Features Comparison of BI Tools

User Experience :

Microstrategy	Qlikview	Pentaho
MicroStrategy Web user interface adheres to an “Extreme AJAX” model where processing is shifted from the Web server to the Web browsers, making for a more responsive Web interface that increases user productivity and improves user adoption	Qlikview multiple Web interfaces intended for different deployment requirements. Because each interface has different capabilities, developers are typically forced to make tradeoffs between functionality and deployment requirements	Pentaho web interface offers very limited functionality. It lacks familiar Microsoft paradigms, making the end user experience less intuitive. Enterprise reports created using the Pentaho Web are limited to basic reports without any graphs, charts or crosstabs, severely limiting end user experience and self-service capabilities

Performance:

Microstrategy	Qlikview	Pentaho
ROLAP architecture which leverages the database for much of its processing. Data joins and analytic calculations are processed in the database whenever possible. MicroStrategy’s multi-pass approach provides the flexibility to answer any analytical question in the most optimal manner.	QlikView stores all data and performs all calculations in memory on the middle-tier server. QlikView does not fully leverage the relational database or the hard disk on the middle-tier. These aspects of the QlikView architecture result in inefficient resource utilization and limit QlikView’s scalability.	Pentaho ROLAP engine does not provide fully implemented multi-source ROLAP and multipass SQL engines. The Pentaho ROLAP engine is unable to leverage the database to its fullest extent possible, resulting in unnecessary network and hardware resources utilization

Deployment and Administration

Microstrategy	Qlikview	Pentaho
Provides organizations a platform that is quick to implement and deploy as well as easy to maintain and administer, fueled by a single code base that offers the advantage of reusable business logic across the entire platform. MicroStrategy’s single BI server provides efficient, centralized administration for IT and fewer moving parts which translate into less downtime.	QlikView lacks a common reusable metadata layer that is shared across documents. This creates a maintenance challenge as developers are typically forced to continually and manually synchronize metric definitions and security profiles across documents.	Pentaho lacks a unified and reusable metadata layer creating maintenance challenge and promotes “multiple versions of the truth.” The administration console provides control over only a subset of administrative tasks. Have fewer tools to centrally monitor and manage the BI applications, thus more administrators per number of end users. Lacks enterprise features like clustering and load balancing, increasing the administration complexity and increasing the IT workload.

Drawback:

Microstrategy	Qlikview	Pentaho
Reusable metadata is easier to maintain  requiring less redundancy, end users  have more self-service capabilities that offload work from the IT staff, t provides a comprehensive suite of administrative tools requiring fewer IT administrators	Developers are forced to create  redundant metadata objects as the metadata objects they create cannot be  reused across multiple reports, causing unnecessary development and maintenance  efforts.	Developers are forced to create redundant metadata objects as the metadata objects they create cannot be reused across multiple reports, causing unnecessary development and maintenance efforts.