#PowerBI experts, Crush on #Tableau
Power BI and Tableau has been ranked as leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI 2020. It becomes critical for businesses to choose between one of these solutions for their analytics and BI workloads.
Of late, we have been receiving a lot of questions and interests in choosing BI tools. Recent trends show that companies are open to Power BI or Tableau as long as their needs are met within budget.
We are open to choosing and suggesting BI tools to our customers. We decided to give a try to Tableau.
Our first impression of Tableau
Tableau is intuitive. Tableau is quick. Table is powerful. Tableau is beautiful.
Tableau’s power is its data visualization capabilities.
You need a dual axis chart with bars and lines? You got it.
You need a dumbell chart? You got it.
You need advanced analytics? You need greater control over tooltips? You need annotations?
You got it!
Looks like Tableau was built ground up with data visualization in mind. And, it’s correct. Tableau founders were from graphics and visualization background.
How does it compare with Power BI?
After our hands on with Tableau we can say Power BI visualization capabilities though familiar, are limited. You have the same decade and century old charts.
You can be creative with visuals but then you need to learn Typescript and Node.js. You can create new and advanced charts but development and learning curve is high.
How about modelling capabilities?
Power BI excels in data modelling capabilities. DAX and multi-dimensional concepts are inbuilt in Power BI.
Tableau lacks much of these. Minimal multi-dimensional support, no functional language like DAX. Tableau relies on calculation scripts, LOD etc.
How about Dashboards and Reports on canvas?
Tableau has concept of Sheets and Dashboards. Power BI has concept of Reports and Dashboards.
We feel Power BI wins here as you have greater control over the layout and structure of your reports. You can create Business dashboards quite easily in Power BI.
What about Publishing options?
With Tableau you can publish to a Tableau server or Tableau online. Same with Power BI.
However, Power BI service (or Power BI online) though looks cluttered sometimes, is quite powerful and feature rich. Navigation can be confusing. It has a concept of workspaces.
Tableau online is clean and has simple interface. Admin capabilities and options look limited. It has a concept of projects. Great UX.
What about cost?
To a large extent Power BI wins here. Power BI Desktop is free. Power BI Online is free for personal use. This makes Power BI quicker to adopt and penetrate within your org.
Tableau unfortunately is not free. It’s costlier than Power BI. Though Tableau has a free version called Tableau Public, its functionality is limited.
Note: We need to evaluate cost in a larger scheme of things keeping view of number of creators, number frequent and occasional users.
How is the support for developer tools?
Microsoft is known for developing products for extensibility. Power BI wins here with APIs to manage everything you need. Power BI lacks APIs for designer and modifying models.
Tableau has some support for tools but it’s limited.
What do you recommend?
Power BI and Tableau, both are great tools. However, recent job trend shows greater demand for Power BI developers.
To sum up: Power BI is a great end to end BI tool. Tableau is a great visualization tool.
We recommend to check your existing BI investments, and BI and analytics needs. Based on this and your budget, take a call.
Given high demand for both the tools, we are working on creating a comprehensive guide comparing Power BI and Tableau. We will cover in detail their BI capabilities, Data Integrations, Enterprise support, APIs and costs with screenshots from both the tools.
Join our list to be the first one to know when the guide is available.
Do you want us to evaluate which BI tools fit your business needs? Contact us now.