MicroStrategy 9 vs. IBM Cognos 10. A Comparison White Paper by MicroStrategy

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1 MicroStrategy 9 vs. IBM Cognos 10 A Comparison White Paper by MicroStrategy

2 This White Paper reflects the views, opinions and conclusions of MicroStrategy Incorporated ( MicroStrategy ) and other contributors to this White Paper. This White Paper is provided as is and without express or limited warranty of any kind by either MicroStrategy or anyone who has been involved in the creation, production or distribution of this White Paper (collectively, Contributors ), including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Neither MicroStrategy nor Contributors makes any warranty, express or implied, concerning the accuracy, correctness, completeness or adequacy of any information that is provided in this White Paper. The entire risk with respect to the use of, or reliance on, this White Paper is with you. Should this White Paper prove inaccurate or erroneous (in whole or in part), you (and not MicroStrategy or Contributors) assume the entire risk for all costs related to the use of this White Paper. 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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 and 7,945,584. Other patent applications are pending. 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3 MicroStrategy 9 vs. IBM Cognos 10 I. Executive Summary... 4 II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and Cognos 10 on the Key BI Capabilities Delivering More BI with Less IT Effort - MicroStrategy Delivers the Lowest TCO All User Needs through a Single Platform Self-Service Through a Fast and Intuitive Web Interface High Performance at Any Scale Quick to Implement and Deploy, Easy to Maintain and Administer Highly Interactive and Flexible Mobile Intelligence Deep Insight through Superior Analytics Flexible Technology for Departmental to Enterprise BI III. MicroStrategy A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology Note: This document is a competitive analysis of MicroStrategy 9 Release 3.2 and IBM Cognos v10.1, the latest version of each application at the time of this analysis. From this point on, MicroStrategy 9 Release 3.2 will generally be referred to as simply MicroStrategy or MicroStrategy 9. IBM Cognos 10.1 will be interchangeably referred to as Cognos 10.1, Cognos 10, and Cognos.

4 I. Executive Summary In the business intelligence (BI) marketplace, MicroStrategy competes vigorously with vendors such as Cognos. At first glance, it would seem that companies can use either MicroStrategy or IBM Cognos to support their reporting and analysis needs. However, throughout the implementation and maintenance of BI applications, companies are realizing significant differences in the BI capabilities between MicroStrategy and the less robust and less integrated BI technologies, such as Cognos. MicroStrategy s organically grown architecture delivers superior performance, scalability, usability, efficiency, and reliability; all of which impact the total cost of ownership, user adoption, and ultimately the success of the BI project. As user and business requirements have become more complex, IT budgets nonetheless have come under increasing pressure. Organizations need to deliver BI solutions in light of expanding user requirements, increasing amounts of data, and differing data sources with a minimal amount of IT resources. Non-organic BI architectures, like Cognos, require higher amounts of IT effort because of the basic nature of integrating disparate BI technologies which leads to redundant and repetitive administration and the constant development of one-off workarounds. In contrast, organically-developed BI architectures like MicroStrategy require the minimum amount of IT effort needed to deploy and maintain BI applications and can empower business people to create their own reports without reliance on IT personnel. MicroStrategy 9 offers business users a redefined user interface for a fast and intuitive user experience where they can access consistent information through secure Web, Microsoft Office, and mobile device interfaces. MicroStrategy s advanced analytical capabilities, such as predictive analytics and new in-memory analysis provide users with fast and deep insight. With MicroStrategy s scalable architecture and a single metadata, users can seamlessly navigate from scorecards and dashboards to reports and analysis without being required to open and close multiple BI tools and navigate dissimilar interfaces. MicroStrategy 9 is advanced technology that allows companies to support all types of BI applications with a single technology. MicroStrategy 9 builds on MicroStrategy s unique strengths at the high-end of BI to extend the boundaries of performance, scalability, and efficiency of enterprise BI. At the same time, MicroStrategy 9 brings quick-to-deploy BI technology easily within reach of smaller departmental BI initiatives through features such as multisource data access, in-memory ROLAP, and Visual Insight. Just as importantly, MicroStrategy 9 provides a smooth migration path for islands of departmental BI to merge into a cohesive and consistent enterprise-wide framework. With MicroStrategy 9, even as departmental BI applications are consolidated into the enterprise-wide framework, the departments can continue to retain significant autonomy and nimbleness that they enjoyed previously. For nearly 20 years, MicroStrategy customers have gained an edge over their competitors with fast, agile analysis using MicroStrategy s sophisticated technology. Companies and industry analysts widely recognize MicroStrategy for its administration-friendly architecture, robust security, self-service zero-footprint Web interface, innovative mobile application platform, and proven user and data scalability. This document discusses in detail the key differences between MicroStrategy 9 and Cognos 10. 4

