MicroStrategy 9 vs. QlikTech (QlikView 11) - NDM II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and QlikView 11 on the Key BI Capabilities Business intelligence has the power to provide performance

A Comparison White Paper

MicroStrategy 9 vs. QlikTech (QlikView 11)

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Patent Information

This product is patented. 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 and 7,881,443. Other patent

applications are pending.

How to Contact Us

MicroStrategy Incorporated

1850 Towers Crescent Plaza

Tysons Corner, VA 22182

Phone: 1.888.537.8135 Fax: 703.848.8610

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.microstrategy.com

I. Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................... 4

II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and QlikView 11 on the Key BI Capabilities ............................. 5

1. Delivering More BI with Less IT Effort - MicroStrategy Delivers the Lowest TCO .............................. 7

2. All User Needs through a Single Platform ..................................................................................... 11

3. Self-Service Through a Fast and Intuitive Web Interface ................................................................ 15

4. High Performance at Any Scale .................................................................................................... 19

5. Quick to Implement and Deploy, Easy to Maintain and Administer ............................................... 24

6. Highly Interactive and Flexible Mobile Intelligence ........................................................................ 28

7. Deep Insight through Superior Analytics ...................................................................................... 33

8. Flexible Technology for Departmental to Enterprise BI .................................................................. 36

III. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology .......................................... 39

MicroStrategy vs. QlikTech

4

I. Executive Summary

In the Business Intelligence (BI) marketplace, MicroStrategy competes vigorously with vendors such as QlikTech. At

first glance, it would seem that companies can use either MicroStrategy 9 or QlikView 11 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 of QlikTech. 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-robust BI architectures

require higher amounts of IT effort because of the basic nature of deploying immature 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’s 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 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

multi-source 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, departments can continue to retain the 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 best-of-breed technology. Companies and industry analysts widely recognize MicroStrategy

for its administration-friendly architecture, robust security, self-service zero-footprint Web interface, and proven user

and data scalability.

This document discusses in detail the key differences between MicroStrategy 9 and QlikView 11.

5

II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and QlikView 11 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. MicroStrategy is easier to maintain also because it

provides end users with more self-service capabilities that offload work from the IT staff, and also provides a

comprehensive suite of administrative tools, requiring fewer IT administrators. On the other hand, QlikView

report developers are forced to create redundant report metadata as the metadata they create cannot be reused

across reports. QlikView administrators have fewer tools that allow them to centrally monitor and manage 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. QlikView

users are limited in the breadth of BI styles they can accomplish. QlikView users typically must recreate metadata

with each report, thus promoting “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. QlikView provides limited self-service capabilities. In order to create QlikView documents users must

first extract data from different data sources by writing a QlikView script; writing the QlikView script requires

experience with SQL. QlikView does not provide advanced self-service capabilities like visual analysis and

simplified data import through Web interface.

4. High Performance at Any Scale ................................................................................................................ pg.19

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. QlikView stores all data and performs all calculations in memory on the

middle-tier server. QlikView does not fully leverage the relational database or the hard disk on the middle-tier.

These aspects of the QlikView architecture result in inefficient resource utilization and limit QlikView’s scalability.

6

5. Quick to Implement and Deploy, Easy to Maintain and Administer ..................................................... pg.24

MicroStrategy provides organizations a platform that is quick to implement and deploy as well as easy to

maintain and administer, fueled by a single code base that offers the 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 translates into less downtime. QlikView lacks a common reusable metadata layer that is

shared across documents. This creates a maintenance challenge as developers are typically forced to continually

and manually synchronize metric definitions and security profiles across documents.

6. Highly Interactive and Flexible Mobile Intelligence ............................................................................... pg.28

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.

QlikView treats mobile devices as just another interface to deliver traditional BI. The QlikView mobile interface

is not designed to use the powerful capabilities of mobile devices, and lacks the ability to provide a rich user

experience that mobile users are accustomed to.

7. Deep Insight through Superior Analytics ................................................................................................. pg.33

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. Users

can drill anywhere in the entire data warehouse for boundary-free investigative analysis. Report designers and

analysts can view and embed predictive analytics in reports and then distribute them to all relevant decision

makers and stakeholders. QlikView does not automatically provide drill anywhere capabilities across all reports.

Report developers must pre-define all drill paths for each chart. QlikView is limited in the data mining and

sophisticated predictive analytic capabilities that are available out-of-the-box.

8. Flexible Technology for Departmental to Enterprise BI ......................................................................... pg.36

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.

QlikView lacks an enterprise metadata layer and the tools required to consolidate disconnected QlikView

applications into one enterprise-wide BI application.

The following section of the white paper provides a side-by-side evaluation of MicroStrategy 9 and QlikView 11

along the key BI capabilities.

7

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.

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

Staffing (60%)

Downtime – UserProductivity

(15%)

IT Staff Training(8%)

Server Hardware(7%)

Software (7%)

Outsourced Costs(3%)

Source: IDC 2007.

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.

8

Microstrategy ranked highest for administration efficiency

0.4 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.40.8 1.0 1.2 2.20.6

arplan

Bissantz

Board

Cubeware

IBM Cognos Analysis

IBM Cognos Reporting

IBM Cognos TM1

Information Builders

Infor PM

Jedox PALO

Microsoft SSAS

Microsoft SSRS

MicroStrategy

MIK

Oracle BIEE

Oracle Hyperion

Pentaho

QlikTech

SAP BO Webl

SAP BO Deskl

SAP BW/ BEx Suite

SAS

TARGIT

1.02

1.18

1.72

N/A

N/A

1.96

2.40

N/A

2.16

N/A

1.51

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1.96

N/A

N/A

MicroStrategy Ranked #1 for Administration Efficiency

0.55

0.39

0.71

0.59

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 and because end users have more self-service capabilities that offload work from the

IT staff.

“ 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.

9

KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY

MICROSTRATEGY 9 QLIKVIEW 11

Min

imiz

ing

Des

ign

eff

ort

Dynamic report Personalization

yes • MicroStrategy has 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.

lIMIteD

• QlikView can simulate basic prompting on attribute and metric values using sliders and selectors. However, QlikView does not provide object or column prompts (i.e. prompts for selecting filters, metrics, hierarchies, etc.), so business users cannot easily author reports at run-time.

automatic Multi-source Drill anywhere

yes • Business users can automatically drill

anywhere to any data source without IT hard coding.

lIMIteD

• Report developers must pre-define drill sequences for each chart.

formatting over the web yes • Easy What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get

(WYSIWYG) formatting allows business users to format reports at runtime without IT support.

lIMIteD

• WYSIWYG formatting requires the installation of ActiveX plug-in, thus forcing users to use Internet Explorer.

one repository of reusable Business logic

yes • Report developers can reuse all existing

business logic across the entire platform rather than spending time recreating business logic.

no • Business logic for each report is defined

and contained within the report, and cannot be reused across reports.

visual analysis for rapid Decision Making

yes • MicroStrategy Visual Insight allows

business users to intuitively visualize, filter, and drill into their data. The drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG interface allows business users to make data driven decision quickly and without any IT involvement.

lIMIteD

• QlikView provides capabilities to slice and dice data. However, it does not provide the capabilities to perform ad hoc visual analysis of data.

Min

imiz

ing

Dep

loym

ent

effo

rt

one report Design automatically Deploys to any Interface

yes • 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.

lIMIteD

• Deploying to the zero-footprint client (ZFC) interface requires further HTML coding to achieve the desired dashboard layout.

Browser agnostic Zero-footprint web

yes • 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.

lIMIteD

• The QlikView Zero-Footprint Client (ZFC) supports only a subset of the functionality supported by the QlikView IE plug-in client. The layout fidelity and functionality supported by the ZFC is also low. As a result, the deployment scenarios of ZFC are limited and restrictive.

easy to Customize and Upgrade

yes • Upgradable plug-ins instantly customize

to corporate look and feel without coding effort.

