These slides list some of the most used Business Intelligence solutions used in the market for both proprietary and open source software.

1. Business Intelligence
Solutions for Enterprise
7 July 2021

2. Overview
In these slides, we’re going to present the most popular BI solutions in the market and most
used in the industries, and we’re going to list some of the open-source as well as proprietary
softwares.
We take into account multiple measures the classify product including Ease of use, Features
& Capabilities, Flexibility & Customization, Cost & License, Learning curve… and much more.
P.S. We do not distinguish in this presentation between Business Intelligence, Data
Analytics, Reporting, and other terminologies, knowing that each field target a specific
business problem and each tool is designed for a specific purpose, although they can be
used for the same requirement in certain situations.

3. Proprietary and/or Closed Source
List of Solutions
Open Source Software Proprietary Software
● Metabase
● Grafana
● Knowage
● Dash
There are other open source softwares that are not intended for use by end users: JasperReports, BIRT...
● Microsoft PowerBI
● Tableau
● SAS
● SAP Business Objects
● Oracle EPM
● TIBCO - Spotfire Analytics
● IBM Cognos Analytics
● MicroStrategy

4. Strengths & Weaknesses
Proprietary Solutions

5. Microsoft PowerBI
Strengths
Cost effective, widely supported and
business ready solution.
Strong points:
● Lower cost
● Ease of use
● Highly customizable
● Great UI & rich features
● Large community support.
Weaknesses
UI are not very intuitive.
Weak points:
● Learning curve can be seedy
● UI customization can be
limited
● Free version has data
limitation

6. SAS
Strengths
Advanced solution for analytics.
Strong points:
● Ease of use
● Advanced analytics
● Ready to use algorithms
Weaknesses
High price and lower presentation
choices.
Weak points:
● High price
● Text mining it limited
● Not suitable to build
dashboards

7. Tableau
Strengths
Friendly and large community which
can fit to any company’s requirements
Strong points:
● Ease of use
● Powerful visualization
● Rich features
● Mobile friendly
Weaknesses
High price, complex requirements
for IT infrastructure.
Weak points:
● High price
● Requires high IT resources
● Not suitable for low cost
project

8. TIBCO - Spotfire Analytics
Strengths
High performance for large and
multiple source data.
Strong points:
● High performance
● Highly customizable
● Ease of use
Weaknesses
Resources intensive for large data.
Weak points:
● Too much time while
collecting large data
● Lack for cloud
● Not suitable for low cost
project

9. SAP Business Objects
Strengths
Comply business standard for large
companies.
Strong points:
● Multiple legacy data sources
● High performance
● Highly customizable
● Enterprise ready for multi-user
Weaknesses
High price
Weak points:
● Not suitable for low cost
project
● Lack for advanced analytics
needs
● Support client

10. IBM Cognos Analytics
Strengths
Advanced analytics for large
companies.
Strong points:
● Advanced analytics
● High performance
● Highly customizable
Weaknesses
High price & steep learning curve
Weak points:
● Not suitable for low cost
project
● Not really easy to learn
● Lack for mobile

11. Oracle EPM
Strengths
Highly customizable reporting
solution for large companies.
Strong points:
● Highly flexible & customizable
● Ease of use
● Advanced reporting features
Weaknesses
High price & only cloud
Weak points:
● Not suitable for low cost
project
● Lack of on-premise hosting
● UI is not intuitive

12. MicroStrategy
Strengths
Can be suitable for any company
reporting needs.
Strong points:
● Great UI & rich features
● Ease of use
● Highly customizable
Weaknesses
High price
Weak points:
● Not suitable for low cost
project
● Lack for advanced analytics
● Lack for advanced cloud

13. Open Source Tools
comparison

14. Ease of use
Key takeaways
This parameter depends on the skill of users and the
level of complexity of your requirements.
● Metabase can be the easiest if you don’t use raw
SQL queries
● Dash may requires some programming skill in
python and some frontend basic skills.
Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
The higher the better

15. Advanced Analytics
Key takeaways
We mean by advanced analytics the possibility to go
beyond the basics reporting features and apply data
algorithms and discover patterns.
● Knowage in the new releases allows to apply
some more analytics analysis.
● Dash can be easily customized to apply any
algorithmes on any kind of data which of course
required more skill and time.
Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
The higher the better

16. Short learning curve
Key takeaways
Some tools require some familiarities with the
underlying technologies or some sort of skills to use
certain features.
● Metabase has a very friendly and intuitive UI
which allows you to start your right after the
installation.
● Grafana & Knowage require more familiarity and
steep learning practice.
● Dash is mainly designed for developers who
want to create a quickly and flexible dashboard.
Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
The higher the better

17. Customization
Key takeaways
Although open source tools are considered highly
customizable, some of them can be quite challenging
due to many reasons, not only technical skills but
including: licenses, architecture, community...etc.
● Metabase has a strict license beside the
complexity of the technical skills required.
● Dash can be easily extended through the
component architecture and custom code.
Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
The higher the better

18. UX/UI Design
Key takeaways
Some tools are very limited in terms of features
comparing to other competitors, but they have a very
friendly and clean UX/UI.
● Metabase has a intuitive and clean UI, yet simple
of powerful query designer with no
compromising on performance .
● Dash dashboard doesn’t have that great
visualization even widgets can are limited due
the framework used to build Dash.
Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
The higher the better

19. Deployment
Key takeaways
Some tools require some specific infrastructure,
whereas others can be embedded in other tools easily.
● Metabase can be deployed in any machine which
supports java, and can also be embedded easily
into another solution.
● Knowage can be quite hard to deploy in already
existing environment since it consists of a variety
of other components.
Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
The higher the better

20. Comparison Matrix
Measure Tool Knowage Grafana Metabase Dash
Ease of use
Advanced
Analytics
Learning Curve
Customization
UX/UI Design
Deployment

21. Use it when you...
Work for a company with large different datasets and high requirements of a variety of formats
Knowage
Grafana
Metabase
Dash
Deal with time-series data and monitoring dashboard with real-time requirements.
Need a quick, easy, and fast way to create highly customizable simple reporting requirements.
Need to use very high customized reports or advanced ML or custom algorithms.

22. Thank you!
Ibrahim HALOUANE
https://corposense.com