5 II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and Cognos 10 on the Key BI Capabilities Business intelligence has the power to provide performance feedback and visibility to all people in an organization, thus enabling businesses to make better decisions every day. However, not all BI technologies deliver on this promise, falling short on a number of key capabilities demanded of enterprise BI applications. A complete and efficient BI platform must provide organizations with the following key capabilities: Key BI Capabilities 1. Delivering More BI with Less IT Effort... pg.7 MicroStrategy technology requires far fewer IT personnel for a given amount of BI users because its reusable metadata is easier to maintain requiring less redundancy, because end users have more self-service capabilities that offload work from the IT staff, and because it provides a comprehensive suite of administrative tools requiring fewer IT administrators. Cognos report developers are forced to create redundant report metadata. Metadata they create cannot be reused across all reports, causing unnecessary maintenance. Cognos end users have limited self-service capabilities and are heavily dependent on IT, requiring more IT administrators and report developers. Cognos administrators have fewer tools that allow them to centrally monitor and manage the BI applications, thus requiring more administrators per number of end users. 2. All User Needs through a Single Platform...pg.11 MicroStrategy users can access any style of BI via a unified and home grown BI platform. MicroStrategy users get a single version of the truth through interactive Web, Microsoft Office, and mobile device interfaces. Although slightly more streamlined in v10.1, Cognos users still must choose from stand alone Studios and platforms to access each style of BI, with disparate user interfaces and metadata that can lead to multiple versions of the truth. 3. Self-Service Through a Fast and Intuitive Web Interface...pg.15 To enhance usability, the MicroStrategy Web interface adopts many familiar paradigms including, ribbon toolbars, accordion controls, control-click multi-select capability, and context-sensitive right-click actions. MicroStrategy s next-generation of advanced self-service functionality is designed to provide more control to business users. The MicroStrategy advanced self-service interface provides incredible speed-of-interactivity, stunning visualizations, drag-and-drop manipulations, and instant results thus allowing business users to rapidly go from data to decisions. Cognos v10.1 continues to force users to get acquainted with different end user interfaces or Studios, which lack consistency in functional paradigms. These inconsistencies in the user interface increase training requirements and decrease user adoption for BI applications that require a combination of reporting and analysis. Cognos does not provide the full extent of self-service that MicroStrategy does and Cognos users more often require IT assistance for report development. 4. High Performance at Any Scale... pg.18 MicroStrategy s high performance at any scale is possible given its In-memory ROLAP architecture, which leverages the database for much of its processing. Data joins and analytic calculations are processed in the database whenever possible. MicroStrategy s unique multi-pass approach provides the flexibility to answer any analytical question in the most optimal manner. The Cognos ROLAP engine does not provide the ability to run multi-pass SQL and therefore forces many calculations to be performed in the middle-tier server not leveraging the database to the fullest extent possible, thus resulting in unnecessary network and hardware resource utilization. 5

6 5. Quick to Implement and Deploy, Easy to Maintain and Administer...pg.22 MicroStrategy provides organizations a platform that is quick to implement and deploy as well as easy to maintain and administer. MicroStrategy s single code base offers the unique advantage of reusable business logic across the entire platform. MicroStrategy s single BI server provides efficient, centralized administration for IT and fewer moving parts which translate into less downtime. Cognos provides disparate sets of source code that have been amalgamated through internal web services. A number of Cognos acquisitions such as Celequest and Applix, represent stand-alone platforms without plans for tighter integration with Cognos BI, other than as external data sources. 6. Highly Interactive and Flexible Mobile Intelligence... pg.26 MicroStrategy Mobile extends BI capabilities on mobile devices well beyond traditional grid and graph reports and provides exceptional flexibility for creating purpose-built, workflow-driven mobile applications. MicroStrategy Mobile apps are built using a metadata driven, point-and-click development paradigm, fully utilizing the MicroStrategy BI platform infrastructure, security, and reusable metadata components. As a result, mobile applications are faster and easier to create, easier to maintain, and provide the administration efficiencies needed to deploy to hundreds of thousands of users while providing the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Cognos does not have a well defined Mobile BI strategy and does not provide native applications for the iphone or ipad. Cognos Mobile is not a full mobile development platform, but merely another distribution channel for existing BI reports. Creating and deploying rich Mobile BI applications using Cognos requires extensive development efforts. 7. Deep Insight through Superior Analytics... pg.30 The MicroStrategy BI platform provides an extensive set of data manipulation and analytic options to allow the user to delve deeply into a report to identify and discover important trends and patterns in the data. MicroStrategy users can drill anywhere in the entire data warehouse with no programming for boundary-free investigative analysis. MicroStrategy report designers and analysts can view and embed predictive analytics in reports and then distribute them to all relevant decision makers and stakeholders. Cognos does not have automatic drill anywhere capabilities across reports. All drill paths across cubes and reports must be manually defined by IT or report developers. And although IBM purchased SPSS a few years ago, they have only integrated a limited amount of its functionality into Cognos. Cognos 10 is still unable to perform most kinds of advanced analytics including data mining. 8. Flexible Technology for Departmental to Enterprise BI...pg.32 MicroStrategy s metadata reusability and life cycle management tools, such as MicroStrategy Object Manager enable departments to incrementally migrate their business logic into a consolidated enterprise BI environment. Cognos does not have a tool equivalent to Object Manager to aid in consolidating and reconciling disparate departmental BI applications into an enterprise-wide BI. The following section of the white paper provides a side-by-side detailed evaluation of MicroStrategy 9 and IBM Cognos 10 along the key BI capabilities discussed above. 6

