A business intelligence (BI) platform is used to help businesses collect, analyze, and transform raw data into something useful. It serves as the backbone of a company’s business intelligence strategy, or how an organization can make better data-driven decisions. BI platforms are no longer differentiated by their data visualization capabilities, as that is the most common baseline of many top BI platforms for the enterprise in 2022. Instead, organizations seeking the benefits of modern BI solutions need to dig deeper to find what sets them apart.
Investing in a modern BI solution opens the door to digital transformation by means of providing access to data across an organization and enabling business users of all backgrounds to find value in data.
With that in mind, here are 7 top BI platforms for enterprises in 2022 to consider.
1. Microsoft Power BI
Coming from the software giant Microsoft, Power BI offers data preparation, visual-based data discovery, interactive dashboards, and augmented analytics. In terms of enterprise BI solutions, Microsoft offers Power BI Premium as the enterprise version of the software. As Microsoft also features their own cloud data platform, Azure, Power BI Premium integrates with many Azure capabilities.
Additionally, Microsoft continually updates the Power BI platform, upgrading and adding new features to remain a pivotal player in the top BI platforms for the enterprise in 2022.
On the downside, the Power BI service is a cloud offering, but can only be deployed in Microsoft’s own Azure public cloud environment (and is optimized for underlying Azure databases).
This may present complexities in the future if enterprises are not exclusively using Azure or Power BI and limits customer choice.
2. Tableau
Tableau is another top BI software platform for enterprises with many expanded enterprise product capabilities. A high selling point for this platform lies in its patented VizQL engine. This technology allows for fast interactive data visualization. While dashboards are commonplace for many other top BI platforms, Tableau features good-looking dashboards and a simplistic design. Another highlight to make is that Tableau CRM (formerly Einstein Analytics) is native to Salesforce.
In terms of negative differentiators, Tableau is optimized for in-memory data extracts, which, over time, can create management and governance challenges.
Additionally, Tableau does not have a cloud-native architecture for on-premises customers to embrace the cloud’s full benefits. And while the platform offers a free trial, it is known to be more expensive than the other top BI solution platforms.
3. MicroStrategy
Continuing in our list of the top 7 BI platforms for the enterprise in 2022, MicroStrategy’s platform comprises an analytic product family for data connectivity, data visualization, reporting, and advanced analytics.
In recent years, MicroStrategy developed the enterprise deployment capabilities of its hosted service, MicroStrategy Cloud Environment, which is available on Microsoft Azure and Amazon’s AWS. Another major component of MicroStrategy is its HyperIntelligence application, which uses a semantic graph to overlay and dynamically identify predefined insights within existing applications.
Those seeking a more modern and flexible BI solution may decide to choose a different competitor, as MicroStrategy lacks the advantage of stackable solutions. Meaning that while MicroStrategy’s platform works well, the incompatibility of its legacy BI platform with cloud architecture and modern systems can create barriers to full modernization efforts.
4. Qlik
Being in business for over 30 years, Qlik has built up a presence in the industry as one of the top 7 BI platforms for the enterprise in 2022. It’s important to note that when comparing Qlik to other BI platforms, there are two solutions that Qlik offers. QlikView is their first generation analytics platform, while their recent Qlik Sense offers a more modern analytic solution.
Similar to QlikView, Qlik Sense is used primarily to build and deploy dashboards and basic applications based on data that has been extracted to Qlik’s proprietary in-memory associative engine. With recent acquisitions over the past few years, Qlik Sense has bolstered its capabilities for alerts, continuous intelligence, and SaaS platform integration.
Qlik’s acquisitions in recent years make for a complex portfolio with extended complexities in pricing and integration. The Qlik umbrella of BI solutions and tools may be comprehensive and extensive, yet may be confusing and unappealing for enterprise leaders looking for more cohesiveness and a simpler approach to business intelligence.
5. Sisense
Sisense provides an end-to-end analytics platform that supports complex data projects by offering data preparation and visual exploration capabilities as well as augmented analytics. Sisense is especially known for its embedded analytics capabilities, which are a major factor in the future of business intelligence. Embedded analytics offers the capability of data analysis within a user’s natural workflow, without the need to toggle to another application.
Sisense is also an open platform, and capable of a muilticloud strategy for enterprises to utilize. The Sinsense Fusion platform In terms of ElastiCube is Sisense’s unique, high-performance analytics database. However, Sisense’s in-memory ElastiCube architecture requires significant maintenance by skilled technicians. And in terms of scalability, it may be cumbersome for enterprise users as the number of users and volume of data increase.
6. Amazon QuickSight
Amazon also features a top BI platform solution which is called QuickSight. While relatively new, it is backed by Amazon’s AWS platform, which is one of the main cloud providers in the industry.
Amazon QuickSight offers Standard and Enterprise editions. QuickSight for enterprises adds additional features such as improved security and machine learning-backed automated insights. In terms of competition, QuickSight is newer and the BI solutions marketplace is already dominated by other players. It provides core data connectivity and data visualization functionality, but in terms of market mobility, many enterprises may look towards more established top BI platforms for their needs. Amazon QuickSight Q was released to general availability in 2021, which allows enterprise users to query their data using natural language.
Despite the advances that QuickSight has made since its release and Amazon’s AWS is a top cloud provider, the BI platform solution may not have much market potential regarding its already established competitors.
7. Looker
Looker is Google Cloud’s modern enterprise platform for business intelligence, data applications, and embedded analytics. Since Looker’s acquisition by Google in 2020, the BI solution platform has been further integrated into Google Cloud Platform. Keeping up with Google Cloud’s multicloud strategy for enterprises, Looker is an end-to-end multicloud platform. This prevents users from being locked into a single interface or cloud environment and allows for flexibility.
With Looker’s BI platform, teams have access to real-time data, so they can answer critical business questions at any moment of the day. Yeah
Another key differentiator of the Looker platform is its semantic modeling layer. LookML is a highly reusable and efficient SQL-based modeling language that allows data analysts to create a single source of truth for all business metric definitions.
Comparing the Top 7 BI Platforms for the Enterprise in 2022
Let’s face it, modern BI platforms are more than just dashboards and other data visualization capabilities, and the goalposts have moved in terms of what BI solutions can provide. Business intelligence in 2022 revolves around actionable insights for all, not just data analysts. By infusing actionable intelligence wherever people spend their time, enterprise organizations can capitalize on each business user executing faster data-driven decisions no matter their role.
While enterprise business leaders recognize the need to be “data-driven,” there is a clear struggle to understand which BI platform solutions fit their needs the most.
While we’ve listed some top BI platforms for the enterprise, choosing a platform in itself can be complicated. Thankfully, Pandera is here to help your organization clear up the clutter to find the best BI solution for you. With our expertise and clear strategy, we provide industry-leading services in business intelligence for the enterprise.
Our partnership with Google Cloud and Looker enables organizations to foster a data-driven culture and gain a competitive advantage. Is your enterprise ready to transform its business intelligence initiatives? Let us know how we can assist!