• Customizations are managed in a central location and can be upgraded with minimal IT effort.

lIMIteD

• Customizations to the zero-footprint interface must be continually reapplied every time the interface is redesigned or upgraded, making customizations difficult to maintain.

automated Deployment yes • Automated life cycle management tool

synchronizes objects across development, test, and production environments thus greatly reducing manual work associated with BI deployments.

no • Incremental updates made in a

development environment cannot be easily merged or synchronized into the production environment.

10

KEY COST REDUCING CAPABILITY

MICROSTRATEGY 9 QLIKVIEW 11

Min

imiz

ing

D

eplo

ymen

t ef

fort Data Import from the

web Interfaceyes • MicroStrategy Data Import functionality

is for business users and provides the ability to easily import data from local files or relational databases and quickly converts them into dashboards or visualizations without any IT involvement.

no • QlikView does not provide Web-based

data import functionality for business users.

Min

imiz

ing

ad

min

istr

atio

n e

ffo

rt

single server yes • A centralized server dramatically reduces

administrative effort and complexity.

yes • QlikView does not support all styles of BI

through its server.

single Point of administration

yes • Administrators need to create users and

security settings once and these settings apply to the entire MicroStrategy platform without requiring duplicate IT efforts.

lIMIteD

• The QlikView Management Console (QMC) provides limited centralized management of the QlikView deployment. Security has to be defined locally within each document by modifying the QlikView script.

out-of-the-Box system-wide Monitoring

yes • 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.

lIMIteD

• Reports to analyze the collected statistics are not provided out-of-the-box.

• Change journaling is not provided out-of-the-box, and developers must typically rely on third-party revision control or change journaling systems for this capability.

automated scripting Control

yes • Reduces repetitive and time consuming

administrative tasks through automated command line scripts.

no • Administrators have limited ability to

automate server-related administrative tasks.

Min

imiz

ing

Mai

nte

nan

ce e

ffo

rt

automated report and Data Integrity Checking

yes • MicroStrategy administrators can uncover

inconsistencies or errors before business users see them while reducing 98% of manual regression testing efforts.

no • QlikView does not provide automated

regression testing tools to detect report and data discrepancies.

highly reusable Business Metadata

yes • IT staff have to maintain only one

business metadata object in one place, and this one definition is reused across the entire platform to reduce IT maintenance efforts.

no • QlikView provides very limited metadata

reusability. This forces report developers to spend more time redundantly creating report objects.

scalable In-Memory rolaP architecture

yes • MicroStrategy customers can instantly

leverage multiple types of data assets without moving data to an enterprise data warehouse.

no • QlikView is an “in-memory only” product.

In order for QlikView users to access data assets, the data must first be moved to a QlikView database.

automatic Change Management

yes • 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.

no • There is no object or metadata reusability

between documents. One change to a common business definition would require making changes to each QlikView document one by one, a mistake-prone and onerous process.

11

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

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

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.

Scorecards &

Dashboards

Enterprise

Repor4ng

OLAP Analysis &

Visual Explora4on

Data Mining &

Predic4ve Analysis

Mobile Apps &

Aler4ng

•  Ad Hoc Analysis

•  Predic4ve Analysis

•  Data Mining

•  Visual Explora4on

•  Slice & Dice Inves4ga4ve Analysis

•  Root Cause Determina4on

•  Page‐perfect Opera4onal Repor4ng

•  Pixel‐perfect Business Repor4ng

•  Print‐perfect Statements & Invoices

•  Opera4onal Dashboards

•  Dynamic Scorecards

•  Metrics Management

•  Mobile Applica4ons

•  Massive Informa4on Distribu4on

•  iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, email

•  Excep4on‐based Alerts

12

KEY BI REQUIREMENTS MICROSTRATEGY 9 QLIKVIEW 11

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

yes 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 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 multi-panel 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.

lIMIteD

QlikView’s pixel-perfect WYSIWYG dashboard design interface requires either a desktop client. Dashboard design is not possible in a zero-footprint Web client. This limitation makes it difficult to provide self-service dashboard creation capabilities to a large user population.

QlikView does not provide layout templates out-of-the-box. With little guidance in dashboard design, business users have a difficult time building effective dashboards.

QlikView dashboards can be distributed as stand-alone files. However, the file is in a proprietary format, and viewing a dashboard offline requires a QlikView desktop client. Dashboards cannot be exported to Flash.

QlikView does not provide the ability to implement, and embed transactional capabilities into the dashboards.

13


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

yes MicroStrategy 9 provides an out-of-the-box 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.

lIMIteD

QlikView provides basic visualizations such as bar, line, pie, radar, and gauge charts. Many advanced visualizations are not available out-of-the-box, including data clouds, weighted lists viewer, graph matrix, calendar widgets, store layout, etc. Bullet graphs are also not supported natively, although they can be built by overlaying multiple graphs in order to give the appearance of a bullet graph, making them time consuming to build and maintain.

QlikView also cannot embed Web-related content, such as HTML containers, media, and RSS feeds, without coding. Advanced interactive selectors such as fish eye selectors are also not available out-of-the-box.

Metric calculations, or chart expressions, are defined within each chart. Because metric definitions defined in one chart cannot be easily reused across charts, report developers are forced to spend time redundantly defining metrics and maintaining the consistency of metric definitions.

QlikView extension objects allow designers to create custom visualization components for use within QlikView. However QlikView extension objects are not suitable for large data volumes (10 thousand records or more). Also, extensions are not visible in reports and can only be used in QlikView documents.

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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

yes 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.

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 QlikView has limited production reporting capabilities. QlikView’s report writer is limited in the breadth of formatting capabilities provided to report designers. Reports can be banded so that a different page is generated for each different attribute element value, but QlikView restricts reports to be banded by only one attribute.

The report output is meant to be printed or output to PDF, and not to be viewed in the desktop or Web client. Accordingly, the documents generated by the QlikView report writer are not interactive, with no filtering or drilling possible.

Production reports must be designed in a desktop client or ActiveX client, and cannot be designed over a zero-footprint Web interface.

Information Delivery and Proactive notification

• Ability to self-subscribe and subscribe others to report deliveries

• Alerting and thresholds

• Wide range of output types: Web, e-mail, 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

yes 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, email, 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-the-box, 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.

lIMIteD

Business users typically cannot self subscribe to reports for delivery nor configure personal exception thresholds. Instead, an administrator would typically set up a recipient list to send reports on a periodic basis. Alternatively, a report developer can configure a QlikView document to display text in a pop-up window or send text as an email when certain threshold conditions are met.

QlikView does not provide portal integration out-of-the-box, forcing developers to write a lot of code to present reports in portlets and to incorporate communication between QlikView and other portlets.

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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

yes 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.

lIMIteD

QlikView is generally limited in the breadth of options it provides for end users to manipulate and analyze data. Data interactivity on charts is generally limited to filtering. Drilling is not automatically enabled on charts. Instead, the report developer must generally pre-define drilling sequences on each chart. The result is that drilling workflows are typically prescribed by the report developer, and the end user’s ability to analyze data is bounded.

QlikView users are also limited in their ability to create new custom groups of attribute elements directly on a chart. Other data manipulations, such as new metric calculations and custom subtotals, require a power user to edit a chart definition in a wizard; such data manipulations are not available in one click.

QlikView does not provide the breadth of OLAP, financial, and statistical functions that are provided out-of-the-box by MicroStrategy.

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

yes 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.

lIMIteD

QlikView reports and documents cannot be created from within Microsoft Office products. The QlikView Microsoft Office integration is limited to exporting individual sheet objects to Excel.

QlikView users can drag-and-drop charts from the desktop QlikView client into a Microsoft Office document. However, this feature is not supported out-of-the-box and requires installation of an ActiveX control and IE plug-in. End users will require installations of these controls for viewing a QlikView-embedded Microsoft Office document. This requirement makes it difficult to widely distribute QlikView embedded Microsoft Office documents.

