BI Survey 18 Highlights

Every year, in return for publicising the BI Survey (the largest survey of BI tool customers and vendors in the world) here on my blog, I get a free copy of the results and the chance to blog about some of the more interesting findings. Here are a few points that stood out for me this year in the BI Survey 18:

• The top 5 tools acquired by respondents were Power BI, Excel, Qlikview, Tableau and SSRS in that order – so Microsoft has three of the top 5 most popular BI tools. Given that users often have trouble understanding the different types of BI that Power BI, Excel and SSRS are suited to, Microsoft’s long-standing strategy of close ties between Power BI and Excel and the forthcoming integration of SSRS reports into Power BI Premium looks very wise.
• Power BI has – unsurprisingly – one of the best price-to-value ratios reported of all BI tools. The flip side of this is that customers are less happy with the level of support that Microsoft offers; I guess this is all relative to more expensive BI tools which need armies of people from the vendor or from a BI consultancy to implement them, and who are more likely to bend over backwards for their customers.
• Power BI is now the number two client tool used for SSAS after SSRS, beating Excel. I find that hard to believe but I guess it’s possible.
• Compared to its obvious competitors, and indeed to all other BI tools, Power BI gets some very good scores. There is no clear leader (and if there was, I would be very suspicious about the survey’s methodology) but it’s clear that Microsoft is now one of the leading BI vendors and given that it’s sustaining the levels of investment that brought it to this position, I think it Power BI will continue to grow and prosper in 2019.