[jsmeaton]

There are so many BI tools around that it's hard to figure out which solution is going to be best for a particular use case. Creating further confusion, it seems like most "enterprise" BI products aren't explained properly on their websites and are hidden behind "request a demo". It's nearly impossible to evaluate all the possibilities without going crazy.

I want to be able to generate my domain models in some way. Point and click data descriptions are awful. Letting certain people work with raw data is fine, but a lot of users are going to want to work with names that make sense to them. Let me define models with text, just like ORM models.

I want row based security. Let me assign groups to values on certain models. This essentially boils down to hidden filters and required tables.

It should all be web based. I'm not exposing my database directly to customers.

It should definitely not cost 100k a year.

I like the idea of QuickSight, but I can already see that it's not going to work for my needs. But at least they give an upfront description and price. Here's hoping the pricing model drives down the crazy license fees the other vendors are extracting.

[baconner]

I think the big issue with "bi" is that the term is just too broadly applied to be meaningful anymore. Every piece of software with a chart in it somewhere is billed as BI these days and moreover if you ask 10 business users what they want out of their BI system you'll get descriptions of several very different tools which all happen to produce charts. I'm sorry to say I've seen countless businesses deeply disappointed in their BI tools simply because they assumed since "it's a BI tool" it will do X,Y,Z when in reality there are a bunch of different classes of tools to choose from with very different features. The few options that really cover the spectrum are extremely complex and costly to really get value from over the long term. There's a reason why the analyst industry exists - it's just too much damn work to suss out what all these tools actually do on your own.

I make BI tools for a living and I am still struggling to really do a great job classifying all these types of functionality and communicating it well enough to lead customers to the tools they really need.

[aceregen]

Hi @jsmeaton, this is Vincent from Holistics (www.holistics.io).

While our website also has a "request a demo" button in our landing page - It's because we have just launched and are looking to validate some of the use-cases that we have built. Will really appreciate if you can contact us and share with us your thoughts.

Will you mind dropping us a note on our website for us to contact you? It will be interesting to get your feedback, and I suspect what we have built (or are building) may meet some of the things you've listed above, though I still need your validation.

A brief introduction about us. We started off as an internal data dashboard for an online video streaming company, serving a specific reporting niche (not a full fledged BI tool) with use-cases different from BI vendors such as Quicksight or the other vendors.