3. self-servICe throUgh a fast anD IntUItIve weB InterfaCe

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.

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Microstrategy Provides end Users with a fast and Intuitive User experience

Add/Remove

•  A*ributes

•  Metrics

Many

Views

Easily Filter

data Visually Analyze Data or

use OLAP enabled Grids

Drop Zones for

mulCdimensional

analysis

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.

“ 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 partner.” – IT Specialist at Silverstar Casinos

Add/Remove• Attributes• Metrics

Easily filterdata Drop Zones for

multidimensional analysis

Visually analyze data or use OLAP enabled grids

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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

yes The MicroStrategy Web interface leverages many familiar, user-friendly paradigms, including folder-tree navigation, ribbon toolbars, accordion controls, control-click multi-select capabilities, and context-sensitive 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, column-level values, metric headers, metric values, subtotal headers, subtotal values, custom groups, consolidation, and reports.

lIMIteD

QlikView’s design interface allows for drag and-drop placement of charts and other dashboard elements. However, the editing of each chart involves navigating through a wizard to select data columns and define metric calculations. Attributes and metrics cannot be dragged-and-dropped onto a grid or graph to modify charts and perform ad hoc analysis on-the-fly.

QlikView has limited capabilities for logging notes and comments from multiple users. A QlikView application can have a text input field where users can append notes. However, QlikView is limited in its ability to automatically add details on the author and entry date of notes. QlikView is also limited in its ability to secure comment fields so that different users have different privileges to read, edit, and append notes.

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

yes 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.

lIMIteD

Creating QlikView documents or dashboards requires a desktop client; it is not possible to create new documents from a Web-based client. As a result, QlikView deployments typically give ad hoc report creation capabilities to a few power users, while end users with Web access are limited to filtering, sorting, and pre-defined drilling.

In order to make a QlikView dashboard available over the Web in a zero-footprint client or QlikX IE client, the dashboard is first designed on the desktop, and then a Web page must be generated from that design. Depending on formatting requirements, the generated Web page must then be further customized via HTML code before being published to a Web server. Any changes to the dashboard design must go through a similar publishing process in order to make the changes available to Web users. This makes Web deployments difficult to maintain.

Drilling within a chart is limited to predefined drill paths. If the user wants to see a different view of the data not available in the pre-defined drill path, the user must essentially recreate the chart by opening the chart wizard and selecting a different set of table columns to place in the chart.

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advanced self-service functionality

• Data Import

• Visual Insight

yes 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, WYSIWYG 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.

no QlikView does not provide advanced self-service capabilities. Importing personal or corporate data is not supported from the Web interface. In addition, existing QlikView scripts cannot be accessed from the Web interface, and end users cannot save changes to the QlikView documents (except shared objects) from the Web interface. As a result, the self-service of end users is severely constrained.

QlikView does not provide an interface or visualizations specifically designed for performing visual analysis of data. In addition, performing actions like adding new metric calculations or custom subtotals require a power user to edit a chart definition in a wizard, making the process of data exploration tedious and less intuitive.

Instant response to User actions

• Extreme AJAX Web interface

• High degree of client-side processing while maintaining a zero-footprint Web client

yes 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.

lIMIteD

Users who need a highly responsive interface with a high degree of client-side processing would typically use QlikView’s desktop client or the ActiveX plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer. A desktop client is difficult to deploy to a large user population, and an ActiveX plug-in cannot be deployed to users who use browsers other than Internet Explorer. A zero-footprint AJAX interface is available, but this interface typically requires custom HTML coding to fully format the interface, and the architecture does not follow an Extreme AJAX model. Consequently, a highly responsive QlikView interface is difficult to deploy to a wide audience.

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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

yes 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.

lIMIteD

QlikView does not natively support prompting. QlikView developers can only simulate basic element list prompting using list boxes.

QlikView users cannot be prompted to select hierarchies, columns, filters, and metrics during run-time to generate a report that shows only the data that is of interest to them.

QlikView’s lack of prompting abilities results in developing, deploying, and maintaining more applications as compared to MicroStrategy. With MicroStrategy, a single highly prompted report can satisfy the analysis requirements for thousands of users across multiple departments.

Security profiles, including row-level and column-level security, can be defined so that different users opening the same document can only see data they are permitted to see. However, security is defined locally within each QlikView document. For a sizable BI deployment security maintenance in QlikView can be very tedious, time consuming, and difficult to maintain.

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

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In-memory BI fills a void in the Performance Curve of a BI system

BEFORE IN-MEMORY BI AFTER IN-MEMORY BI

Output Caching

In-memory On-Disk

Caching Query

Database Query Slower

Response Time

Data SetCachingReport

CachingOutput Caching

Database Query

Data SetCaching

In-memoryQuery

Report Caching

In-memory On-Disk

Caching Query

FasterResponse Time

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

Microstrategy 9 Multi-source rolaP allows Data environments to be optimized for Performance and Cost

MicroStrategy Virtual Cube

MarketingData Mart

MicroStrategy Virtual Cube

MfgData Mart

EnterpriseData Whse

SalesData Mart

FinancialData Mart

Lookups, Aggregates,Summary Data

Enterprise Data Warehouse

Supporting Hub and Spoke Data Architectures Balance the Workload Across Databases

SQLServer

Teradata

MySQL

Netezza

SybaseIQ

SQLServerDB2

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.

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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


Quick response time

• In-memory ROLAP

• Dynamic sourcing

• Dynamic multi-level caching

yes 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 frequently-used 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.

lIMIteD

QlikView is an “in-memory-only” product and holds its entire database in memory. QlikView cannot offload portions of its database to disk, so the entire database must fit in memory. QlikView’s performance is thus limited by the amount of data being analyzed and the memory capacity of the mid-tier server or client.

QlikView does not allow dynamic sourcing of data. All data must be queried from QlikView cubes, resulting in increased hardware costs and wasteful utilization of database processing power.

QlikView caches recently calculated chart aggregations in memory, but does not persistently store these caches to disk. Because the chart caches exist only in memory, the caches typically do not exist as long as a disk-persisted cache. As a result, the same chart aggregations are often calculated redundantly.

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high Performance rolaP engine

• Push-down joins

• Push-down analytics

• Multi-pass SQL

• Support for all implementations of multi-pass SQL, including the use of temp tables, derived tables, and common table expressions

• Minimize network traffic

• Automatic aggregate awareness

• Database-specific SQL generation and optimization through VLDB drivers

• SQL query optimization algorithms

yes MicroStrategy’s ROLAP architecture uses the database for much of its processing. Data joins and analytic calculations are processed in the database whenever possible. MicroStrategy’s multi-pass approach provides the flexibility to answer analytical questions in an optimal manner. Any technical advances in the database are seamlessly accessible to the MicroStrategy platform. By leveraging the database to its fullest extent possible, large volumes of transaction level data are processed efficiently and network traffic is minimized.

Automatic and intelligent support for common data warehouse optimization techniques like aggregate tables and table partitioning ensures that the MicroStrategy SQL engine maximizes database usage for every analysis.

VLDB properties allow for further fine-tuning of the SQL engine on both a global and report-by-report basis. Through VLDB drivers, MicroStrategy can optimize table join sequences, databases’ parallel execution capabilities, query optimization hints, and other database-specific tuning parameters.

Global SQL query optimization algorithms optimize complex queries to reduce the number of SQL passes, providing further performance improvement to queries.

no QlikView relies on the client or mid-tier server to perform all its processing and does not provide a push-down architecture where processing is shifted from the mid-tier server to the database. Data joins are pre-processed when loading the data into QlikView’s proprietary in-memory database, but analytic calculations and aggregations are performed on-the-fly by the client or mid-tier (i.e. QlikView server). This aspect of QlikView architecture results in wasteful utilization of the underlying database’s processing power and puts additional pressure on QlikView server resulting in more hardware costs and performance bottlenecks.

