cluster. Asymmetric clustering is not supported.

Parallel SQL Execution: Multiple passes of SQL can be executed in parallel to improve query performance.

No Parallel SQL Execution: Multiple passes of SQL cannot be executed in parallel to improve performance.

17

Push-down Joining Uses the

DBMS Engine

Multi-pass SQL

Multi-dimensional

Business Model

Joins across databases happen at the client side

Minimum data movement across

the network

Heavy data movement across the network

Push-down architecture to fully leverage database processing power



ADMINISTRATION EFFICIENCY

Higher efficiency using administration and automation tools vs. limited administration tools


1 Workflow Automation: MicroStrategy System Manager merges different administrative tasks, such as creating users, starting or stopping server, and many others into a single workflow. It is also possible to combine non-MicroStrategy processes into the workflow.

No Workflow Automation: IBM Cognos does not provide any workflow automation tool.

2 Object Management and Migrations: MicroStrategy Object Manager facilitates metadata life cycle management. The presence of a single metadata repository increases change management accuracy and efficiency.

Object Management Available: Objects in IBM Cognos can only be migrated from the content store in packages. Users have to create the packages and upload them to the content store, then move them to the new project. This requires multiple steps for final deployment increasing the chances for errors. Cognos also does not automatically and comprehensively check for dependencies when changes in metadata objects occur given its inability to support metadata content across the entire product set.

3 Automated Integrity Checking: MicroStrategy Integrity Manager automates the report comparison process and verifies the consistency of reports by comparing both the SQL and the pixels of copies of reports and highlights any inconsistencies. This automated process eliminates the need of manual consistency checking, resulting in huge time savings while upgrading to a newer versions or during object migrations.

Limited Integrity and Regression Testing: Cognos does not provide any automation tool for data validation.

4 Automated Command Line Scripts: MicroStrategy Command Manager reduces repetitive and time consuming administrative tasks through automated command line scripts.

No Automated Command Line Scripts for Administrative Tasks: IBM Cognos does not provide a comprehensive command line administrative tool for high volume tasks across the product set, making administration across several departmental BI applications more time consuming.

10

IBM Cognos’ LIMITED ADMINISTRATION



DEPLOYMENT FLEXIBILITY

BI on-premises or in the cloud


1 Deploy Platform On-Premises or in the Cloud: The platform itself can be deployed both on-premise and in a traditional software model or through the Cloud environment. MicroStrategy Cloud offers a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering which includes a MicroStrategy BI service, plus the option of adding integrated data warehouse and data integration capabilities.

No Integrated PaaS Option: IBM Cognos only offers its enterprise BI cloud solution through partners. So whatever services are offered (support, payment model, data integration, etc.) depends a lot on what the partner is able to provide.

2 Access Data Instantly via MicroStrategy Analytics Express (SaaS): Business users can instantly connect to their data and explore it using powerful and intuitive data visualizations. No installation required as all capabilities are available through a zero-footprint Web based SaaS solution.

Supports a SaaS-based BI offering: IBM Cognos now offers BLU Cloud combining IBM DB2 with BLU Acceleration, in-memory technology, and Cognos BI. This offering is currently in beta since Januray 2014. However the cognos BI portion offers no data exploration and ad-hoc capabilities. Users have to follow complicated steps before their data is available in Cognos BI cloud portion.

3 Securely Explore Data using the Free MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop: MicroStrategy offers a free solution to explore your data securely using a desktop application. The free solution not only allow accessing Excel Files, and Flat files but also all major databases and even big data sources.

Restrictive Free Offering: IBM Cognos Insight Personal Edition is available for free, but only allows access to Excel data (CSV, XLS, and XLSX). In order to connect to all major databases users have to buy the Standard Edition.

Run MicroStrategy Analytics Platform on-

premises (PaaS)

Deploy secure, expertly managed BI Platform in

the Cloud

Start exploring in the cloud with the free MicroStrategy

Analytics Express (SaaS)

11

BI Platform Agile BI

Start exploring data with free MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop

Analytics Express



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BI Scorecard

INDUSTRY ANALYST

Get unbiased perspective from one of the top industry analysts – BiScorecard 12

Source: BI Scorecard® Strategic and Product Summary – Q4 2013.

MicroStrategy vs. IBM Cognos

• No functional gaps, superior breadth

• Industry’s best architecture

• Highest-rated overall in self-service BI

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