Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#131

Post by mistermann » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:33 AM UTC

caractacus wrote: post #107

jameshart wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all just pivot tables, in the end. Excel solved most data slicing/drilldown problems years ago. Only issue has always been data size limits and access to live, up to data data (though Excel's also been able to hit external OLAP services for data for a long time too).

And the data size limit is excel is stifling. 1m maximum rows? That can get filled very quickly.

With Power Pivot it's quite a bit better, this guy did 122 million rows:

http://www.microsofttrends.com/2014/02/09/how-much-data-can-...

If that's not enough you can do SSAS Tabular + DirectQuery (although to be fair, that's no longer "pure Excel", but an end user likely doesn't care):

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh230898.aspx

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#132

Post by baconner » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:35 AM UTC

solutionyogi wrote: post #13

For me, the most interesting part is SPICE. To implement a data warehouse, one creates a star schema (OLAP) database from a regular OLTP database. This involves massive amount of work. It looks like SPICE aims to replace the need for OLAP database and produce similar data directly from OLTP systems. I would love to know more about this engine. I hope Amazon open sources the engine (I highly doubt that they will do it…

There are a few similar technologies out there some of which are open source. Prestodb comes to mind but there's also some other closed systems like powerbi (with some underlying azure distributed data warehouse bits), etc out there.

What's happening in the industry I think is that there was a first wave of data discovery products (tableau being the prime example) that seek to get you right to reporting and data exploration side without necessarily having to slog through all the data warehouse design, and now a second wave like powerbi, etc that are pure saas plays that do something very similar are starting to come out.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#133

Post by baconner » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:47 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #2

At first glance, this seems like a Tableau competitor. So I'm surprised to see Tableau listed as a partner.

The thing about Tableau is that they're really the industry leader in terms of data exploration workflow. Users love the tool so much that they expect any new data system put in place to work with it so even vendors that are trying to put out their own data exploration ui are partnering up with them to provide the best-of-breed sort of option where they can still sell you the data system, but your c-level who will not even consider using anything but Tableau can still use it.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#134

Post by grantc » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 4:56 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #29

ececconi wrote: post #9

I've been working exclusively in implementing BI solutions for the past five years. The thing that depresses me the most is not that BI solutions take forever to implement and cost a lot, but that clients many times just don't understand the data they are trying to report on. Many times it leads to over-engineered BI solutions just for one report that a client says is mission critical, but is never used. I'm sure mor…

Yep. Any exec or manager looking to buy this service as a solution to their reporting needs should sit down and have a serious talk with their analysts or teams who build their reports first. Innumeracy is why the mantra of asking "Why?" instead of "How?" also applies to BI reporting. A flashy new tool or report isn't going to help as much as having a builder with industry knowledge or experience.

They're not mutually exclusive options.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#135

Post by edwinnathaniel » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 5:33 AM UTC

tyrelb wrote: post #127

realcul wrote: post #40

Looks similar to Power BI. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/features

The Power BI is an incredible product - thanks for listing it here... unreal! Coming from SAP/BusinessObjects products which are generally overweight and expensive, Power BI nails it... Price is free, they offer a download for Windows, web app and appears to have a mobile app. Worth a try. In 5 minutes, I had a dashboard built out of exported data from our accounting system...

Have you tried SAP Lumira?

http://go.sap.com/product/analytics/lumira/desktop.html

Personal Edition is free.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#136

Post by grogenaut » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 7:10 AM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #57

brador wrote: post #31

I say: Bezos is the #1 CEO in Tech right now. Amazon takes risks, and ships innovative products and services every month. Their risk taking is relentless and they take failure in their stride. They "get" how to do push. No other tech company comes close to their pace. And the key to that is the juicy under the radar micro manager that is Jeff Bezos. If there was an award for best tech CEO. 2015, i'd nominate him in a…

Amazon has been busy, but I still have to go with Satya Nadella. Since he's gotten the job in early 2014, Microsoft has shipped amazing things. Many of his decisions have helped redefine company culture, for the better. Amazon has shipped a lot, but I think the new Microsoft has a bigger impact. Off the top of my head: open-sourcing .NET, SSH to Windows, Surface product line, Hololens development, Windows 10 (hit a f…

So you're crediting Satya with windows 10? That started way before he was ceo.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#137

Post by madaxe_again » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 7:12 AM UTC

ececconi wrote: post #9

I've been working exclusively in implementing BI solutions for the past five years. The thing that depresses me the most is not that BI solutions take forever to implement and cost a lot, but that clients many times just don't understand the data they are trying to report on. Many times it leads to over-engineered BI solutions just for one report that a client says is mission critical, but is never used. I'm sure mor…

I know marketing directors of large retailers who can't figure out what 10% off a figure is, and get confused as to which is gross and which is net. End up explaining VAT at least once a week.

It's cool to be innumerate, though, and if you can't do this stuff yourself there's always a nerd to blame somewhere nearby.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#138

Post by ohitsdom » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:21 PM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #136

ohitsdom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has been busy, but I still have to go with Satya Nadella. Since he's gotten the job in early 2014, Microsoft has shipped amazing things. Many of his decisions have helped redefine company culture, for the better. Amazon has shipped a lot, but I think the new Microsoft has a bigger impact. Off the top of my head: open-sourcing .NET, SSH to Windows, Surface product line, Hololens development, Windows 10 (hit a f…

So you're crediting Satya with windows 10? That started way before he was ceo.

A lot was started before he took over, but there's still been a dramatic change since it happened.

When SSH was announced, the team said they tried twice before and were shot down. This time, they got executive support. I bet there were many great, open ideas that Ballmer shot down that Nadella would approve of. My point being- of course good things were in progress before he took over, but they seem more likely to make it out the door now.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#139

Post by chenster » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:30 PM UTC

7952 wrote: post #91

mmaunder wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed re Tableau being a competitor. But I'm not surprised they're not a partner. Last quote we got from Tableau for desktop was $2k. This comes in at around $200/year. That is probably where the "1/10th of the cost of traditional BI solutions" comes from at the top of the home page.

Tableau are pushing their web system over their desktop tools. It is perfectly possible to use the free reader to consume data without needing hundreds of licences for a cloud product or the full edition.

It's possible, but last time when I used, it's pretty limited. You would need to manually feed local data and re-sync it when it changes. Nothing something you want to do a lot.

Re: Amazon QuickSight – Business Intelligence by AWS

#140

Post by chenster » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #4

nostromo wrote: post #2

At first glance, this seems like a Tableau competitor. So I'm surprised to see Tableau listed as a partner.

Looks like Tableau is a front-end option with AWS QS doing the grunt work of the data handling and digestion.

Tableau offers both desktop and server edition for data visualization. AWS QS also does data visualization but doesn't offer a desktop version. They are competitors. Once Amazon enters a market, game's over. It becomes a race to the bottom red ocean.