7 1. Delivering More BI with Less IT Effort - MicroStrategy Delivers the Lowest TCO With IT budgets under increasing scrutiny and business requirements becoming more complex, today s organizations need to critically examine BI costs. The costs of BI extend beyond the initial acquisition. An IDC study, Demonstrating Business Value: Selling to Your C-Level Executives, concludes, Because the single largest factor affecting TCO is staffing cost, IT initiatives that can reduce IT labor costs are likely to find greater acceptance among financial decision makers, and initiatives that enable IT consolidation or automation can significantly reduce TCO across the IT infrastructure. Figure 1 shows that over three years, IT staffing constitutes between 60 and 71% of BI Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). 1 Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership is Dominated by IT Personnel Costs Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership Breakdown Server Hardware (7%) IT Staff Training (8%) Outsourced Costs (3%) Software (7%) Downtime User Productivity (15%) Staffing (60%) Source: IDC Figure 1: Staffing Costs Consume a Majority of Three-Year Software Lifecycle Costs Three-year total cost of ownership for BI systems is dominated by costs related to IT personnel: IT personnel costs account for 71% of total costs = Staffing (60%) + Outsourcing Costs (3%) + Staff Training (8%). Customers and leading industry analysts alike recognize MicroStrategy s ability to deliver BI to more users and a great amount of data with fewer IT staff than other BI vendors. Many MicroStrategy customers have expanded their BI deployments while saving millions of dollars a year in staffing costs by switching from non-microstrategy BI tools to MicroStrategy s efficient and scalable self-service BI platform. To save costs and ensure successful BI solutions, decision makers must evaluate the key BI capabilities that reduce IT efforts and make the BI platform easier to implement, deploy, maintain, and administer. 1 IDC. Demonstrating Business Value: Selling to Your C-Level Executives. Three Year Server TCO. Based on more than 300 interviews conducted across numerous platforms, presented in composite form. 7

8 MicroStrategy Ranked #1 for Administration Efficiency arplan 1.18 Bissantz 0.39 Board 1.02 Cubeware 0.55 IBM Cognos Analysis N/A IBM Cognos Reporting 1.72 IBM Cognos TM1 Information Builders Infor PM Jedox PALO N/A N/A N/A N/A Microsoft SSAS 0.59 Microsoft SSRS N/A MicroStrategy 2.40 MIK 1.96 Oracle BIEE Oracle Hyperion Pentaho N/A N/A N/A QlikTech 0.71 SAP BO Webl 2.16 SAP BO Deskl SAP BW/ BEx Suite SAS TARGIT N/A N/A Source: The BI Survey 9 (2010) This chart provides a KPI score for the deployed seats per administrator head. The KPI is calculated so that higher administration costs lead to a lower KPI and vice versa. Figure 2: MicroStrategy Technology is Recognized for its Ability to Support Many More Users for Each IT Administrator MicroStrategy technology requires far fewer IT personnel for a given amount of BI users because its metadata is inherently easier to maintain requiring less redundancy, because end users have more self-service capabilities that offload work from IT staff, and because MicroStrategy provides a comprehensive set of administrative tools requiring fewer IT administrators. We evaluated several leading BI products and, using a total cost of ownership model, determined that MicroStrategy had the best combination of ease-of-use, time-to-market, successful retail implementations, and robust analytical capabilities. IT Senior Coordinator of Purchasing, Private Label and Reporting, Whole Foods Market The following table lists out key capabilities in which the MicroStrategy 9 platform helps organizations reduce costs when designing, deploying, administering and maintaining BI applications. 8

9 KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Congos 10 Dynamic Report Personalization MicroStrategy has a very robust prompting engine. End users can dynamically author reports at run time by selecting attributes, metrics, metric levels, templates, filters, and even hierarchies. This greatly reduces report design dependency on IT and the number of reports for IT to maintain. No object or column prompts such as selection of attributes, metrics, and filters on-the-fly. This causes an unnecessary number of reports to be created and maintained for end users. Minimizing Design Effort Automatic Multi-source Drill Anywhere Formatting over the Web One Repository of Reusable Business Logic Business users can automatically drill anywhere to any data source without IT hard coding. Easy What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) formatting allows business users to format reports at runtime without IT support. Report developers can reuse all existing business logic across the entire platform rather than spending time recreating business logic. No automatic drill anywhere and drilling across hierarchies requires IT hard coding per report. Cognos consumers get static reports only. Users cannot change formats, pivot, sort by, or edit reports on-the-fly. Cognos legacy of stand-alone products are still not fully integrated on a single repository of reusable business objects (e.g. Metric Studio, Cognos Real Time, and TM1 run on separate repositories or external data sources). Visual Analysis for Rapid Decision Making MicroStrategy Visual Insight allows business users to intuitively visualize, filter, and drill into their data. The drag-and-drop interface allows business users to make data driven decisions quickly and without any IT involvement. NO Cognos does not provide visual analysis capabilities. Minimizing Deployment Effort One Report Design Automatically Deploys to Any Interface Browser Agnostic Zero-footprint Web Easy to Customize and Upgrade The same report design is automatically optimized for interacting through all interfaces including Web browsers, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office; and formats including PDF, Flash, and HTML. Eliminates client installation costs and ensures application is automatically updated. Provides secure access for any browser without IT effort or reliance on ActiveX downloads or IE Active X dependence. Upgradable plug-ins easily customize to corporate look and feel without coding effort. Cognos does not have one format for a single report definition. Its Active Reports tool has a different interface and requires separate report definitions from Report Studio or Business Insight. Cognos now runs on all web browsers. NO Cognos does not have an Eclipse IDE plug-in to speed up customization and migration tasks. Customizations are managed in a central location and can be upgraded with minimal IT effort. 9

