Best Business Intelligence Solution for HUD: A Vendor Comparison
This paper evaluates five business intelligence vendors — Information Builders, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAS — to determine the best fit for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Each vendor is assessed on pricing, functionality, integration capabilities, scalability, and overall return on investment within a government context. The analysis eliminates MicroStrategy due to security and support concerns, and Information Builders due to limited integration transparency, ultimately narrowing the field to Microsoft, Oracle, and SAS. Microsoft is recommended as the optimal solution because of its per-user monthly pricing model, deep integration with existing HUD software, scalability, and seamless cross-product functionality.
- Introduction: Overview of the five vendors under evaluation
- Information Builders: Pricing and portal features of Information Builders
- MicroStrategy: Low-cost cloud option with security concerns
- Microsoft: Per-user pricing and Office suite integration
- Oracle: Enterprise pricing and database dominance
- SAS: Government-focused analytics with Microsoft integration
- Final Vendor Selection and Recommendation: Elimination rounds lead to Microsoft recommendation
- Conclusion: Microsoft endorsed for scalability and HUD fit
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper applies a consistent evaluation framework — pricing, integration, scalability, and ROI — across all five vendors, making comparisons clear and systematic.
- It contextualizes "return on investment" within a government agency setting, correctly noting that ROI for HUD means cost efficiency rather than profit generation.
- The elimination-style argument structure is well-organized: vendors are ruled out in logical stages, narrowing to a final recommendation with explicit justification.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates comparative vendor analysis using a multi-criteria decision framework. Rather than simply listing product features, the author maps each vendor's strengths and weaknesses against the specific operational and budgetary constraints of a large federal agency, showing how context shapes technology selection decisions.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief framing introduction, then dedicates one section to each of the five vendors. A "Final Verdict" section eliminates candidates in two rounds before recommending Microsoft. A short conclusion reinforces the recommendation and flags the need for further evaluation. This structure — survey, elimination, recommendation — is a standard approach for technology procurement analysis papers at the undergraduate level.
Introduction
This report evaluates five business intelligence solutions to determine which is best suited for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The five options under consideration are Information Builders, MicroStrategy, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAS. Each option will be examined individually, with its advantages and disadvantages considered in turn. The factors evaluated center on the functionality, cost, scalability, and overall return on investment of each solution, leading to a final recommendation.
Information Builders
Information Builders positions itself as a company that enables expedient and accurate data-driven decisions through visual analytics and a strong emphasis on user roles and skill-set dynamics. Return on investment is presented as a key driver for choosing this vendor. Information Builders describes its solution as following a chain whereby IT developers and data analysts translate the solution to power users, business users, operational employees, business partners, and customers, in that order. The "business intelligence portal" extends from the business user to customers in various forms, including reporting, operational dashboards, performance dashboards, search functions, and schedules.
As for cost, the Information Builders solution would run slightly over $250,000 for the 4 Core Production package and $118,960 for the 2 Core Development package. Annual maintenance ranges from approximately $25,000 to $50,000, and a professional engineer to assist with implementation would cost $112,000. Adding the optional data quality suite would roughly double the overall cost. The performance management module is more affordable, with a base cost of no more than $62,000, but the professional services personnel for that module alone would cost a quarter of a million dollars. In total, HUD would be looking at approximately $600,000 for core services alone and roughly $1 million in startup costs overall to get the solution operational (Information Builders, 2014).
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy represents the low-cost, self-service option among the vendors covered in this report. The company promotes its cloud-based, big data, and self-service analytics capabilities. While the nominal costs and open functionality of this software may seem appealing, that openness includes publicly used cloud and other technological solutions that may not always be sufficiently secure. A free or near-free solution is also unlikely to provide the level of client support that a vendor charging hundreds of thousands — or millions — of dollars would offer. Interoperability with consumer tools such as Dropbox and Google may be attractive on the surface, but these are consumer-driven solutions that may not handle the heavy usage and support requirements that HUD needs, demands, and requires (MicroStrategy, 2014).
Microsoft
Microsoft represents one of the premier options on this list. Notably, only four firms in the entire United States carry a AAA credit rating from major credit rating agencies, and Microsoft is one of them. One major advantage of the Microsoft Business Intelligence solution is its powerful integration with the widely used Microsoft Office suite, which includes Excel, Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and other applications. Pricing is another significant upside, as costs are assessed per user rather than per setup or some other fixed unit.
Microsoft offers three tiers of its business intelligence software: Power BI 365 (technically an add-on), a Power BI option with a SharePoint Online Plan add-on, and a third option that includes everything in the second tier plus Excel functionalities covering data discovery and access, data modeling, and data visualization. These plans cost $20, $40, and $52 per user per month, respectively. Depending on the number of users, the total cost may be higher or lower than competing options, but the ability to scale the business intelligence solution as workforce and budgetary conditions change is a significant advantage. Government departments like HUD often experience year-to-year budget fluctuations, making scalability especially valuable. The integration of this solution with a software suite already in widespread use also eliminates import/export compatibility issues (Microsoft, 2014).
Conclusion
Further analysis will be needed to confirm that the Microsoft-based solution is the optimal choice, but the ability to structure costs on a per-user, per-month basis — rather than committing to high fixed overhead regardless of budgetary or personnel changes — is a compelling advantage. This, combined with the fact that Microsoft products are already heavily used by HUD, means the transition to a Microsoft business intelligence solution would be far less disruptive than adopting a new platform. The result would be a faster and more substantial realization of return on investment overall.
References
Henschen, D. (2011, July 26). Low-cost options for predictive analytics challenge SAS, IBM. InformationWeek. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/low-cost-options-for-predictive-analytics-challenge-sas-ibm/d/d-id/1099191?
Information Builders. (2014, April 21). Business intelligence. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from
MicroStrategy. (2014, April 21). Experience MicroStrategy analytics right on your desktop. It's free and easy. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.microstrategy.com/us/
Microsoft. (2014, April 21). Business intelligence in Office and SQL Server. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/solutions/business-intelligence/default.aspx
Oracle. (2014, April 21). Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/overview/index.html
SAS. (2014, April 21). Big data. Bigger opportunity. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from http://www.sas.com
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