Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Databricks VS MicroStrategy

Compare Databricks VS MicroStrategy and see what are their differences

Databricks logo Databricks

Databricks provides a Unified Analytics Platform that accelerates innovation by unifying data science, engineering and business.‎What is Apache Spark?

MicroStrategy logo MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy is a cloud-based platform providing business intelligence, mobile intelligence and network applications.
  • Databricks Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-14
  • MicroStrategy Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-07

Databricks features and specs

  • Unified Data Analytics Platform
    Databricks integrates various data processing and analytics tools, offering a unified environment for data engineering, machine learning, and business analytics. This integration can streamline workflows and reduce the complexity of data management.
  • Scalability
    Databricks leverages Apache Spark and other scalable technologies to handle large datasets and high computational workloads efficiently. This makes it suitable for enterprises with significant data processing needs.
  • Collaborative Environment
    The platform offers collaborative notebooks that allow data scientists, engineers, and analysts to work together in real-time. This enhances productivity and fosters better communication within teams.
  • Performance Optimization
    Databricks includes various performance optimization features such as caching, indexing, and query optimization, which can significantly speed up data processing tasks.
  • Support for Various Data Formats
    The platform supports a wide range of data formats and sources, including structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, making it versatile and adaptable to different use cases.
  • Integration with Cloud Providers
    Databricks is designed to work seamlessly with major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, allowing users to easily integrate it into their existing cloud infrastructure.

Possible disadvantages of Databricks

  • Cost
    Databricks can be expensive, especially for large-scale deployments or high-frequency usage. It may not be the most cost-effective solution for smaller organizations or projects with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    While powerful, Databricks can be complex to set up and manage, requiring specialized knowledge in Apache Spark and cloud infrastructure. This might lead to a steeper learning curve for new users.
  • Dependency on Cloud Providers
    Being heavily integrated with cloud providers, Databricks might face issues like vendor lock-in, where switching providers becomes difficult or costly.
  • Limited Offline Capabilities
    Databricks is primarily designed for cloud environments, which means offline or on-premise capabilities are limited, posing challenges for organizations with strict data governance policies.
  • Resource Management
    Efficiently managing and allocating resources can be challenging in Databricks, especially in large multi-user environments. Mismanagement of resources could lead to increased costs and reduced performance.

MicroStrategy features and specs

  • Robust Analytics
    MicroStrategy provides powerful analytics and business intelligence capabilities, allowing users to create complex reports and dashboards with a wide variety of data sources.
  • Scalability
    MicroStrategy is designed to handle large volumes of data, making it suitable for large enterprises that require high-performance analytics.
  • Data Connectivity
    The platform supports a vast array of data connectors, making it easy to integrate with various databases, cloud services, and other data sources.
  • Mobile Capabilities
    MicroStrategy offers robust mobile analytics applications, enabling users to access reports and dashboards from their mobile devices with ease.
  • Security Features
    The platform provides strong security features, including role-based access control, data encryption, and rigorous authentication processes.

Possible disadvantages of MicroStrategy

  • Complexity
    MicroStrategy can be complex to implement and requires significant technical expertise to fully leverage its capabilities, which may necessitate specialized training.
  • Cost
    The platform can be expensive, particularly for small to mid-sized organizations, as it involves licensing fees and costs associated with training and implementation.
  • Learning Curve
    New users might experience a steep learning curve due to the comprehensive and advanced features offered by the platform.
  • Customization Limitations
    While MicroStrategy is highly configurable, there can be limitations when it comes to customizing certain aspects to meet unique organizational needs or preferences.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report performance issues, particularly when dealing with extremely large datasets or during peak load times, which can impact the user experience.

Analysis of MicroStrategy

Overall verdict

  • MicroStrategy is a solid choice for organizations that require a high-performance, scalable business intelligence solution. Its extensive features and strong security make it suitable for large enterprises with complex data needs.

Why this product is good

  • MicroStrategy is a well-established business intelligence platform known for its robust analytics capabilities, scalability, and comprehensive reporting features. It offers powerful data visualization tools, a wide range of data connectors, and supports mobile intelligence for users on the go. The platform is also recognized for its strong security features and the ability to handle large datasets efficiently, making it a solid choice for enterprises seeking in-depth data insights.