10 KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Congos 10 Automated Deployment Minimizing Deployment Effort Data Import from the Web Interface Automated life cycle management tool synchronizes objects across development, test, and production environments thus greatly reducing manual work associated with BI deployments. MicroStrategy Data Import functionality is for business users and provides the ability to easily import data from local files or relational databases and quickly convert them into dashboards or visualizations without any IT involvement. There are no file size constraints. Cognos does not offer a comprehensive tool like MicroStrategy Object Manager for automated life cycle management and consolidation and reconciliation of disparate departmental BI applications. IBM Cognos can import local files but only up to 2.5 MB, with a maximum of rows. Single Server A centralized server dramatically reduces administrative effort and complexity. Cognos uses a number of disparate servers (Cognos BI, Virtual View Manager, TM1, and Celequest). Minimizing Administration Effort Single Point of Administration Out-of-the-Box System-wide Monitoring Administrators need to create users and security settings once and these settings apply to the entire MicroStrategy platform without requiring duplicate IT efforts. Prebuilt system performance dashboards allow the administrator to immediately analyze system usage data down to the details and to easily optimize resources. Automatically logs object change history without requiring IT staff efforts, easing auditing process. NO Cognos multiple platforms and servers expose multiple administration points, increasing effort and complexity of enterprise deployments. Cognos provides very limited dashboards, reports, and KPIs to monitor the BI application from end to end, which is critical for enterprise BI deployments and therefore decreases the efficiency of the BI system. Automated Scripting Control Reduces repetitive and time consuming administrative tasks through automated command line scripts. Cognos does not provide a comprehensive command line administrative tool for highvolume tasks, making administration across several departmental BI applications more time consuming. Minimizing Maintenance Effort Automated Report and Data Integrity Checking Highly Reusable Business Metadata MicroStrategy administrators can uncover inconsistencies or errors before business users see them while reducing 98% of manual regression testing efforts. IT staff have to maintain only one set of business metadata objects in one place, and this one definition is reused across the entire platform to reduce IT maintenance efforts. Cognos provides a data integrity tool as well. However, the flexibility of the tool does not allow the automation of highly parameterized reports that examine different scenarios based on the prompt answers. Cognos report designers using Report Studio cannot create report objects (e.g. metrics, filters, prompts, and custom groups) and then reuse these objects across different reports. This forces them to redesign the same business logic in each report, increasing maintenance and change management time. 10

11 KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Congos 10 Minimizing Maintenance Effort Scalable In-Memory ROLAP Architecture Automatic Change Management MicroStrategy customers can instantly leverage multiple types of data assets with a powerful in memory technology. MicroStrategy s unified platform and object-oriented development method ensure that a change is propagated to all related objects, ensuring one version of the truth with minimal IT maintenance effort. Cognos does not use multi-pass SQL and in-memory temporary tables thus missing opportunities to improve performance. Cognos administrators can easily damage metadata integrity by erasing a filter or other metadata objects used inside a report as there is no automatic integrity check before removing an object. This leads to unnecessary maintenance and unavailability of reports. Because metadata created by report designers is not reusable across reports, change management time is greatly increased, also leading to "multiple versions of the truth." 2. All User Needs through a Single Platform The ideal architecture for business intelligence is the one that provides organizations with a single and cohesive model of the business that can be automatically displayed through any user interface. MicroStrategy users have the option to access a single version of the truth through interactive Web, Microsoft Office, and mobile device interfaces. MicroStrategy 9 includes a newly re-engineered Web user interface that is designed to be faster, more powerful, and more personalized than ever before. The MicroStrategy 9 Web architecture boasts a wide range of performance-enhancing changes that make the user interface interactive and instantly responsive to user requests. Five Styles of Business Intelligence Through a Single Platform Scorecards & Dashboards Opera4onal Dashboards Dynamic Scorecards Metrics Management Enterprise Repor4ng Page perfect Opera4onal Repor4ng Pixel perfect Business Repor4ng Print perfect Statements & Invoices OLAP Analysis & Visual Explora4on Visual Explora4on Slice & Dice Inves4ga4ve Analysis Root Cause Determina4on Data Mining & Predic4ve Analysis Ad Hoc Analysis Predic4ve Analysis Data Mining Mobile Apps & Aler4ng Mobile Applica4ons Massive Informa4on Distribu4on ipad, iphone, BlackBerry, Excep4on based Alerts Figure 3: Users Can Seamlessly Traverse All Styles of BI from a Unified Platform and a Single Interface MicroStrategy s long history and devotion to producing world-class business intelligence technology provided 11