Each year DB vendors spend millions of dollars in R&D to improve their performance, MicroStrategy benefits from these improvements transparently because of MicroStrategy’s push-down architecture; QlikTech cannot leverage these investments as the entire database is held in-memory.

Some recently calculated aggregations are cached for use by multiple users, but the caches exist only in memory and not persisted to hard disk. These aspects of QlikView’s architecture limit its scalability, as performance is bounded by the CPU and memory capacity of the mid-tier server or client.

QlikView has limited options to pre-aggregate data or partition data across multiple servers. As a result, QlikView is limited in its ability to optimize and tune the performance of its database engine.

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Market Proven enterprise scalability and Performance

• Native 64-bit BI processing

• 64-bit Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) support

• Server Clustering for failover recovery and load balancing

• Customer references for large user and data scale production deployments

yes The MicroStrategy platform is designed for enterprise scalability. Native 64-bit processing allows MicroStrategy to support large numbers of users and data volumes while improving performance. MicroStrategy supports native 64-bit processing for all major operating systems, and across the entire BI platform.

MicroStrategy also fully supports 64-bit Java Virtual Machines (JVMs) in both J2EE Web servers as well as ASP.net Web Servers. The expanded memory available in 64-bit JVMs allows for optimal Web performance across the enterprise. One server can maintain more concurrent user sessions and run much larger reports, reducing overall hardware costs.

A cluster-capable server provides load balancing and automatic failover capabilities, so system resources are allocated efficiently and system uptime is maximized. MicroStrategy clustered servers support asymmetric configurations, so each cluster node can support different applications. All cluster nodes share caches and in-memory cubes and all changes made to the metadata objects and security settings take effect immediately.

MicroStrategy has many customer references for deployments to thousands of users who are reporting and analyzing tens of terabytes of data.

lIMIteD

RAM need by QlikTech is not only affected by the amount of data, but also by the number of users simultaneously accessing the QlikView application. Each QlikView user needs to have its own User Session States; storing the User Session States and aggregates takes up RAM above and beyond the RAM used to store the QlikView application. It is not uncommon to have a QlikView application that takes up nearly 100% of the RAM for each additional user. Having 3-5 concurrent users accessing the same QlikView application could easily double the amount of RAM required, creating serious scalability, performance, and user concurrency issues.

QlikTech only supports the Windows platform. By not offering UNIX versions, QlikTech limits customers’ deployment options.

QlikView is limited in the extent to which resources can be optimally shared across a cluster. For example, chart aggregations that are calculated on one server are cached only in the memory of that server, and not shared across a cluster.

QlikTech does not have the long reference list that MicroStrategy has of customers that have proven the product’s data and user scalability.

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5. QUICK to IMPleMent anD DePloy, easy to MaIntaIn anD aDMInIster

MicroStrategy 9 can deliver BI solutions quickly with little or no IT support. MicroStrategy’s unified BI architecture

offers many IT timesaving features including object reuse and optimized administration. MicroStrategy 9 allows

organizations to create a single shared business logic layer, the metadata, which presents a single cohesive model

of the business. Object reuse across the entire platform facilitates faster application development. Object reuse

across the entire platform also minimizes IT maintenance effort, since IT only needs to maintain one object instead

of several (or several hundred) object copies. Object reuse ensures a single “version of the truth” that persists across

all reports, dashboards, and analyses, regardless of who creates them.

Microstrategy allows report Designers to Create reusable Metadata Components

Range of MetadataElements Used in Reports

REPORT DESIGN

Layout

Format

Calculations

REPORT COMPONENTS

Parameterization

Templates

Filters

Autostyles

BUSINESS ABSTRACTION

Metrics

Hierarchies

Custom Groupings

Transformations

DATA ABSTRACTION

Attributes

Facts

Tables

Aliases

MicroStrategy Other BI Technologies

Report-Specific

Components

Report-Specific

Components

ReusableMetadata

Components

ReusableMetadata

Components

Figure 7: The More Comprehensive the Reusable Metadata, the More an Enterprise can Ensure Fast and Managed Development

MicroStrategy designed its architecture to minimize administration overhead through capabilities such as a single

administration point, reusable and automated cell level data security, and automatic internationalization features.

A central point of control across the entire platform reduces overhead. MicroStrategy’s universally-applied reusable

security system protects the privacy of the data and dynamically filters out data from any report based on the

security profile of each business user. MicroStrategy 9 offers the ability to automatically present every report,

dashboard, or OLAP analysis in the local language of each business user viewing the information without requiring

any additional design work by report authors. MicroStrategy capabilities, such as centralization and automation,

allow administrators to deliver secure BI to any user base, whether to a department or to thousands of users, with

minimal IT effort.

“ The new BI system has reduced the time we spend on monthly reporting by more than 50%. There is now

more time to spend on operations and innovation.” – IT Specialist, Silverstar Casino

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Unified BI architecture

• Single interface provides seamless integration of analytics and reporting for root cause analysis

• Single metadata reduces IT effort

• Single Server

• Single code base across platforms

• Single, zero-footprint Web interface

yes MicroStrategy’s single code base offers reusable business logic across the entire platform. For example, MicroStrategy’s dashboards can be made from existing reports and objects, speeding development and ensuring consistency of report logic across reports and dashboards.

MicroStrategy’s single BI server provides efficient, centralized administration for the IT administrator. A single server with fewer moving parts and processes translates into less downtime.

lIMIteD

QlikView is limited in its ability to provide all five styles of BI. QlikView is limited in its ability to generate the complete range of enterprise reports (highly structured, multi-page reports); to perform complex OLAP analysis (including statistical, data mining, and predictive analytics); and to deliver sophisticated user-driven alerting.

All metadata associated with a QlikView objects, such as metric and filter definitions, are contained within the document and cannot be shared across QlikView documents. The lack of a common reusable semantic layer creates a maintenance challenge; as metric definitions change, report developers are typically forced to manually synchronize definitions across reports.

QlikView has three different Web clients to choose from. These clients provide different levels of functionality. The QlikView Zero-Footprint Client (ZFC) supports only a subset of the functionality supported by the QlikView IE plug-in client.

reusable and rich Metadata layer

• Robust abstraction layer where all physical constructs can be modeled logically and hidden from the business user

• Highly reusable metadata

• Automatic change management

• Object-oriented metadata

yes MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata defines an enterprise’s business layer in a single repository. Metadata objects can be nested as building blocks to create more complex objects. If a metadata object changes, every other metadata object dependent on it automatically changes. This ensures consistency across business definitions and minimizes the number of objects to create and maintain.

MicroStrategy assembles all metadata objects necessary for a report and dynamically builds the report SQL at run-time. Complex queries, such as set qualifications, dimensional calculations, and custom groupings, are created easily without requiring manual SQL coding.

no As each QlikView dashboard is a standalone application, there is little object or metadata reusability between dashboards. This makes it difficult to maintain one consistent business view of the data. One change to a business definition would involve making changes to each QlikView application one by one, a mistake-prone and onerous process. The lack of object reusability makes the BI environment more difficult to maintain, and increases the risk of having “multiple versions of the truth.”

QlikView lacks an object-oriented metadata. Many calculations are typically created anew for each new report and cannot be used as building blocks to build other report objects. This forces report developers to spend more time redundantly creating report objects.

26


enterprise-Caliber administration

• Single management console

• Self-tuning scalable server for maximum performance

• Impact analysis

• Usage monitoring / auditing

• Controlled environment for usage analysis

• Object management / migration

• Change journaling

• Automated regression testing

• Optimization of In-Memory ROLAP environment

yes MicroStrategy’s centralized administration provides a single console for real-time user and system management. Administrators can view and perform tasks on many system-wide activities, including executing jobs, user management, and scheduled services.

