vs. SAP Business Objects XI 3.1

MicroStrategy 9

• Homegrown Single Platform: MicroStrategy’s single code base offers the advanced advantage of 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.
• Single Server and Centralized Administration: 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.

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1

• Multiple Platforms and Metadata Repositories: BO is a loosely integrated set of tools, not a unified architecture. XI Release 3 consists of multiple overlapping tools (with different interfaces and user paradigms); multiple different code bases, multiple separate metadatas and repositories. This multiplicity results in redundant setup and administration tasks.
• Five Different User Interfaces: BO's portal, Infoview, is necessary to combine up to 10 different user interfaces together since BO reports and reporting objects do not fully integrate across their distinct tools, or from their desktop to Web interfaces.

MicroStrategy 9

• Single Reusable Metadata Repository: MicroStrategy’s object-oriented metadata defines your 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.
• Dynamic SQL Engine: MicroStrategy assembles all metadata objects necessary for a report, such as set qualifications, dimensional calculations, and custom groupings, and dynamically builds the report SQL at run-time without requiring manual SQL coding.

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1

• Report Designers Cannot Created Metadata To Reuse Across Reports: BO's legacy of stand-alone products are still not fully integrated on a single repository of reusable business logic. BO's multiple separate metadata models (Universes, Business Views, Metric Universes, etc.) vary in functionality supported and are stored in different repositories.
• Local Reporting Objects not sharable among users: Many calculations, conditions and prompts are typically created anew for each new report and cannot be easily used as building blocks to build other reporting objects.

MicroStrategy 9

• Single Point of Monitoring and Administration: MicroStrategy provides a single centralized console for real-time user and system management and an out-of-the box BI environment monitoring application.
• Robust Life Cycle Management: MicroStrategy Object Manager facilitates metadata life cycle management, automatic dependency checking, and project management.
• Advanced In-Memory Optimization Tools: MicroStrategy’s Cube Advisor recommends and automatically creates an optimal set of In-Memory ROLAP Cubes to reduce database processing and speed response time.

SAP BusinessObjects XI 3.1

• Limited Monitoring and Administration: BO provides very limited out-of-the-box dashboards, reports and KPIs to perform impact analysis, auditing and tuning of the BI application.
• Incomplete Life Cycle Management: BO offers limited auditing capabilities and tools to aid in usage and metadata management.
• Insufficient In-Memory Optimization Tools: BO does not provide any cube advisor tool that would recommend In-memory ROLAP cubes to reduce database processing and response time for BI applications.

MicroStrategy 9

• Centralized and Pervasive Security: MicroStrategy provides centralized security administration across the entire platform.
• Automatic Levels of Functionality and Data Access: Reusable user profiles and privileges automatically ensure users only access the appropriate information and functionality down to the data cell level.
• Pervasive 128-bit Encryption: MicroStrategy supports 128-bit end-to-end encryption with a zero-footprint Web client, making it a secure platform behind the firewall.

MicroStrategy 9

• Native Support for Multilingual Deployments: MicroStrategy automatically translates the report descriptions, user interface, metadata objects, error messages and data into local languages without any IT design or maintenance effort.
• Integrated Translation Interfaces and Wizards: 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.

MicroStrategy 9

• Single and Flexible Development Environment: MicroStrategy’s single Web interface, single server and single code base provide a unified development environment for the whole platform. There is no need to learn multiple SDKs.
• Eclipse IDE-Ready Web Customization Editor: The MicroStrategy Web Customization Editor integrates into the Eclipse IDE. Developers easily perform MicroStrategy Web customization and migration tasks by eliminating the need to manually modify configuration files.