12 us with extreme confidence that we are making the right decision for our casino partners. MicroStrategy s interactive dashboards with advanced data visualizations will allow our clients to view complex data in an easily understood and graphically appealing manner to improve decision-making. In addition, we look forward to implementing MicroStrategy s Mobile BI on the BlackBerry, iphone, and ipad, which will give our customers far greater flexibility in business intelligence than is currently available today. President, Aristocrat Technologies. KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Cognos 10 Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards Dashboards integrated with industrial-strength BI platform Fast WYSIWYG Pixel Perfect design Single design environment Automatically drill anywhere in any data source from the dashboard Native parallel Flash and DHTML visualizations Multiple layers of analysis Multi-layout dashboards Automatic multi-panel filtering Dashboard templates reduce design time Dashboard output caching in HTML, PDF, Excel, and Flash for instantaneous response Actionable dashboards Dashboards are created using reports and objects from MicroStrategy s single metadata. Intelligence Server provides its sophisticated processing, security, caching, and analytical capabilities. Users design dashboards from MicroStrategy s single Web interface using an already familiar design paradigm. Dashboards are created in a Pixel Perfect, zero-footprint Web interface, WYSIWYG and freeform layout. MicroStrategy dashboards provide high interactivity via selector controls that allow users to dynamically apply filters to all dashboard components and to synchronize data across multiple analytical layers of information. Users can automatically drill throughout the full depth and breadth of the data warehouse to obtain more detailed information or view related information. MicroStrategy dashboards provide multipanel and multi-tab layers for various views of data. Multiple dashboards can also be assembled into a single dashboard book. MicroStrategy 9 dashboard templates provide reusable starting points with sophisticated formatting that can make any business user a dashboard designer. Pre-calculated dashboards are cached for instant viewing in HTML, PDF, Excel, and Flash. MicroStrategy provides the ability to implement, and embed transactional capabilities into the dashboards. Using MicroStrategy Dashboards, business users can not only monitor key business metrics, but also initiate appropriate actions from within the dashboard. Cognos 10.1 released a new dashboarding tool called Business Insight. This new tool still provides much less dashboarding functionality than MicroStrategy. Depth of analysis and interactivity are limited and there is no support for Flash. Dashboard components offer limited options to change their content automatically via selectors, controls, OLAP enabled grids, and graphs. They also provide limited support for multiple layers of analysis, automatic multi-panel filtering, and advanced visualizations. Cognos BI dashboards do not support pixel perfect positioning. Users cannot edit dashboards while viewing the information in a WYSISWYG way. No drilling in Cognos is automatic. Hierarchy drilling must be enabled for each Cognos report. Any cross hierarchy drilling must be hard coded by IT. 12

13 KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Cognos 10 Rapid Comprehension of Data Through Advanced Visualizations Out-of-the-box library of advanced visualizations Automatic drilling from visualizations Easy to create and deploy customized widgets Flexible properties support different types of data comparisons Extensible library of visualizations and widgets created by 3rd parties Customizable advanced visualizations and widgets Robust Enterprise Reporting Pixel Perfect absolute positioning OLAP-enabled grids and graphs Horizontal and vertical display of data Desktop publishing formatting Advanced Export to Excel, Word, PowerPoint, or PDF High quality printing Templates for rapid design MicroStrategy 9 provides an out-of-thebox library of advanced visualizations and widgets that enhance the understanding of complex data and highlight patterns and trends. MicroStrategy provides a library of advanced visualizations, including Bullet Graphs, Micro Charts, Interactive Heat Maps, Interactive Bubble Charts, Grid of Graphs, Bubbles Grid, RSS, Fish Eye, Media, Cloud, Time Slider, and Stack Area Charts. All visualizations have drilling capabilities and enable users to select data elements that filter out other areas of the dashboard. Each MicroStrategy widget has flexible capabilities and properties that enable users to immediately identify or further investigate trends or anomalies in the data. For example, the Heat Map widget incorporates OLAP technology that enables users to filter data based on numeric values. MicroStrategy customers can extend the advanced visualizations library by importing 3rd party visualizations. Advanced dashboard designers can edit or create their own visualizations or widgets. The widgets are built using the power of Adobe Flash and are part of MicroStrategy s single platform. MicroStrategy offers comprehensive report styles for banded reports. These documents are highly interactive, providing in-place OLAP analysis through pivoting, drilling, and Excel-like formatting toolbars. Highly formatted documents are built using common desktop publishing paradigms such as rulers and Pixel Perfect positioning, all in a zero-footprint Web Interface. MicroStrategy s export to PDF capabilities support advanced PDF features such as table of contents and watermarks. Export to Excel supports export of multiple document layouts to multiple Excel worksheets. Print-perfect reports can be printed exactly as-seen to any network printer. MicroStrategy documents can be printed horizontally or vertically. Users can dynamically change the page layout, apply fit-to-page functionality, and customize headers and footers for any report. MicroStrategy provides out-of-the-box templates and the ability to create custom templates in order to decrease design time. These templates can be saved and shared across multiple projects. NO Cognos' much more limited visualization capabilities hamper its ability to provide the impactful presentation of important trends and the identification of outliers in large volumes of data. Cognos does not support Adobe Flash, which means it lacks the rich, impactful and interactive visualization library of the web s leading animation and visual technology. Cognos offers significantly less reporting functionality and flexibility. Cognos Report Studio does not offer report designers a way to edit and format the report layout while viewing it with a real-time WYSIWYG view of their changes. This increases the design time due to unnecessary iterations and design frustration. Cognos users cannot continue analyzing a report in Analysis Studio once it has been formatted in Cognos Report Studio. They are limited to exporting the information to Microsoft Excel for further analysis, promoting silos of information throughout the enterprise and multiple versions of the truth. Cognos Report Studio is not optimized for operational, hierarchical, or banded reporting. 13

