BI Vendors

My company is looking at several vendors of BI software for our data
warehouse. We have never had a data warehouse before and are learning
everything from scratch. Does anyone have any opinions on the
following vendors...
Panorama
Proclarity
Cognos
Business Objects
Information Builders
We are hoping to bring in someone who has lots of DW experience to
help us decide on one of these vendors. But, we are interested in
opinions of people who have experience with these vendors.
Thanks for the help!!
--Lori
Hi Lori,
ProClarity & Panorama are very similar products but given the 2 I would
always go with Panorama. I prefer the look-and-feel and has some nice
functionality (e.g. Bubble-Up exceptions) that ProClarity doesn't.
Did you get all the information you wanted from your same post on
sqlservercentral.com?
cheers
Jamie
"LoriB" wrote:

> My company is looking at several vendors of BI software for our data
> warehouse. We have never had a data warehouse before and are learning
> everything from scratch. Does anyone have any opinions on the
> following vendors...
> Panorama
> Proclarity
> Cognos
> Business Objects
> Information Builders
> We are hoping to bring in someone who has lots of DW experience to
> help us decide on one of these vendors. But, we are interested in
> opinions of people who have experience with these vendors.
> Thanks for the help!!
> --Lori
>
|||Jamie,
Thanks for the info. And, I did get a lot of good opinions in my
other post. I wanted to try to get to as many people as I could so I
posted in several different places.
--Lori
"Jamie" <Jamie@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:<1F3F614A-8EEF-4061-9159-2BA25277C12D@.microsoft.com>...
> Hi Lori,
> ProClarity & Panorama are very similar products but given the 2 I would
> always go with Panorama. I prefer the look-and-feel and has some nice
> functionality (e.g. Bubble-Up exceptions) that ProClarity doesn't.
> Did you get all the information you wanted from your same post on
> sqlservercentral.com?
> cheers
> Jamie
|||the answer is never clear, this depend on budget, functionalities required,
number of users...
if you have 100 users and 2 analysts the choice is different from 98
analysts and 2 viewers!
do you use Analysis Services cubes? (so focus on AS compatible applications)
or there is only an SQL Server database for the moment?
AS is required for Proclarity and Panorama. and optional for Cognos, BO and
Info Builders.
do you need to support AS features like actions, drill through, writeback?
* focus on Proclarity, panorama, and some of the AS compatible applications
what type of calculation do you need?
* distinct count are difficult to support outside AS and Cognos Cubes.
* complex calculations required (like: average of the parent level if the
user look at th day, but sum at the year level...) -> AS or Microstrategy
what is the expertise of your users?
* Very low : Info. Builder, Microstrategy (viewer) and Cognos Reportnet
(viewer only) (maybe BO, but the price is high for simply accessing a
report)
* Average : Proclarity / panorama / Cognos Powerplay
* High: Microstrategy / Proclarity / panorama / Bo (WebIntelligence) /
Cognos reportnet (designer role)
Do you need to create high quality and printable reports?
* Microstrategy / BO / Cognos. BO is very good for this, other the web or in
client/server.
The other tools are more analysis oriented than reporting oriented
what is the level of security required?
* Microstrategy and AS cubes are great, so its very easy to open the doors
to your users. Personally, I've never open the doors of BO and Cognos
because the data security is hard to setup. (except in simple viewer
accesses)
There is other interesting tools:
Reportportal; winsight (http://www.winsight.fr/en/index.htm); Arcplan
dynasight; Hyperion etc...
Test reportportal online to see what an AS tool can do. you'll find some of
these features in proclarity and panorama.
I've found the Microstratgy administration tools very good. deploying a
project, or comparing 2 projects is easy.
Cognos reportnet do a great job too.
The BO repository is bad. the organization of the reports and the management
of the published reports is not easy. all the other tools works like a
secure shared folder, where each item published can be secured.
other way to analyse: SDK and integration.
do you need to integrate your data warehouse in home made application?
calculate the price of the SDK if you need it ;-)
Cognos Powerplay cubes cannot be accessed by 3rd party tools.
Microstrategy provides an OLEDB for Olap driver which allow an Excel (or
procalrity, panorama...) users to access it.
Now I prefer to start a project with Excel as the end user tool. and after
I'll work with the users to find the right tool.
Because my users says : I need to analyse, to report to do everything!!! but
after they do nothing because its too complex!
Also each tool is very different from the concurrent, specially between BO
(ad-hoc reporting, scorecard with application fundation)/ Cognos (pushing,
web access, olap access) / Microstrategy (high performance, data security,
analysis capabilities), because each company provides its own OLAP/reporting
engine.
Also, think SQL 2005, the OLAP capabilites are great, so I recommand to
focus on a tools which support AS2005 in the future.
so... good luck in your job! :-)
and welcome in the DW world!
(its late, and my english starts to become very bad... so... ;-) )
"LoriB" <loribrown48@.hotmail.com> a crit dans le message de news:
848869d7.0408131126.46fce96c@.posting.google.com...
> My company is looking at several vendors of BI software for our data
> warehouse. We have never had a data warehouse before and are learning
> everything from scratch. Does anyone have any opinions on the
> following vendors...
> Panorama
> Proclarity
> Cognos
> Business Objects
> Information Builders
> We are hoping to bring in someone who has lots of DW experience to
> help us decide on one of these vendors. But, we are interested in
> opinions of people who have experience with these vendors.
> Thanks for the help!!
> --Lori