MicroStrategy’s Pixel-Perfect reporting packages are priced as low as $150 per named user, which is around 30% to 70% lower than the Report Services module that’s included as part of its industrial-strength MicroStrategy 8 BI platform.
Of course, MicroStrategy has an eye on eventually migrating Pixel-Perfect customers up to its flagship BI platform. While Pixel-Perfect is sold as a standalone package it also works with MicroStrategy 8 – its metadata is compatible with other components of the BI platform.
MicroStrategy’s BI technology has traditionally been renowned for its data, rather than user, scalability. And its products have traditionally been priced accordingly.
MicroStrategy 8’s ROLAP (relational OLAP) architecture is best suited for complex analysis of large data sets – something that only a handful of enterprise users (analysts and power users) typically engage in.
Yet BI vendors increasingly recognize the need to push down the cost of their premium-priced BI query and reporting tools in order to make them more affordable for wider-scale deployment and more accessible to a wider constituency of mainstream business users.
MicroStrategy has opted for attractively priced packaging while other vendors are looking at the SaaS (software-as-a-service) model to lower deployment costs. Earlier this month Business Objects opted to deliver report distribution capabilities for its Crystal Reports platform as a hosted, on-demand solution. However users still need to license Crystal Reports XI to create and build reports.
