7 top cloud-based analytics tools for enterprise use

Amazon QuickSight

Amazon QuickSight is AWS's cloud-native business intelligence (BI) platform designed to integrate with other AWS services. The platform includes interactive dashboards, pixel-perfect reports and embedded analytics. The dashboard authoring capabilities enable natural language prompts to explore and share insights from their data, which they can import from a variety of cloud and on-premises sources. The platform includes built-in security features and role-based access controls, and it provides multi-region availability and built-in redundancy to accommodate global deployments.

For customers already invested in the AWS ecosystem, QuickSight is a valuable tool that integrates with other AWS services and data stores. Its serverless architecture scales to hundreds of thousands of users and supports data sets up to a billion rows. The user-friendly interfaces simplify the process of building interactive dashboards.

Amazon designed the platform for global use, and it is available across multiple AWS regions. It is localized in 10 major languages.

Despite its benefits, QuickSight is not as feature-rich as other cloud-based analytics tools. According to some customer reviews, it lacks some of the extract, transform, load (ETL) and customization capabilities available to other platforms. It doesn't support as many data sources as other products, and integrating with non-AWS sources can present additional challenges. Some customers have also expressed concerns about the platform's complexity and the time required to become proficient, while others have run into performance issues with large data sets and complex queries.

Amazon offers QuickSight subscription plans based on user roles. Author plans start at $24 per user/month, and Reader plans start at $3 per user/month. Customers can also opt for capacity pricing, which starts at $250 for 500 sessions/month, with volume discounts available to qualified customers. Customers can also opt for add-on services such as alerts, pixel-perfect reports and the Super-fast, Parallel, In-memory Calculation Engine (SPICE).

Domo

Domo is a cloud-based analytics tool that provides a user-friendly environment for creating dashboards, visualizations, reports and alerts. The platform's Integration Suite allows users to pull data from multiple sources and automate transformations. Users can turn raw data into interactive visualizations that can be personalized and customized. Domo also provides advanced governance and security features, with proactive alerting and the tools for tracking data lineage.

Domo is well-regarded for its usability, making it easy for designers to create visualizations and reports, and for end users to work with them. The platform includes more than 1,000 prebuilt connectors to access data from a wide range of sources, and it includes Magic ETL, a drag-and-drop interface for transforming data. The platform also offers features such as automated reporting and real-time processing, making it easier to deliver effective visual insights.

However, some customers have reported slow performance when working with large data sets or refreshing data. Others have experienced bugs in the newer features or found the support team to be slow to resolve certain issues. Usage-based pricing can result in high subscription costs, which might be especially challenging for smaller businesses.

Domo offers three subscription plans -- Standard, Enterprise and Business Critical -- under a credit-based pricing model. Domo also offers add-ons, including Professional Services, Support Services and Enterprise Apps. While subscription rates are not published, they do offer a 30-day free trial.

Google Cloud Looker

Google acquired Looker in 2019 and has since incorporated it into its Google Cloud offerings. Looker is a feature-rich BI platform built on cloud-first infrastructure that includes detailed APIs, the LookML modeling language, and semantic and AI foundational models. The platform enables users to create visualizations, reports and formulas, and to model data that can be pulled in from a wide range of sources.

Google provides several deployment options for Looker, providing customers increased flexibility. These can be broadly divided into Looker (original) and Looker (Google Cloud core). Looker (original) can be hosted on Google Cloud, third-party cloud platforms or on-premises. When hosted on Google Cloud, the Looker team manages all IT operations. Looker (Google Cloud core) is similar to the original but offers deeper integration with Google Cloud. The platform also includes enterprise-grade security and is integrated with Looker Studio, which extends the functionalities of both platforms.

Some customers have found Looker to be difficult to use, either during initial setup or when building reports. It can also be difficult to distinguish between Looker products or to determine which one is being referred to in some Looker documentation. For example, the documentation references "Looker on Google Cloud," but it's not always clear if this refers to Looker (original) on Google Cloud or to Looker (Google Cloud core). Some customers have also run into performance issues with large data sets or complex queries, while others have found the interfaces and functionality to be lacking or outdated.

Google Cloud pricing for Looker can also be difficult to calculate, and prices can change depending on the type of deployment. For example, pricing for Looker (Google Cloud core) has two components: platform pricing (the cost to run a Looker instance) and user pricing (the cost for licensing users to access the instance). The three platform tiers are Standard, Enterprise and Embed, and the three user types are Developer, Standard and Viewer. Google does not publish the prices for either the platforms or the user types, nor provide any pricing information for the other deployment options.

IBM Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos Analytics is a scalable platform for building customizable visualizations and reports that communicate AI-driven insights. The platform offers a web-based UI that allows users to explore and model data and build dynamic dashboards, interactive visualizations and comprehensive reports. IBM Cognos Analytics also supports team collaboration and provides enterprise-grade governance and security.

One of the platform's strengths is its flexible deployment model. Customers can choose the SaaS offering on the IBM cloud, a dedicated cloud environment, or as on-premises software. The platform enables teams to build and share dynamic reports in various formats while providing granular control over access and permissions. In addition, users can use drag-and-drop capabilities to position data and generate visualizations automatically. The platform also supports time-series modeling to identify trends in their data and uncover insights.

Some users report that IBM Cognos Analytics lacks the application ecosystem available to products like Amazon QuickSight or Microsoft Power BI, which many organizations use when committing to a cloud-based analytics tool. Others have found that the platform is difficult to learn, comes with a dated UI and has performance issues when handling large data sets. Some users have also found customer support to be lacking.