MicroStrategy Enterprise Manager provides out-of-the box platform monitoring with hundreds of KPIs and corresponding dashboards to perform impact analysis, auditing and tuning of the BI application.

MicroStrategy Object Manager facilitates metadata life cycle management, metadata dependencies, and project management.

MicroStrategy’s change journaling system captures and logs all changes to the metadata. Change tracking is critical for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Persistent commenting allows distributed development teams to communicate with one another about their changes.

MicroStrategy Integrity Manager automates the report comparison process and verifies the consistency of reports. This tool can detect, compare, and present inconsistencies in reports and data caused by changes in the BI ecosystem. Discrepancies in data values, SQL, and graph display are highlighted.

Cube Advisor recommends and automatically creates an optimal set of In-Memory Cubes to reduce database processing and improve response times.

lIMIteD

In order to be data scalable, simply being able to store and process large volumes of data is insufficient. Large data volumes are typically associated with:

• Complex Schema

• Many tables and columns

• Sophisticated analytical needs

• Large number of users (which typically translates to more reports to maintain)

QlikView is typically difficult to administer under these conditions.

QlikView provides limited out-of-the-box infrastructure to perform analysis on server statistics. QlikView collects usage statistics in a log file, not in a database in a format that is easily analyzable. QlikView also does not have out-of-the-box reports to analyze the collected statistics.

QlikView’s capabilities to queue and prioritize jobs are limited. As a result, the administrator has little control to prevent the mid-tier server from being overtaxed or to properly prioritize resource allocation. QlikView provides system statistics to the administrator – for example, how many users are logged in and how many jobs are running. However, the administrator typically does not have detailed visibility into who is logged in and what jobs they are running. QlikView also does not allow the administrator to manually log out users or kill jobs. In short, the QlikView administrator can monitor the system, but has little power to act.

QlikView does not natively provide change management facilities. Entire documents can be moved from development to production environments, but incremental updates made in a development environment cannot be easily merged into the production environment.

QlikView does not provide change journaling out-of-the-box, and developers must typically rely on third-party revision control or change journaling systems for this capability. QlikView does not provide automated regression testing tools to detect report and data discrepancies caused by changes in the BI system.

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Industrial-strength Multi-level security

• One, reusable setup for platform-wide cell level data security

• Same report yields different views of the information based on user profiles

• User profile determines appropriate level of functionality

• Truly zero-footprint Web interface. No use or download of ActiveX and other plug-ins

• Automatic secure extranet ready with 128-bit encryption

• Integrate with any security infrastructure with single sign-on

yes MicroStrategy provides centralized security administration across the entire platform. Reusable user profiles and privileges automatically ensure users only access the appropriate information and functionality down to the data cell level.

MicroStrategy automatically provides 128-bit end-to-end encryption with a zero-footprint Web client, making it a secure platform behind the firewall.

MicroStrategy automatically integrates with existing security authentication infrastructure such as LDAP, NT, Windows Active Directory, Tivoli, CA SiteMinder, and database security.

lIMIteD

QlikView security is generally managed locally within each dashboard. Security permissions are defined locally within each QlikView document, instead of being automatically applied across all reports and dashboards across the entire BI implementation. In order to implement row level security for users, QlikView designers have to modify the QlikView script and assign appropriate access privileges to the QlikView document users. This makes security management both tedious and error-prone, especially as the user population grows.

QlikView typically requires administrators to write code in order to integrate with security authentication infrastructure such as LDAP, NT, Windows Active Directory, IBM Tivoli, SiteMinder, and database security.

QlikView’s zero-footprint Web client provides less functionality than the ActiveX and Java plug-in versions of the QlikView Web client. A business user who needs greater interactivity will typically require an ActiveX control, making it difficult to deploy widely as some users may be restricted from installing ActiveX controls.

easy to Maintain global Deployments

• Native support for multilingual deployments

• Configurable translations for multiple content categories, including the interface, error messages, date/number formatting, metadata objects, and report data

• Integrated interfaces and wizards to input translations or import translation strings

• Support for partially translated metadata

• Flexible support for multiple data warehouse translation methods

• Internationalization-aware data pre-calculations

yes MicroStrategy offers the ability to dynamically present every report, dashboard, or OLAP analysis in the local language of each business user viewing the information.

Translation wizards and interfaces make it easy for end users to input or import translation strings into the metadata. Translations can be performed incrementally; fallback language settings allow for partially translated metadata.

Multiple methods of data warehouse translations are supported, including translations at the column-level, row-level, table-level, and database-level. A single In-memory ROLAP Cube supports multiple languages so that resources are used efficiently.

lIMIteD

QlikView’s out-of-the-box support for multilingual deployments is generally limited to presenting the QlikView interface in various languages. QlikView has limited native support for multilingual metadata and data. Translation capabilities are not incorporated into the data loading and modeling environment, nor is it incorporated into the report development environment.

QlikView does not provide interfaces to simplify the process of inputting or importing translation strings into the metadata. In order to support a multilingual deployment from a single QlikView document, the report developer must implement workarounds that are time consuming to develop and maintain.

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easy to Customize and Migrate seamlessly

• Single development environment for entire platform

• Easy to create and upgrade customizations via Web Customization editor

• Eclipse Integrated Development Environment(IDE) integration

• Flex Builder support

• Extensive API documentation

yes The MicroStrategy SDK is a comprehensive development environment primarily used for integrating MicroStrategy functionality into other existing systems, especially enterprise portals, and customizing and extending the functionality of MicroStrategy Web.

The MicroStrategy Web Customization Editor integrates into the Eclipse IDE. Developers can easily perform MicroStrategy Web customization and migration tasks by eliminating the need to manually modify configuration files.

MicroStrategy provides Flex Builder 3.0 support for creating powerful Internet applications embedded with robust business intelligence.

The MicroStrategy Developer Zone offers developers access to documentation via advanced search functionality such as sorting results by relevance or by date, wild card and exact phrase searching, word highlighting, spelling suggestions, and exclusion searches.

MicroStrategy provides developers with an online collaborative community, documentation, and customization code samples.

lIMIteD

The QlikView zero-footprint Web interface follows a publishing model to deploy and customize reports. The interface is designed in the desktop client, and then the Web interface HTML file is generated and placed on the Web server. Customizations are then applied to the generated Web page. If the interface is redesigned or upgraded, then a new HTML file must be generated, and any interface customizations must be reapplied. Because customizations must be continually reapplied, Web customizations are difficult to create and upgrade.

6. hIghly InteraCtIve anD flexIBle MoBIle IntelIgenCe

The use of the Internet on smartphones and other mobile devices has changed the way people communicate and

consume information, creating an exponential rise in the acceptance, adoption, and usage of data. With the ability

to access information at any time, in any location, on a hand-held device, consumers can now make more and

more decisions quickly and easily.

MicroStrategy offers a very robust and innovative mobile app development platform that can be used either

for creating purpose-built, workflow-driven mobile applications, or for directly displaying existing Reports and

Dashboards on mobile devices without the need of re-authoring.

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MicroStrategy Mobile Apps:

• Are faster and simpler to develop (no coding) – Created by metadata driven, point-and-click paradigms

and fully utilizing MicroStrategy’s BI infrastructure, security, and reusable metadata components.

• Are easier to maintain – Changes to the centralized BI platform metadata are instantaneously

propagated to all user interfaces, including mobile devices. Changes are made once and only in one

place in the metadata, ensuring a “single version of the truth” and hassle-free maintenance.

• Are enterprise grade – Delivers the full benefits of MicroStrategy’s BI infrastructure: administration,

security, scalability, and performance.

• Provide intuitive and powerful visualizations – Fully leverages MicroStrategy’s vast library of advanced

visualizations.

• Provide exceptional flexibility – The MicroStrategy app platform provides exceptional flexibility to create

a wide range of mobile apps that go above and beyond the boundaries of traditional BI, without

writing a single line of code.