14 KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Cognos 10 Information Delivery and Proactive Notification Ability to self-subscribe and subscribe others to report deliveries Alerting and thresholds Wide range of output types: Web, , print, fax, wireless, and file server Report bursting Portal integration, with support for portal servers including: Microsoft SharePoint, SAP NetWeaver Portal, Oracle WebLogic, and WebSphere Flexible and Powerful OLAP Interactivity Drill anywhere fosters investigative analysis Derived elements and derived metrics for on-the-fly calculations and groupings View filters for quick data filtering On the fly creation of derived elements, custom groups, subtotals, etc. Built-in financial and statistical functions Seamless Microsoft Office Integration All Office products supported (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Outlook) Leverage all BI reports and reporting objects Full new report creation Ability to save logic created in Excel back to enterprise metadata Persistent and interchangeable formatting across Office and Web Server based configuration for client settings, user, host, and IP address settings Users can subscribe themselves and other users to personalized reports and alerts. Report deliveries can be triggered by dynamic events, exception thresholds, or time schedules. Personalized content can be delivered via portal, print, , wireless, or file servers. MicroStrategy s platform leverages highly scalable technology that slices a single report and dynamically bursts personalized information to the right users. Reusing a single report across hundreds of users saves processing resources. Portal integration is available out- of-thebox, with support for portal servers such as Microsoft SharePoint, SAP NetWeaver Portal, Oracle WebLogic, and WebSphere. Portlet-to-portlet communication is also available out-of-the-box, making it easier to inject BI into a portal. The MicroStrategy BI platform provides an extensive set of data manipulation options to allow the user to delve deeply into a report to identify and discover important trends and patterns in the data. Users can drill anywhere in the entire data warehouse for boundary-free investigative analysis. New derived metrics, derived attribute element groups, filters, and subtotals can be created on- the-fly using existing metrics and attributes in the report. This functionality makes it possible for users to perform new calculations, custom groupings, and filtering directly on the report at the speed of thought. MicroStrategy s analytical engine provides hundreds of built-in financial, statistical, and mathematical functions. Cognos Event Studio is a standalone interface for Alerts and Event management that forces users to define alerts in a separate environment, therefore limiting its adoption. Although IBM claims Cognos Event Studio has been better integrated into the platform in Cognos 10.1, the interface remains separate, ensuring further discontinuity. Cognos has very limited dynamic distribution list capabilities. Therefore, Administrators have to define fixed distribution lists and cannot use conditions to dynamically conform the recipient list. MicroStrategy delivers the complete reporting and analysis environment to Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook users. MicroStrategy Office applications are linked to MicroStrategy security and administration, ensuring 100% data consistency across the enterprise. Users are able to access existing reports or create new ones from within Microsoft Office applications. Changes made through Microsoft Office are immediately reflected across MicroStrategy Office and Web interfaces and can be saved to the enterprise business logic metadata layer. Microsoft Office formatting changes are preserved after automatic data updates. The Web administrator can set client side settings and security. Users can change their passwords through the familiar Microsoft Office interface. Cognos does not have automatic drill anywhere capabilities across reports. All drill paths across cubes and across reports have to be manually defined by IT or report developers. Unlike MicroStrategy, Cognos requires two different products to perform similar ad hoc and OLAP tasks: Query Studio and Analysis Studio. Cognos acquisition of TM1, an OLAP database, also overlaps with its long time Power Play offering, which has experienced drastic declines in market share adoption vs. other OLAP vendors. Cognos SQL engine lacks automatic aggregate awareness, hurting data scalability. Cognos recommends using MOLAP sources instead. There are no formatting options in Analysis Studio and users must move their reports to a different product called Report Studio to do formatting. There is no parameterized (prompted) reporting within Analysis Studio. Cognos Microsoft Office plug-ins offer limited prompting functionality. For example, Cognos Microsoft Office plug-in does not support the ability to prompt on the set of metrics and attributes to incorporate in the report, also referred to as column prompts. Cognos Office plug-in does not offer dynamic dashboard technology (Flash) that could provide embedded visualizations and a more interactive experience. 14

15 3. Self-Service Through a Fast and Intuitive User Experience MicroStrategy 9 provides capabilities for business personnel to create their own ad hoc report designs easily from their Web browser. Using drag-and-drop actions through the MicroStrategy 9 Web interface, any business person can assemble virtually any report by adding attributes and metrics to a simple report template without the need to know any technical details about the data or the underlying databases. With MicroStrategy 9, business users also have the ability to interactively build analysis with dozens of visualization options. To enhance usability, the MicroStrategy 9 Web user interface adopts many familiar Microsoft paradigms, including ribbon toolbars, accordion controls, control-click multi-select capability, and context-sensitive right-click actions. MicroStrategy Provides End Users with a Fast and Intuitive User Experience Add/Remove A*ributes Metrics Easily Filter data Many Views Drop Zones for mulcdimensional analysis Visually Analyze Data or use OLAP enabled Grids Figure 4: Design and Format a MicroStrategy Report Using a Fast and Intuitive User Interface MicroStrategy s next-generation of advanced self-service functionality is designed to provide more control to business users. Business users can easily import their personal or corporate data directly from the MicroStrategy Web interface and quickly convert the raw data into insightful visual analyses, reports, or dashboards. The MicroStrategy Visual Insight interface provides incredible speed-of-interactivity, stunning visualizations, drag-and-drop manipulations, and instant results thus allowing business users to rapidly go from data to decisions. 15

