The most common question you get asked is what is the best BI tool.
There is no best BI tool. The question is like asking what is the best car? The buyer of the car goes through a check list of specification/features he would like to have. But his result out of a car purchase is getting from Point A to Point B. BI tools are more or less the same. They all serve one purpose - Enabling decision making. But they differ in terms of price, features etc. So when looking at a BI tool, the choice should be based on a few question you should ask yourself.
1. What do you want to do with it? Reporting / Analytics / Dashboarding / Mining / Planning / etc.,
2. How much data do you have? Huge / Big / Small
3. What sort of presentation layer are you looking at? Flash / Silverlight / Ajax / etc.,
4. What types of reports are the business requiring (Grid, Graphs, etc)?
5. Are there any analytical requirements? OLAP Slice and Dice
6. Are there scenario planning requirements etc. Planning / Budgeting / Monitoring
7. Can you consider opensource
8. What is your budget
9. Can you leverage some of our existing investments? Database / etc.,
So when you know what you are looking for and taking into consideration all the above, you can then go and find a BI tool that at the end of the day, like the car, will serve your decision making needs.
To my knowledge, this is the list one can look at.
Strategy Companion
Panorama
Qlikview
Microsoft
Tableau
Birst
eiVia
Cognos
Panopticon
Spotfire
SpagoBI
SAP Business Objects
MicroStrategy
Visokio Omniscope
Hyperion
OBIEE
SAS