Recommended for

  • Large enterprises needing robust data analytics and reporting
  • Organizations with significant data security requirements
  • Companies looking for high scalability and performance
  • Businesses seeking a comprehensive platform that supports dynamic dashboards and mobile intelligence solutions

Databricks videos

Introduction to Databricks

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Azure Databricks Tutorial | Data transformations at scale
  • Review - Databricks - Data Movement and Query

MicroStrategy videos

Overview of MicroStrategy Desktop 10.10

More videos:

  • Review - Introducing MicroStrategy 2019

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Databricks and MicroStrategy)
Data Dashboard
61 61%
39% 39
Big Data Analytics
100 100%
0% 0
Business Intelligence
0 0%
100% 100
Database Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Databricks and MicroStrategy

Databricks Reviews

Jupyter Notebook & 10 Alternatives: Data Notebook Review [2023]
Databricks notebooks are a popular tool for developing code and presenting findings in data science and machine learning. Databricks Notebooks support real-time multilingual coauthoring, automatic versioning, and built-in data visualizations.
Source: lakefs.io
7 best Colab alternatives in 2023
Databricks is a platform built around Apache Spark, an open-source, distributed computing system. The Databricks Community Edition offers a collaborative workspace where users can create Jupyter notebooks. Although it doesn't offer free GPU resources, it's an excellent tool for distributed data processing and big data analytics.
Source: deepnote.com
Top 5 Cloud Data Warehouses in 2023
Jan 11, 2023 The 5 best cloud data warehouse solutions in 2023Google BigQuerySource: https://cloud.google.com/bigqueryBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:SnowflakeBest for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:Amazon RedshiftSource: https://aws.amazon.com/redshift/Best for:Top features:Pros:Cons:Pricing:FireboltSource: https://www.firebolt.io/Best for:Top...
Top 10 AWS ETL Tools and How to Choose the Best One | Visual Flow
Databricks is a simple, fast, and collaborative analytics platform based on Apache Spark with ETL capabilities. It accelerates innovation by bringing together data science and data science businesses. It is a fully managed open-source version of Apache Spark analytics with optimized connectors to storage platforms for the fastest data access.
Source: visual-flow.com
Top Big Data Tools For 2021
Now Azure Databricks achieves 50 times better performance thanks to a highly optimized version of Spark. Databricks also enables real-time co-authoring and automates versioning. Besides, it features runtimes optimized for machine learning that include many popular libraries, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, etc.

MicroStrategy Reviews

10 Best Alternatives to Looker in 2024
MicroStrategy: MicroStrategy delivers a comprehensive enterprise analytics platform that supports advanced data analysis and mobile applications, offering powerful insights into a wide array of business metrics.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Databricks seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 18 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Databricks mentions (18)

  • Platform Engineering Abstraction: How to Scale IaC for Enterprise
    Vendors like Confluent, Snowflake, Databricks, and dbt are improving the developer experience with more automation and integrations, but they often operate independently. This fragmentation makes standardizing multi-directional integrations across identity and access management, data governance, security, and cost control even more challenging. Developing a standardized, secure, and scalable solution for... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • dolly-v2-12b
    Dolly-v2-12bis a 12 billion parameter causal language model created by Databricks that is derived from EleutherAI’s Pythia-12b and fine-tuned on a ~15K record instruction corpus generated by Databricks employees and released under a permissive license (CC-BY-SA). Source: about 2 years ago
  • Clickstream data analysis with Databricks and Redpanda
    Global organizations need a way to process the massive amounts of data they produce for real-time decision making. They often utilize event-streaming tools like Redpanda with stream-processing tools like Databricks for this purpose. - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • DeWitt Clause, or Can You Benchmark %DATABASE% and Get Away With It
    Databricks, a data lakehouse company founded by the creators of Apache Spark, published a blog post claiming that it set a new data warehousing performance record in 100 TB TPC-DS benchmark. It was also mentioned that Databricks was 2.7x faster and 12x better in terms of price performance compared to Snowflake. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • A Quick Start to Databricks on AWS
    Go to Databricks and click the Try Databricks button. Fill in the form and Select AWS as your desired platform afterward. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
View more

MicroStrategy mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of MicroStrategy yet. Tracking of MicroStrategy recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Databricks and MicroStrategy, you can also consider the following products

Google BigQuery - A fully managed data warehouse for large-scale data analytics.

Domo - Domo: business intelligence, data visualization, dashboards and reporting all together. Simplify your big data and improve your business with Domo's agile and mobile-ready platform.

Looker - Looker makes it easy for analysts to create and curate custom data experiences—so everyone in the business can explore the data that matters to them, in the context that makes it truly meaningful.

Jupyter - Project Jupyter exists to develop open-source software, open-standards, and services for interactive computing across dozens of programming languages. Ready to get started? Try it in your browser Install the Notebook.

Sisense - The BI & Dashboard Software to handle multiple, large data sets.

Presto DB - Distributed SQL Query Engine for Big Data (by Facebook)