Most other BI companies are still trying to establish their mobile strategies and are primarily focused on providing

traditional BI through mobile devices. These companies do not offer an app development platform that is specifically

designed for building rich mobile applications, while fully leveraging the underlying BI platform infrastructure.

Information at your fingertips – Using Microstrategy’s workflow-Driven Mobile BI

Figure 8: MicroStrategy Mobile Intelligence Provides Exceptional Flexibility to Create a Wide Range of Mobile Apps.

“ We were ‘wowed’ by MicroStrategy’s technology and the ability to build our application in one week

leveraging our existing infrastructure. Our clients are very excited about our new iPhone app and the

capabilities it provides to help them enhance efficiency and improve business performance. We see

tremendous potential for iPhone and iPad apps, which will enable our clients to access important

information whenever they need it.” – CTO at Alloso Technologies

app-Centric

Purpose-built, workflow-driven Apps that quickly and easily guide users through their data to discovery, analysis, or decision. Apps fully leverage mobile device capabilities, including the multi-touch interface, sensors (GPS, camera, etc.), communications (voice, email, text), and more.

enterprise grade

Designed to deliver the higher levels of performance and scalability demanded by mobile Apps. MicroStrategy delivers in-memory, multi-level caching, ROLAP analytics, robust security, easy extensibility, and comprehensive administration features designed for enterprise deployments.

fast to app

Fast, code-free app development via MicroStrategy’s metadata-driven, point-and-click paradigm. Build rich, interactive BI apps in just days. Speed deployment by building once and deploying across platform to iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, browsers, Microsoft Office, or portals.

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enterprise grade Mobile application

• Single “version of the truth”

• Minimum development efforts

• Minimum maintenance efforts

• Superior performance and scalability

• Minimum administration efforts

yes MicroStrategy Mobile accesses the same reports and dashboards used by all other MicroStrategy user interfaces, ensuring a “single version of the truth.” Because reports and dashboards in the BI application do not have to be re-authored for mobile device, minimal additional IT investment is required for mobile deployment.

New reports for mobile devices are created by a metadata driven, point-and-click paradigm fully utilizing MicroStrategy’s BI infrastructure, security, and reusable metadata components. As a result, reports for mobile devices can be created rapidly and easily, in a code-free environment.

MicroStrategy’s object-oriented development paradigm results in reduced maintenance. Changes to metadata are instantaneously propagated to all user interfaces. Changes are made once and only in one location, ensuring hassle-free maintenance.

MicroStrategy Mobile leverages the MicroStrategy platform’s superior performance and scalability functionality and provides rapid answers to tens of thousands of users through their mobile devices. Performance is further enhanced by efficiently caching reports and dashboards locally on the mobile devices.

MicroStrategy's acclaimed administration tools provide the administration efficiencies needed to deploy mobile applications to hundreds of thousands of users, while providing the industry's lowest total cost of ownership.

lIMIteD

Scalability and user concurrency has become even more critical with the advent of Mobile BI. Users now have the flexibility to access BI systems at anytime and from anywhere. As a result, users will ask more questions and the number of queries submitted to the BI system will increase exponentially.

In order to deliver enterprise-caliber mobile applications, the underlying BI platform will require superior scalability to handle the increased user requests and higher user concurrency. QlikView has inherent scalability and user concurrency issues. Each QlikView user needs to have its own User Session States, storing the User Session States and aggregates takes up RAM above and beyond the RAM used to store the QlikView application. It is not uncommon to have a QlikView application that takes up nearly 100% of the RAM for each additional user. Having 3-5 concurrent users accessing the same QlikView application could easily double the amount of RAM required, creating serious scalability, performance, and user concurrency issues.

QlikView does not follow an object-oriented development paradigm and does not have a reusable metadata layer. The lack of object-oriented development results in significantly higher maintenance efforts; changes to the QlikView deployment are not automatically propagated and any change to the common business definition would require making changes to each QlikView document one by one, a mistake-prone and onerous process. QlikView’s limited breadth of administration tools further increases the administration and maintenance workload.

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security of Mobile BI

• Multi-level BI platform security extended to mobile devices

• Data protection on the mobile device

• Data transmission security

• Integration with enterprise-wide security infrastructure (single sign-on)

yes MicroStrategy Mobile utilizes the same sophisticated user authorization management framework available in theMicroStrategy BI platform. Authorization refers to the three-dimensional process by which the application determines:

• Application functionality privileges• Object access permissions• Data access security

MicroStrategy provides a Web-based mobile configuration interface that enables administrative control of password policies for the MicroStrategy BI platform. It also allows administrators to set a variety of local data caching options. Administrators can specify maximum cache size on the device, automatically wipe all locally cached data every time the app is closed, and set options for automatically rebuilding new caches for user subscriptions once the application is re-loaded. This ensures security of data that is stored locally on the device.

MicroStrategy’s BI platform provides an option to encrypt communications between its server components, such as between the MicroStrategy Intelligence Server and MicroStrategy Mobile Server, using an AES 128-bit algorithm.

lIMIteD

Security has to be defined redundantly for each QlikView document. QlikView developers have to edit each QlikView document and modify the load script to enable row level security. This is a tedious and time consuming process that is difficult to maintain in a large scale deployments.

QlikView provides limited options for local data caching on the mobile devices.

QlikView only provides the functionality to extract user information from the Directory Service; any authorization needed against it has to be handled separately.

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highly Interactive and Intuitive User experience

• Native mobile applications

• Device-specific actions

o Multi-touch

o App integration

o Sensor based query

o Mobile Info capture

• BI-specific features perfectly designed to work with device specific capabilities

o Drill anywhere

o Swipe to page-by

o Integrated mapping

o Rich visualizations

o Alerts through push notifications

o Prompting

o Subscriptions

• Offline analysis

yes MicroStrategy provides native apps for mobile devices. The native apps are designed to fully leverage mobile device capabilities including the multi-touch interface, sensors (GPS, camera, etc.), communications (voice, email, text), and more.

MicroStrategy Mobile apps provide a vast range of BI-specific functionality designed to leverage and work seamlessly with device capabilities. BI functionality includes integrated Google maps, out-of-the-box drill-anywhere, a vast library of advanced visualizations, and device-specific actions to perform tasks such as swiping (horizontally or vertically).

Users can page-by, set alerts for report refresh or data changes through push notifications, use intelligent prompting, metric swapping, and much more.

With MicroStrategy Mobile, reports are cached directly on the mobile devices for fast, offline viewing. Reports are fully interactive; data can be sliced and sorted; and columns can be locked, resized, and reordered for effective comparisons of metrics.

Users can subscribe to reports directly from their mobile devices and do not have to wait for IT to create subscriptions for them.

lIMIteD

QlikTech launched native applications for iOS and Android devices first. The user experience delivered by QlikTech’s native apps was very poor; as a result, it failed to generate enthusiasm in the BI space. Instead of improving their existing native apps QlikTech changed its strategy and introduced a new browser-based interface that supports HTML5 capable browsers.

The QlikTech native applications support only one object-at-a-time view of the QlikView document. This restriction results in creating an unintuitive user interface with awkward navigation. End users have to go back and forth to make and clear selections. Users cannot change the value of an attribute and see its effect on the KPIs side- by-side. As a result, users quickly get lost and lose context of the data being analyzed.

The QlikTech browser-based mobile interface tries to mimic the QlikView desktop functionality on mobile devices. QlikView’s browser-based interface is designed for larger screen devices like the iPad, and its use is not practical for small screen devices like the iPhone. Users who wish to use QlikView on smartphones will be forced to use the QlikView native clients that provide a terrible user experience.

The browser-based QlikView mobile interface has many limitations and cannot fully utilize powerful device specific functionality to provide a rich user experience that mobile users are accustomed to, for example: Offline analysis, Metric swapping, location-based analytics, alerts through push notifications, swipe to page-by, App integration (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, phone, etc), Sensor based query, mobile info capture, and so on.

