Spotlight is great when you need a tool to give a quick look at a SQL server as a whole. It gives you the ability to see a lot of things, which can be vital in diagnosing problems or identifying stressors. Less great is the open-end of some of the diagnoses it makes, and things it identifies as "problems" (unless you love users coming to you and saying something like "Spotlight says there's a problem with our page latch!!!").
BIDS works well if you're committed to using all MS products. It does take some serious consideration if you know you will end up working outside of that, such as working with AWS products.
the platform offers a clean, easy to use interface. You can customize reports and dashboard. Integration is also pretty good, you can integrate to Xero, QBO and MYOB and excel spreadsheets. It also offers very broad supporting documents and webinars. There are only two downside of Spotlight; learning curve (it could be a bit difficult at the beginning to learn the system) and price point (For small businesses, Spotlight Reporting can be seen as relatively expensive compared to other reporting tools)
Spotlight is more usable, better at meeting requirements. Integration with Xero is one of the strengths (as others integrate too but Spotlight seems better connection). We also like the way group consolidation work in Spotlight. If your focus is on comprehensive, flexible, and visually rich reports and dashboards for multiple clients or entities, Spotlight is a clear choice.
SQL Server [Business Intelligence] Manager works well with Microsoft products. It has several advanced features along with dashboards and alerts that can be configured to user's need.
It had a positive impact in two main areas. First, it was easy for the DBA team to configure it to watch and alert on the most important instances. And second, it was very easy to provide clients read-only access to the dashboard so they could watch their servers as well, i.e. they weren't always pestering us for current status.
