Microsoft business intelligence platform vs QlikView

Question

I have no experience at all with QlikView, but I have read great reviews about it. According to Gartner Research Report 2012, QlikView is in the top quadrant together with Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and IBM (leaders and visionaries).

I am interested in hearing from the community how QlikView stacks up against Microsoft's business intelligence (BI) platform. In my company they are choosing between Microsoft and QlikView for a future solution to be built. We are basically a Microsoft shop, but I read that QlikView is designed for user friendliness, super intuitive, etc.

I also read that some cons for choosing QlikView are:

1. High hardware requirements
2. Technical resources (people who know QlikView) are very rare
3. Licencing costs are high
4. Scalability issues

Any insight in this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Cobwebby

Something to bear in mind is that the Gartner review is from the entire portfolio offerings. When looking at Microsoft, this includes SQL Server, PowerBI, PowerPivot, SSIS, etc. In addition when looking at Qlik, Gartner are reviewing Qlik view, Qlik Sense and Qlik Nprinting... – Cyclonite

Answer 1

I'm an ex-Microsoft employee who sold their BI toolset - I'm currently with Tableau.

To address your initial question. A "Power+" user can generally get Qlik up and running fairly quickly -- faster than if that user needed to learn a BI platform like Microsoft/ IBM / SAP Oracle. Everything you need is in one place and you don't need to worry about installing / configuring / caring for multiple components like you do with Microsoft - SQL Server, SQL Analysis Services, SharePoint (at least).

In my opinion, Qlik needs fewer "tech people" than the same solution created with the Microsoft platform. Qlik's scripting / importing capabilities are a little "techy / clunky", but once you get past that, things aren't very difficult - I figured it all out in an afternoon.

If you're dealing with large data sets, you will have to invest some $$ in RAM, because Qlik must load the entire dataset into memory. Yes, RAM is relatively cheap, but data sizes are growing faster than the cost of RAM is coming down - so it's something to think about.

Since Qlik needs to "own all the data" inside it's in-memory database, it may be challenged down the road. For example, you're going to see very few people running "big data" stores like Teradata / Greenplum, etc. putting Qlik on top b/c of of the HW requirements to re-store all the data. Microsoft is more flexible in that regard is it CAN store data either in memory (the new Tablular Data Model of SSAS) or go directly to the data in the original database.

You'll find user acceptance is generally much higher for the "Data Discovery" tools like Qlik, Tableau and Spotfire - Users just tend to "get" these tools and feel more in control of what's going on. They can get their work done with less assistance from IT.

I completely agree with the previous poster - you really should consider additional tools in the "Data Discovery" space when doing a bake-off against Microsoft - there are free / eval versions of Tableau, Spotfire, and Qlik - try them each out. I'm, of course partial to Tableau - it's friendlier still than Qlik, allows for in-memory storage or can connect "live" to the data source, and has very high-end visualizations.

Good luck and have fun!

Prevailing

Thanks a lot Russell, just the info I needed. – Cobwebby

"I figured it all out in an afternoon." Either things have changed greatly since 2012 or Russell was not setting up nightly data loading, backups, formulas, and all the other things you need. – Bulb

Answer 2

Microsoft Power BI has a fully-featured FISMA HIPAA secure cloud for about $144 a user a year, and their desktop client is upgraded monthly and is completely free.

More importantly, SSRS will host Power BI internally on-premise as a first-class citizen, productionizing the entire server component for FREE in Q2 2017

Power BI also has Revolution R statistical analytics deeply integrated, beating every data discovery tool on the market in statistical integration, period.

There is no Qlik or Tableau answer to this above statement as these TCO and feature rollouts are incredibly expensive as the rest of the data discovery cohort, and Qlik does not do monthly iteration releases.

In 2017 it will become apparent that Power BI is the best solution for data discovery without spending seven million dollars on a five year TCO to accomplish it.

Gartner 2016 has Microsoft a top-ranked in nearly every data category, which cannot be said for any of the products which were listed in the page (or any other company).

Congruous

"productionizing the entire server component for FREE in Q2 2017." link? – Bulb

Answer 3

Why just those two? Have a look at Tableau, Altosoft, Spotfire. They are certainly easier to use than MS and don't have QV troubles.

Venusberg

Thanks for your suggestions. Could you elaborate on why are Tableau, Altosoft, Spotfire better choices than MS and QV. – Cobwebby

Answer 4

A poster above embedded the 2016 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Modern BI but that firm's more analytical review of product strengths is their "Critical Capabilities" report. I'm biased myself of course, but you can see TIBCO Spotfire out scores Tableau, Qliktech and Microsoft for critical capabilities.

TIBCO's TERR engine is unique in the market in that it is the only higher performance, supported, commercial engine for R, tightly coupled to the visual experience in Spotfire. Revolution has great packages but they are based on the original open source R engine, so inherit its flaws.

Here's a key summary table: 2016 Gartner Critical Capabilities Summary Scores Table

I think you could see the whole reprint here: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2RVRL5R&ct=151110&st=sb

Kirovograd