Microsoft-Power-BI-vs-SAP-Analytics-Cloud

Microsoft Power BI and SAP Analytics Cloud are business intelligence and analytics platforms that allow users to query and visualize data. This analysis helps provide businesses with insights to improve their decision-making capabilities. 

Microsoft Power BI is more focused on ad-hoc querying of datasets with powerful data slicing and dicing tools. On the other hand, SAP Analytics Cloud is targeted at businesses that already use SAP database and data warehouse platforms and want to use their data to build dashboards and reporting structures. On TrustRadius, Microsoft Power BI is popular among midsize businesses and enterprises while SAP Analytics Cloud is preferred by enterprise organizations. 

Features

Since Power BI is part of the Microsoft ecosystem of products and services, users who are comfortable with other Microsoft products will likely have little trouble adjusting to Power BI. Another major plus of Power BI is that it is available for free for individual users. This allows users without business accounts to learn and practice with the software on their own time with their own projects. Another feature offered by Microsoft Power BI is the ability to use custom data visualizations downloaded from Microsoft Marketplace, further expanding the capabilities of the tool. 

SAP Analytics Cloud’s standout features are its excellent dashboard and data visualization capabilities. TrustRadius users report that the product’s graphics are high quality and that dashboards are easy to build. SAP also pushes frequent updates to the program on a bi-weekly or quarterly basis (depending on contract details) and is actively adding new features to the software regularly. Analytics Cloud also offers natural language processing to make finding results easier through the search function. Lastly, An embedded version is offered at no extra cost so that users can build charts and dashboards into other SAP applications and have changes in data reflected in real-time.    

Limitations

According to end-users, Microsoft Power BI has a few downsides. Businesses that want complete control of their data will have to upgrade to the premium version of the software to be able to keep their data in-house and off of Microsoft’s servers. Power BI also has rigid rules in place for handling table joins within a database. This can lead to problems for users who need multiple joins from a single table. TrustRadius reviewers also report some issues with performance when trying to manipulate extremely large datasets.  

SAP Analytics Cloud has a few limitations as well. Since it is so heavily embedded within the SAP environment, there are fewer third-party integrations available. Integration with other software systems may be more difficult to achieve because of this. Some TrustRadius reviewers comment that SAP Analytics Cloud’s data analysis capabilities are not as robust as some of their competitors’ data analytics features. Other users have experienced issues with having to split up queries because of line limits and other data limitations.  

Pricing

Microsoft Power BI offers paid plans for business users and a free version for individual users. While the free version allows individuals to practice using the software and become familiar with its functionality, it has a more limited feature set than the paid business plans. 

Pricing for its Power BI Pro plan starts at $9.95 per user per month. For businesses that need advanced functionality, the Power BI Premium plan is available starting at $4,995 per year. Enterprise organizations will need to request a consultation for full pricing options. 

SAP Analytics Cloud offers a 90-day free trial which includes access to SAP Analytics Cloud for Business Intelligence and SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning, with limitations on their capabilities. They also offer a Business Intelligence package for $22 per user per month, which includes full access to those modules with Cloud for Planning being view-only. SAP also offers two higher-priced tiers, with pricing available by request from the vendor.