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app Development Platform

• Flexibility to create any information workflow

• Ability to deliver multiple forms of information through the mobile app

• Actionable mobile apps

yes The MicroStrategy app platform provides exceptional flexibility to create Mobile apps that can be used to create a very wide range of mobile applications that go above and beyond the boundaries of traditional BI without writing a single line of code.

MicroStrategy extends the boundaries of the mobile BI App by delivering multiple forms of information to users within the same app. Unstructured information like images, text, desktop publishing design, web content (web pages, videos), and more can also be included. In addition, MicroStrategy Mobile also provides an in-app PDF reader, email, browser, HTML containers, and optimized ePub handling.

MicroStrategy provides the ability to implement, and embed transactional capabilities into the information driven mobile apps. Using MicroStrategy Mobile, business users can not only monitor key business metrics, but also initiate appro-priate actions from within the mobile apps.

no QlikView considers mobile as just another user interface to deliver traditional BI and does not provide the capabilities to build and deploy custom-built, work-flow driven mobile applications that go beyond the boundaries of viewing traditional BI content on mobile devices.

QlikView does not provide the capabilities to deliver multiple forms of information through mobile devices.

QlikTech does not provide transactional capabilities through mobile devices.

7. DeeP InsIght throUgh sUPerIor analytICs

MicroStrategy 9 allows users to freely investigate data and “surf” through the data warehouse without having to

design a new report for each new combination of data that a user wants to see. Users can create analytic metrics

leveraging a wide range of data mining algorithms, statistical, predictive, and OLAP functions, as well as capabilities

for metric grouping on-the-fly. Users can import complex statistical models from specialized third party data mining

applications. MicroStrategy’s unified platform ensures that all these analytic capabilities are available on any type of

report in the entire BI environment.

“ World-class analytics are important and MicroStrategy is a cost efficient way to address our expanding BI

requirement.” – Chief Executive Officer, eHarmony

34

Microstrategy Delivers Comprehensive analytics that are easy to Consume

Figure 9: Advanced Analytics can be Easily Incorporated into and Consumed through Reports, Dashboards and Scorecards.

MicroStrategy’s ability to generate multi-pass SQL is a key element in providing analytically sophisticated business

intelligence applications. Multi-pass SQL is required to answer analytical questions that require several steps and

cannot be answered with a single SQL query block. MicroStrategy generates SQL that performs these multi-pass

queries as efficiently as possible for each particular database.

Iterative analysis is the dynamic mechanism that represents the continuous interaction and advanced analytical

techniques between the BI server and the database. MicroStrategy uses this approach when complex questions cannot

be answered using only the database. Not only does MicroStrategy automatically invoke iterative analysis when

required, it also dynamically decides the most optimal location to perform the calculations, based on its own strengths

and the database strengths, while minimizing data transfer.

“ MicroStrategy’s powerful analytics help us analyze sales performance across locations and model lines for

enhanced sales targeting and inventory management” – Manager, IT Systems, Porsche Cars North

America, Inc.

Web Browser

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Segmentation Analysis

Trend Analysis

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efficiently answer Complex Questions

• Multi-pass SQL

• Collaborative processing between analytical engine and RDBMS-based processing

• Reusable analysis objects (e.g., custom groups, consolidations, transformations, conditional metrics, sets)

• Support for complex definitions of analysis objects (e.g., conditional metrics with set conditions, custom groups defined with a mix of metric qualifications and attributes at different levels, set analysis with multi-attribute comparisons)

• All analytical capabilities available across all styles of BI

yes MicroStrategy’s ability to generate multi-pass SQL allows MicroStrategy to answer analytical questions that require several steps and cannot be answered with a single SQL query block.

MicroStrategy automatically uses collaborative processing between the BI server and the database when complex questions cannot be answered using only the database. MicroStrategy also dynamically decides the most optimal location to perform the calculations, based on its own strengths and the database strengths, while minimizing data transfer.

The MicroStrategy metadata supports a rich set of reusable analysis objects. In addition to attributes, metrics, and filters, complex objects such as custom groups and transformations can be created and reused in any report. The reusability of these analysis objects allows business users to answer sophisticated questions without requiring IT coding and promotes more efficient application development.

MicroStrategy’s analysis objects can be defined with a high degree of complexity. For example, a custom group can be based on a mix of metric qualifications and multiple attributes at different levels.

MicroStrategy’s analytical capabilities are provided by the BI platform instead of standalone capabilities in the front-end interface. As a result, all analytical capabilities are available across all styles of BI, and users can have any question answered in any type of report.

lIMIteD

QlikView performs all calculations in the analytical engine on the mid-tier server or the client. All data is held and processed in memory by the QlikView engine, even if complex and iterative calculations can be processed more efficiently by the RDBMS. QlikView’s performance is limited by the CPU and memory capacity of the mid-tier server or client.

QlikView is also limited in its ability to take advantage of the OLAP calculations supported by relational databases that are not provided out-of-the-box by QlikView.

QlikView’s basic metadata does not support complex objects such as conditional metrics, custom groups, and transformations. As a result, complex analysis is often not possible, or requires developers to encode and pre-calculate complex analytics within the QlikView database load scripts.

36


sophisticated Predictive analytics

• Single unified platform provides data mining scoring capabilities

• Open platform and cross-vendor interoperability via PMML

• Seamless integration of predictive analytics with casual reporting

• Support for popular predictive analytic algorithms (e.g., Linear Regression, Logistic Regression, Tree-Regression, Clustering, Decision Tree, Association Rules, Time Series)

• Support for complex algorithms (e.g., Neural Network, Rule Set, Support Vector Machine, Ensembles of Models)

• Member of the Data Mining Group, a data mining standards-setting organization

yes The MicroStrategy BI platform delivers data mining and predictive analytics to all users through a fully unified and integrated enterprise-caliber BI system. MicroStrategy Data Mining Services enables organizations to maximize their investment in data mining products by importing their Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) and seamlessly encapsulating the model as a predictive metric for use with any report or document.

Report designers and analysts can view and build predictive reports using MicroStrategy and then distribute these reports to all relevant decision makers and stakeholders. Business analysts can perform further analysis – slicing-and-dicing data, creating ad hoc reports, drilling, pivoting, and sorting – on predictive reports. All users continue to inherit all the object reuse, security, administrative, and manageability benefits of the MicroStrategy BI platform.

MicroStrategy data mining scoring capabilities support cross-vendor interoperability. MicroStrategy supports PMML from SPSS, KXEN, SAS, Salford Systems, Oracle, ANGOSS, FairIsaac, StatSoft and R.

MicroStrategy is an active member of the Data Mining Group, providing guidance and leadership to set the PMML standards for the data mining industry.

lIMIteD

QlikView provides some statistical functions. QlikView also provides the ability to input variable values, which can be combined with mathematical functions to perform basic what-if calculations. However, many predictive analytic and data mining algorithms are not provided out-of-the-box. QlikView is also limited in its ability to import PMML models or otherwise integrate with the predictive models provided by third-party data mining products.

QlikTech is not a member of the Data Mining Group.

8. flexIBle teChnology for DePartMental to enterPrIse BI

Increasingly, departments want their own islands of departmental BI because they need the flexibility and speed

offered by smaller systems that are unencumbered by inter-departmental coordination, budgeting allocations,

and project prioritization. On the other hand, CFOs and CIOs want enterprise BI systems because they offer a

single “version of the truth” and the lowest cost of ownership. With MicroStrategy 9, companies can have both.

MicroStrategy’s flexible BI platform provides multi-source data access, rapid application development, and seamless

migration from departmental to enterprise BI.

