MicroStrategy 9.3 : Visual Insight

Visual Insight is MicroStrategy’s answer to business intelligence tools which look for rapid and easy deployments such as Tableau and Tibco Spotfire; it enables business users with limited IT experience to create and polish off functional dashboards which are compatible with mobile platforms in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks. Visual Insight allows users to begin asking – and answering – questions which they may not have come up with originally by allowing them to take a hands on approach in creating the dashboards.

I felt that having a short article going through some of the new Visual Insight features introduced in version 9.3 would be good since I have noticed many of my visitors are interested in the new capabilities of MicroStrategy’s latest release. I base many of my notes on some personal usage of visual insight (available free to try on MicroStrategy Cloud) and on a video I found on Youtube (it’s also the same video shown to me when I attended MicroStrategy’s partner training day).

UK Charitable Giving

Recently I found an interesting dataset from the Guardian’s datablog showing the levels of charitable giving across different age groups in the UK. The data is interesting as it uses more than 30 years of data and shows the changes in attitude towards donating money to charities over time.

Originally I used this dataset for one of my other blog articles (Business Intelligence Bout: MicroStrategy 9.3 vs. OlikView 11) but decided that it could also be used in an article which demonstrates the power of business intelligence and how it reveals the story behind data.

Business Intelligence Bout: MicroStrategy 9.3 vs. QlikView 11

As a special request I have taken a look into the latest versions of both MicroStrategy (9.3) and QlikView (11) for a comparison between the two platforms. I have already looked at and written about both of these technologies in BI Battle Royale but will be making a slightly more detailed study for this article.

I will be exploring and making my judgements based on the following key points:

• Data Source connectivity – The different kinds of data sources you can use and how simple it is to make a connection
• Report Capabilities – What kind of functionality comes with report development and how flexible this tool is
• Dashboards – What kind of functionality comes with dashboard development and how flexible this tool is
• Mobile Capabilities – How the technology can be used on a mobile medium
• Aesthetics – The amount of freedom a developer has with pixel perfect design and fine-tuning