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In recent years, the business intelligence field has become a competitive field due to its rapid growth and development. It has become complicated for the organizations to decide on the tools that have to be used for their businesses. The stakeholders have invested large amounts of time and efforts to build and streamline the processes to ensure that the business intelligence platform is a scalable one.
Looker and Microsoft Power BI are the two business intelligence tools which are competitive among each other. Most of the organizations and professionals are confused to make a choice among the tools. Each and every tool has their own features due to the cloud capabilities they hold. Let’s get an understanding about Looker and Microsoft Power BI, the differences that exist between them. Looker training will help you perform Data Analytics for small and large scale Enterprises, you can also get clear understanding on the concepts of Looker.
What is Looker?
Looker is referred to as one of the most popular business intelligence and data visualization platforms, a cloud-based tool which is responsible for exploring, sharing and visualizing the data to make the right decisions for the business development. The Looker platform will allow anyone to perform the data analysis of the business processes and identify the insights into the data sets in a faster way.
Looker makes use of data modeling language, allowing you to get connected to the different data sources, helping you to create customized dashboards and perform data analysis effectively. Through Looker, you will be able to access the up-to-date version of the organization’s data and is considered as a single solution for the business intelligence, data analytics and Management, visualization processes, etc. You will also have multiple career opportunities for career advancements through Looker.
A Looker Professional is estimated to attain an average annual salary of $129000. The salaries of a to the Looker professionals is high when compared to the other Technologies. There are no prerequisites to take up the training and certification program. All you need is a potential with the knowledge and skills required for Looker job opportunities, capable of analyzing and showing your expertise in the data community.
What is Microsoft Power BI?
Microsoft Power BI is referred to as a business intelligence and analysis platform by Microsoft. The Power BI tool is responsible for collecting the connectors, applications and software services that will hold the data from different sources, helps in the transformation of the data and also produce reports.
In Power BI, the data sets will be used and imported for performing the data analysis by using the dashboards in applications. The Power BI tool also has the drag and drop features which are impressive and also hold some of the self service capabilities, making the tool unique.
Through Power BI, one can perform real-time analysis by establishing a connectivity between the data resources. The data will always be updated through the data refreshing feature. You can also create custom visualizations, allowing you to provide you with multiple categories in options. The Power BI tool will help you to search for the latest updates and insights, through the quick insight option available in it. The Power BI platform will always get updated with some of the latest features making it more popular and unique.
Looker vs. Power BI:
Features:
As you all might have known about Microsoft, it is one of the competitors which is holding multiple platforms and applications. Among them, Power BI has multiple features that range beyond data analytics and business intelligence. The Power BI tool performs the functionalities like data Discovery, preparation of the data, creation of dashboards and data visualization. There will be weekly updates released by Microsoft on the cloud based Power BI service. Some of the recent features that have been added are smart narratives, infused experiences, anomaly capabilities of detection. The premium version of Power BI is available in all the geographical areas and is also deployed in the 42 data centers of Microsoft.
Looker was acquired by Google in the year of 2019. The Looker tool also holds multiple analytics capabilities which can be used for visualization, discovery, exploring and sharing the insights and analysis. The organizations can make use of Looker for the different mining techniques. In Looker, the data is defined using a specific modeling language. Google has taken the ownership to integrate lookup with the different Google data sets available along with Google Analytics.
Microsoft Power BI is leading among the two tools because of the integrated ecosystem it holds.
Ease of use:
The Power BI tool will definitely be easier for the new users when compared with the Looker platform. Looker utilizes the LookML programming language which requires deep learning. Once you have an idea on the language, it will definitely be easy as well. Looker could be difficult for the new users and time taking to master it.
The Power BI tool can be used by non-technical users whereas Looker can be used by technical users with a deep knowledge of the language.
CRM:
The Power BI tool is capable of integrating with the Dynamics CRM whereas the lookup tool does not have a CRM capability. Customer relationship management and business intelligence will go together. Ofcourse, Microsoft Power BI is the winner in this category.
Integration:
The Power BI tool is capable of handling the publication and promotion content which is generating overhead at the administrator level. This will require manual labor and is also not considered as an easy fix, it further requires collaboration between the Power BI applications and development environment called workspaces. The Power BI is capable of running on Linux and Mac, constituting a vast ecosystem, integrated with multiple Microsoft tools.
The Looker platform also runs on Linux, Mac and Windows. The lookup platform is capable of offering the application programming interfaces and allows exporting the data models to the different visualization platforms. The Looker tool is integrated with the Google data sources but it is not really competitive with integration options that are available in Power BI.
Price:
You might be aware that Microsoft keeps its prices low when compared with the other competitors in the market. It not only offers multiple features but also at a low price.
The Power BI pro will cost $10 per month for a single user. The premium version of the Power BI tool costs around $20 per month. The price level of Power BI is comparatively low when it comes to the features that it provides related to Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.
The Looker platform is more expensive when compared to Power BI. Looker holds enterprise based features requiring much more capabilities with high price. Power BI is a winner in price perspective as well.
Community:
If the Power BI users are facing any technical issues, then the user will have an option to submit a ticket to the Power BI team. Once the ticket is submitted, the user needs to wait for an update from the Power BI team. The Power BI also provides an additional option for the users to post their queries in a forum, where the users can seek help from the community.
The Looker tool holds an expert to whom the users can interact with, when they need any help without leaving the Looker platform. This will really help the new users when they face issues while navigating and trying to learn on the tool.
Version:
The Power BI tool has recently come up with the feature called version control application. Which helps users to have a glance about the history and modify the comments. This feature was launched in the year 2021 and there is no need to create any approval workflow. If there are multiple people working on the same project report. Then there could be multiple versions overwritten which could be a risk.
When it comes to the Looker tool, Looker platform makes use of Git to perform the management. And handling of the changes that take place within the ecosystem. It includes all information about the history. Workflow and the change logs which does not allow any conflict when the report gets updated.
Closing Thoughts:
Power BI with Microsoft is capable of integrating with multiple platforms, providing advantages to all kinds of users. In the near future, it is expected that these advantages might increase as well. Microsoft is also highly involved in putting efforts for the integration with the other applications. Which helps in auto- tuning the query performance and also get more integrated with the Microsoft teams.
The Looker tool doesn’t seem to be very competitive when compared with the Power BI. However, there are certain organizations that are looking for the analytics and reporting capabilities. The Looker tool holds advantages for those who are depending on the Google platforms. If the user is purely Google centric, then Looker will be the best.
Each tool has its own significance, it is the business leader’s choice to choose the right tool. Based on the business processes that the organization holds. To enhance your career, you can get trained and certified in any of these platforms.