37

Microstrategy 9 supports a gradual and Incremental Migration from Islands of BI into a Consolidated

enterprise BI system

Enterprise DW

HR Dept Sales Dept

HR Sales

Enterprise

Finance Dept

Fin

HR Dept Sales Dept

Enterprise HR Sales

Finance Dept HR Dept Sales Dept

Enterprise DWEnterprise DW

HR Dept Sales DeptFinance Dept

Fin

Finance DeptFinance Dept

Fin

Finance Dept

Enterprise

Stage 1Disparate Islands of BI

All Running on MicroStrategy BI

Stage 2Merging Islands of BI

Using MicroStrategy Multi-source

Stage 3Consolidating Data

Re-pointing Metadata to the EDW

HR Sales

Figure 10: MicroStrategy Technology Provides a Seamless Migration Path from Departmental BI to Enterprise BI

“ Organizations need to gradually and incrementally consolidate their departmental and workgroup islands of

BI into a cohesive enterprise framework that ensures a single “version of the truth” and low cost of operation.

MicroStrategy is directly addressing this challenge with MicroStrategy 9, which contains an In-memory BI and

Multi-source BI capability that will make MicroStrategy’s enterprise-caliber technology equally suitable for

workgroup BI and departmental BI. MicroStrategy’s new platform includes capabilities that allow consolidation

and transformation of departmental and workgroup islands of BI without having to redo reports or dashboards

as consolidation takes place.” – Chief Executive Officer and Executive Vice President Research,

Ventana Research


seamless Migration from Departmental to enterprise BI

• Metadata compatibility enables consolidation of islands of information

• Metadata abstraction layer enables seamless re-pointing of the data source without affecting the business model

• Advanced migration and environment management tools

yes MicroStrategy’s metadata compatibility enables departments to incrementally migrate their business logic into a consolidated BI environment.

MicroStrategy’s metadata abstraction layer allows companies to “re-point” the metadata to automatically access new data locations without disrupting reports or requiring redesign.

MicroStrategy Object Manager can automatically consolidate disparate departmental BI applications while reconciling all overlaps or conflicts that may arise.

lIMIteD

QlikView applications are standalone documents in which all metadata is self-contained. QlikView lacks an enterprise metadata layer in which a semantic layer, including data relationships and reporting objects, is shared across QlikView applications. As a result, QlikView deployments are typically soloed and departmental, with little flexibility to consolidate the disconnected QlikView applications into one enterprise-wide BI application with a “single version of the truth.”

38


high Performing Multi-source Data access

• Unified multi-dimensional business model across multiple data sources

• Optimized retrieval of multi-source data

• Smart Push-Down architecture

• Automatic multi-source drill anywhere

• Support for distributed workload database architectures

• Direct access to multi-dimensional data sources including SAP® BW InfoCubes and QueryCubes, Hyperion Essbase, and Microsoft Analysis Services.

• Direct reporting from salesforce.com

yes MicroStrategy’s unified multi-dimensional business model allows companies to create a single logical view spanning multiple data sources, making it easy to add new data sources. Users are able to seamlessly drill across multiple data sources.

MicroStrategy optimizes the retrieval of data from heterogeneous data sources. MicroStrategy dynamically selects the most efficient data source to query. The MicroStrategy SQL engine automatically creates queries optimized for each data source for fast performance without IT tuning efforts.

MicroStrategy’s Smart Push-Down architecture performs joins at the database layer thereby minimizing network traffic and leveraging the power of modern database engines. MicroStrategy further minimizes network traffic by moving the least amount of data to the most optimal database.

yes QlikView can extract data from multiple data sources into a single QlikView database. Heterogeneous data is consolidated into one QlikView database before a semantic layer and reports are created. Reports can inherently query and drill across multi-source data, provided the data is stored in one QlikView database.

QlikView does not push down query processing to the data source, and performs all calculations on the mid-tier instead. For a given query, QlikView’s architecture cannot distribute processing workloads across multiple data sources or across multiple instances of the QlikView database.

rapid Departmental BI application Development

• No need for a data warehouse or ETL tool

• Graphical and intuitive design interface to minimize IT effort

• Automatic detection wizard for creation of business logic and table mappings

• Pre-created templates for quick project and dashboard development

• Command line administrative tool for high volume tasks

• Comprehensive data model support

yes MicroStrategy 9 provides easy access to multiple data sources without requiring a data warehouse. MicroStrategy can instantiate In-memory ROLAP cubes by pulling information from multiple sources, obviating the need of an ETL tool or a data warehouse.

MicroStrategy’s graphical design interface makes it fast and easy to add new data sources and define business logic. A set of pre-created templates speed dashboard development.

MicroStrategy automatically detects data types from data sources and creates the entire business logic layer, speeding development.

MicroStrategy provides a scripting interface that allows project developers to schedule massive and repetitive tasks in a matter of seconds.

lIMIteD

In order for QlikView users to access multisource data, all data must first be loaded into a single QlikView database. QlikView automatically links tables by joining fields that have the same name.

QlikView’s data load scripting interface is largely text-based instead of graphical. This makes it difficult for developers to view and define data joins and business logic, especially for moderately complex data environments with many tables and columns.

QlikView provides an Automation API and a built-in VBScript interpreter that allows developers to automate complex or bulk application-related tasks. However, administrators have limited ability to automate server-related administrative tasks.

39


Centralized and De-Centralized administration

• Web-based administration for business managers

• Allows distribution of administrative tasks, including object promotion, data integrity checking, and user management

• Update Packages allow distributed development

yes MicroStrategy 9 allows user and application administration responsibilities to be distributed to business people within individual departments using a Web interface. This offloads administrative tasks from centralized IT personnel and gives departments the ability to have their own databases, their own BI applications, and their own metadata within the same infrastructure as the enterprise BI environment.

MicroStrategy 9 Update Packages can automatically consolidate disparate development teams’ updates and changes.

lIMIteD

QlikView has limited ability to provide administrators with only subsets of administrative tasks. As a result, it is difficult to have an enterprise BI environment with a centralized security and development infrastructure, while allowing for departmental administrators with a limited scope of capabilities.

All metadata for a QlikView document is stored in one file. QlikView does not provide facilities to have multiple developers simultaneously and independently edit a QlikView document, and then later merge all edits. Instead, a QlikView document will typically be modified by one developer at a time, and a checkout system would be implemented to prevent more than one developer from modifying a QlikView document at the same time. As a result, QlikView does not easily support a distributed development environment that is often needed for moderately large applications.

III. MicroStrategy – A Market Proven, Industrial-Strength Technology

MicroStrategy 9 is an advanced technology that allows companies to support all types of BI applications with one

technology. MicroStrategy 9 builds on MicroStrategy’s heritage of high-end BI and further extends the boundaries of

performance, scalability, and efficiency of enterprise BI. At the same time, MicroStrategy 9 brings that same enterprise-

caliber BI technology easily within reach of smaller departmental BI initiatives. 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.

“Today, organizations need a business intelligence solution that can support user self-sufficiency and can

respond more quickly and effectively to local business needs. MicroStrategy 9 provides end users with more

control over the analysis and reports they create and helps them to be more self-sufficient, require far less

IT support, and quickly adapt to changing business requirements.” – Wayne Eckerson, Director of TDWI

Research at The Data Warehousing Institute

Unlike BI suites offered by other vendors, MicroStrategy offers the only organically grown BI architecture. All of

the MicroStrategy 9 components were expressly built to work within a unified architecture and not as separate

standalone products or acquired technologies that were subsequently joined together. This caliber of BI technology

is now being sought after by companies, not solely for their most demanding BI applications, but for the purpose of

hosting all of their BI applications. Today, companies can standardize all BI into a single, highly-functional, efficient

architecture and reap significant economies of scale and enterprise-wide consistency.

MicroStrategy Incorporated • 1850 Towers Crescent Plaza • Tysons Corner, VA 22182 • 1.888.537.8135 • www.microstrategy.com COLL-1022 0812

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MicroStrategy 9 vs. QlikTech (QlikView 11) - NDM II. Comparison of MicroStrategy 9 and QlikView 11 on the Key BI Capabilities Business intelligence has the power to provide performance