16 We were impressed with MicroStrategy s self-service architecture, ease-of-use, highly visual dashboards, and mobile reporting that allows us to put the analytics and reporting in the hands of the business user. MicroStrategy s history in the business intelligence sphere also gave us confidence that we had chosen the right technology IT Specialist at Silverstar Casinos partner. KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Cognos 10 User-Friendly Interface Drag-and-drop actions One-click access Familiar Microsoft paradigms Tree view navigation Ribbon toolbars and menus Accordion controls Personalized interface User collaboration capabilities Context-sensitive online help Sophisticated formatting for final report presentation Self-Service Web Interface Fully interactive interface with controls for data formatting, manipulation, and analysis Real-time changes without a publishing process Creation of report objects, such as prompts and filters, over the Web What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) design and editing of any report type over the Web Zero-footprint Web interface from any browser The MicroStrategy Web interface leverages many familiar, user-friendly paradigms, including folder-tree navigation, ribbon toolbars, accordion controls, control-click multi-select capabilities, and contextsensitive right-click actions. MicroStrategy 9 enables collaboration via comments that can be added to reports to provide instructions to other users and to share information. Every report can maintain and display a set of notes with details on who left the note and when. MicroStrategy provides users comprehensive, context-sensitive help throughout the interface. MicroStrategy Web allows users to format reports and save custom format styles. These include row-level headers, row-level values, column-level headers, columnlevel values, metric headers, metric values, subtotal headers, subtotal values, custom groups, consolidation, and reports. MicroStrategy puts wide-ranging control in the hands of business users, minimizing the need for IT personnel to perform the same functions. Business users are able to rapidly create, manipulate, format, and analyze any report themselves, all through a single Web interface. Report objects such as prompts, filters, derived metrics, thresholds, and totals can also be created over the Web. Individual columns and rows on a grid can be selected quickly and users can easily format, drill, pivot, and perform other tasks on-the-fly. Changes are available right away without any need to publish or export information to other environments. Business users create highly formatted reports using any metadata object using a zero-footprint, WYSIWYG design paradigm that drastically shortens report development time. MicroStrategy Web is zero-footprint, and does not rely on Java or ActiveX. As a result, report designers and business users can use any browser to design and interact with reports. Although Cognos claims to have created a more unified interface for v10.1, they still have 7 studios and modes users must get acquainted with, which lack consistency in functional paradigms. "Studio jumping" will continue with Cognos These inconsistencies in the user interface increase training requirements and decrease user adoption for BI applications that require a combination of reporting and analysis. Cognos does not offer casual users or consumers with intuitive Excel-like interaction with reports over the Web, such as enabling users to resize and lock column and row headers, and perform simple custom formatting on the data. Cognos reports, once generated, are much more static for the common user. Cognos end users, with consumer and recipient roles, get a static view of reports. Interaction with the report is limited to a few actions (e.g., end users cannot sort by a column, change the format of the report, or pivot the columns and rows). Cognos Report Studio provides limited pixel-level positioning of report objects over the report layout. Pixel-level positioning is necessary for designer productivity and to obtain boardroom quality reports. Cognos Report Studio does not provide report designers with the ability to edit reports during run-time and immediately see formatting changes reflected in the report with live data. This limitation requires more round trips between design and run-time mode and therefore increases the time it takes to create a report. 16

17 KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Cognos 10 Advanced Self-Service Functionality Data Import Visual Insight Instant Response to User Actions Extreme AJAX Web interface High degree of client-side processing while maintaining a zero-footprint Web client Dynamic Report Personalization Comprehensive parameter and question prompting (column, filter, search based, value, hierarchical) Personal answers saved for reuse across different reports Security profiles personalize report content for individual users The Data Import and Visual Insight functionality is designed to give more control to business users. Business users can convert raw data into decisions in minutes and without assistance from the IT department. Using Data Import functionality, business users can easily import personal or corporate data from local files, Excel files, or relational databases through the MicroStrategy Web interface. The imported data can be easily converted into interactive reports or dashboards without any IT assistance. MicroStrategy Visual Insight allows business users to visually identify patterns, trends, and anomalies in data. Business users can intuitively query, visualize, filter, and drill into their data. A drag-and-drop, WYSI- WYG interface enables business users to visualize the changes as they are made. MicroStrategy Visual Insight provides incredible speed-of-interactivity, detailed visualizations, and instant query results thus allowing business users to rapidly go from data to decisions. The MicroStrategy Web architecture adheres to an Extreme AJAX model, shifting processing from the Web server to the Web browser for any browser type. By spreading the processing workload, the user is given a much more responsive and interactive Web experience while still preserving a true zero-footprint Web interface. In MicroStrategy, a single report can span hundreds of possible data combinations tailored to different user needs. MicroStrategy prompts provide report input parameters that control most aspects of a report, and give the user significant ad hoc reporting capabilities. Prompts enable the personalization of reports from a single report definition, reducing the number of objects stored in the metadata repository. Advanced report parameters, like object (column) and hierarchy prompts, allow users to select the business attributes and KPIs to include in the report at run-time. MicroStrategy Web displays prompt values and report contents that are permitted by the user's security profile. For example, when running a prompted report, dashboard, or document, the user can only select prompt answers that he has permission to see. In a similar way, when running a report, only the metrics and attributes that the user has permission to see will be displayed to the user. Cognos does support local file imports, but there are significant constraints on the file size. The maximum file size is 2.5 MB, or 20,000 rows. Cognos does not provide visual analysis capabilities. Cognos report consumers get static reports only. End users cannot change the format of the report, pivot columns and rows, sort by a column, or edit reports on-the-fly. 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 causes an unnecessary number of reports to be created and maintained. Report personalization is accomplished in Cognos by bringing all possible data to the report and hiding columns with extensive formatting logic on each report. 17