Compared to many available cloud-based analytics tools, IBM Cognos Analytics offers a relatively simple pricing structure. When implemented in a multi-tenant environment managed by IBM, the platform is available in two subscription plans: Standard and Premium. The Standard plan is $10.60 per user/month, and the Premium plan is $42.40 per user/month. The platform is also available in a dedicated cloud and standalone software package, although IBM does not publish the prices for this tier. In addition, IBM offers a 30-day free trial.

Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft's Power BI is a set of services, applications and connectors that work together to allow users to access data from multiple sources, create visualizations and reports and then share those insights with others. Power BI includes both Power BI Desktop for building reports and the Power BI online service for consuming and interacting with them. The online service also offers its own report-building capabilities, although they are not as detailed as those in Power BI Desktop. The platform also includes apps for iOS and Android devices as well as the Power BI Report Server for on-premises report publishing.

Power BI provides a comprehensive platform for building, sharing and collaborating on reports using data from cloud and on-premises data sources. It integrates with Microsoft 365 and Azure services and incorporates technologies such as Power Query, Microsoft Copilot and the Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) language. Users can create customized dashboards and detailed reports that support real-time updates. Developers can use the platform's APIs to push data into semantic models or embed dashboards and reports in custom applications. Power BI's popularity also means that it has substantial user community support behind it.

Despite its popularity, Power BI presents some challenges. The platform's advanced features can be difficult to navigate without prior experience, and some customers have found the product's licensing confusing because of the variety of subscription plans that include the Power BI service. Power BI can also be costly for large-scale enterprise deployments. In addition, customers have run into performance issues when working with large data sets and complex reports. Some have reported that integrating with non-Microsoft data sources is not always as smooth as it could be.

Power BI Desktop is available to download for free. However, users need a subscription to use the Power BI service. Microsoft offers two subscription plans: Power BI Pro at $10 per user/month, and Power BI Premium at $20 per user/month. Microsoft also offers the Power BI Embedded plan, whose rates are variable. In addition, Power BI is included in certain Microsoft 365 plans, and in the Fabric Capacity Reservation plan and Fabric Capacity Pay-As-You-Go plan, whose rates are also variable. Microsoft also offers a free Power BI Premium 60-day trial.

Qlik Cloud Analytics

Qlik Cloud Analytics offers a full range of tools for self-service analytics. The platform supports interactive dashboards and applications, metadata cataloging and lineage, and both reporting and alerting. It also provides activity centers that allow users to find and organize their analytics content, while offering a collaborative environment for developing and sharing that content. In addition, the platform includes natural language processing to understand user intent and reveal correlations and trends in the data.

Qlik Cloud is purpose-built for analytics and uses a unique engine that freely associates data to improve performance. The platform also includes advanced technologies such as generative AI and predictive analytics. Unlike other cloud-based analytics tools, Qlik Cloud is not tied to a specific cloud or application ecosystem and can ingest data from a wide range of sources, including Cloudera Impala, Dropbox Metadata, GitHub, MongoDB and Salesforce.

Qlik Cloud Analytics is not without its trade-offs. Its platform and application-agnostic nature also means that it does not have the sort of ecosystem integration inherent in environments such as AWS or Microsoft Azure. In addition, users have cited a steep learning curve, particularly for non-technical users. Customers have also reported performance issues with large or complex data sets and described the platform as expensive, especially when factoring in the cost for additional training or expertise.

Qlik Cloud Analytics offers three capacity-based subscription plans. The Standard plan starts at $825/month and includes 25 GB/year of data for analysis and 20 full users. The Premium plan starts at $2,500/month and includes 50 GB/year of data for analysis and 20 full users, with support for up to 100,000 basic users. The company does not publish its Enterprise tier plan rates, but the plan starts with 500 GB/year of data and supports up to 100,000 total users.

Salesforce Tableau

Tableau is a widely used analytics platform acquired by Salesforce in 2019. It provides a suite of tools for exploring data, performing self-service analytics and sharing insights through dashboards and reports. Tableau connects to both cloud and on-premises environments, while providing the governance necessary to protect data and stay in compliance. In addition to Tableau Cloud, the platform includes Tableau Server for on-premises deployments, Tableau Desktop for analyzing and visualizing data, Tableau Pulse for personalizing metrics, and Tableau Prep Builder for shaping and cleaning data.

Tableau offers management capabilities for deploying and scaling analytics efficiently. It also provides a secure infrastructure that integrates with an organization's single sign-on (SSO) or identity provider and meets security certification standards such as SOC 2 and ISO. Tableau has an active user community that supports analytics initiatives and enables developers to embed Tableau analytics into products and applications. Tableau Pulse also helps standardize data definitions, supporting more personalized and context-aware insights.

Despite its strengths, some users report that Tableau can be hard to learn, especially for nontechnical users or those using more advanced features. Others have also cited inconsistent support and noted that the service can be expensive, which can be out of reach for smaller organizations. Users have also reported performance issues with large data sets and believe that the functionality can be lacking in certain areas, such as collaboration and sharing.

Salesforce offers two categories of Tableau subscription plans: Tableau for Teams and Tableau for Enterprises. All plans are priced per user, per month. The Team plans include Tableau Creator, starting at $75/user per month, Tableau Viewer, starting at $15/user per month and Tableau Explorer, starting at $42/user per month. The Enterprise plans include Enterprise Creator, starting at $115/user per month, Enterprise Viewer, starting at $35/user per month and Enterprise Explorer, starting at $70/user per month. Each plan is available for either Tableau Cloud or Tableau Server and includes Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Pulse (Tableau Cloud only). Salesforce also offers a free trial.

Robert Sheldon is a freelance technology writer. He has written numerous books, articles and training materials on a wide range of topics, including big data, generative AI, 5D memory crystals, the dark web and the 11th dimension.