18 4. High Performance at Any Scale MicroStrategy technology has long been the performance leader at high user counts and data scale. MicroStrategy 9 continues and extends that leadership with adaptive caching technology called In-memory ROLAP and SQL generation optimizations that can deliver the highest query performance, even when accessing hundreds of terabytes of data. In-memory ROLAP takes advantage of the huge addressable memory space now available on 64- bit computers to provide high performance middle-tier databases that can respond directly to data requests from reports, dashboards, and OLAP analyses. We look forward to using MicroStrategy 9 In-memory ROLAP technology to help us improve our user experience with faster response times and to take unnecessary pressure off our Teradata system. Manager of BI Architecture, ebay In-memory BI Fills a Void in the Performance Curve of a BI System BEFORE IN-MEMORY BI AFTER IN-MEMORY BI Database Query Slower Response Time Database Query Output Caching Report Caching Data Set Caching Faster Response Time Output Caching Report Caching In-memory Query Data Set Caching In-memory On-Disk In-memory On-Disk Caching Query Caching Query Figure 5: MicroStrategy In-Memory BI Provides the Combination of Fast Response Time from Multidimensional Caching and the Flexibility of Ad Hoc Query BI ROLAP is unique among BI architectures in that it can model whole relational databases as if they were a single multi-dimensional cube. In this case, the cube is virtual since relational databases often contain terabytes of data that could not fit within any physical cube technology. MicroStrategy s virtual cube provides MicroStrategy users with the ability to perform OLAP interactions with the data and drill freely throughout the vast virtual cube without the severe size limitations of MOLAP architectures. MicroStrategy s new In-memory ROLAP option is game changing. Unlike other in-memory approaches on the market today, it is fully integrated with an enterprise BI environment and provides high performance transparently to business users. The way in which large amounts of data are stored and accessed in-memory is so seamless that I was skeptical until I saw the actual SQL generated and witnessed the performance. Cindi Howson, Founder of BIScorecard 18

19 MicroStrategy 9 Multi-source ROLAP Allows Data Environments to be Optimized for Performance and Cost Supporting Hub and Spoke Data Architectures Balance the Workload Across Databases MicroStrategy Virtual Cube MicroStrategy Virtual Cube MySQL DB2 Netezza SQL Server Sybase IQ SQL Server Teradata Marketing Data Mart Mfg Data Mart Enterprise Data Whse Financial Data Mart Sales Data Mart Lookups, Aggregates, Summary Data Enterprise Data Warehouse Figure 6: MicroStrategy Multi-source ROLAP Helps Decrease Time to Value by incorporating Hub and Spoke Architectures and Decrease Cost by Switching Database Processing from the Enterprise Data Warehouse to Alternative Lower Cost Databases. Successful BI systems often experience dramatic growth in user populations. It is increasingly common for a single MicroStrategy BI installation to support thousands and even tens of thousands of business users. The technical challenge in these circumstances is to be able to efficiently accommodate thousands of concurrent user sessions while providing high performance and easy administration. MicroStrategy 9 supports 64-bit Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) in both J2EE Web servers as well as ASP.net Web Servers. The dramatically expanded memory available in 64- bit JVMs supports many more concurrent user sessions, and allows users to display and interact with larger reports and dashboards. The most critical factor for our organization is the speed with which we can react to the needs of the business. MicroStrategy enables our executives and other business users to run reports and analyses within seconds, which in turn, allows our employees to make timely decisions that dramatically impact the business. Also, our high performance BI environment encourages the use of BI across the company, providing greater visibility into the business for more employees. Chief Information Officer, FAMIQ 19

20 KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 IBM Cognos 10 Quick Response Time In-memory ROLAP Dynamic sourcing Dynamic multi-level caching MicroStrategy s In-memory ROLAP capabilities leverage 64-bit operating systems to improve the overall performance of the BI system. In-memory ROLAP cubes improve the performance of the most time-consuming and frequentlyused queries, while still allowing users to seamlessly navigate the entire data warehouse. When building a report, the report developer never has to explicitly reference an In-memory ROLAP cube. Dynamic sourcing capabilities automatically direct queries to In-memory ROLAP cubes whenever possible. Administrators can be assured that the In-memory ROLAP cubes they create will automatically and immediately improve overall query performance. MicroStrategy provides automatic caching at multiple levels, including element list, metadata object, report dataset, XML definition, document output, and database connection caching. Caching makes the entire BI system efficient by reducing redundant computations and network traffic. Cognos does not provide an in-memory ROLAP engine that could leverage 64-bit operating systems natively. Even though IBM Cognos externally acquired TM1 server, provides inmemory capabilities, it is a standalone multidimensional database and cannot be leveraged in conjunction with their Cognos ROLAP engine to provide dynamic sourcing capabilities. This disparate architecture results in unwanted tradeoffs and increased maintenance. Although Cognos claims to make greater use of native 64-bit processing in v10.1, this is limited as they do not offer end-toend native 64-bit processing. Thus, Cognos is unable to take full advantage of the high in-memory optimizations and ultimately faster response times for end users that are provided by 64-bit memory spaces. Cognos provides very limited support for inter-user report caching, inter-report dataset caching, and element list caching. Reports are often re-run unnecessarily when users perform drill-through actions. This increases CPU utilization, network traffic, and database processing, thus weakening the performance of the BI application and elevating the cost of ownership. 20