Pentaho Business Analytics vs Tableau comparison

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1,444 views|1,055 comparisons
89% willing to recommend
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17,550 views|14,973 comparisons
89% willing to recommend
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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Pentaho Business Analytics and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Reporting solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Tableau Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced.""Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud.""The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report.""The initial setup is pretty straightforward.""Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it.""Easy to use components to create the job.""We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."

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"Tableau has comprehensive, insightful charts, which allow you to build stunning dashboards and enrich your support decision-making.""The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics.""While using this solution I have found the valuable features to be ease of use and the visualization. It is a complete solution.""It provides business users with a tool, so they are not dependent on IT.""Our customers love the visual capabilities on top of it and the ability to explain and get the required data. There is no other product like Tableau in the business intelligence and analytics space.""The solution makes for very productive and really informative decision making. It can lead the whole business and build a strategy across whole working departments.""The most valuable feature is the user experience.""Its dashboarding is the most valuable. It is easy to create visualizations and dashboards and import Excel sheets and ESP files in Tableau as compared to other tools."

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Cons
"Version control would be a good addition.""Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive.""Logging capability is needed.""We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost.""Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process.""Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention.""The repository should be improved.""Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."

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"I would like to be able to set the parameters in a more specific manner.""There should be more widgets that would help less trained individuals create charts with less difficulty.""I have used Power BI as well as Tableau. There are a couple of interesting features that I like in Power BI, but they are not present in Tableau. For example, in Power BI, if I am looking at country-wise population, I can type and ask for the country that has the maximum population, and it will automatically give an answer and address that query. This kind of feature is not there in Tableau. Similarly, in Power BI, for integrating with the latest ML algorithms, we have decision trees and primarily multiple machine learning algorithms. The decision tree essentially visualizes the patterns in the data. We don't have such a feature in Tableau. If Tableau can integrate with the machine learning algorithms and help us to do visualizations, it would be a wonderful combination. Most of the people are going for Tableau primarily for visualization purposes. However, in the data science industry, users want to do model building as well as tell a story. As of now, Tableau is fulfilling the requirements for visualization purposes. If they can bring it up to a level where I can use it for machine learning purposes as well as for visualization, it would be very helpful. Many people who want to do data science don't want to write a code. Tableau is anyway a drag and drop tool, and if they can provide those options as well, it will be a powerful combination.""Tableau's data modeling, mining, and AI library features need improvement.""Tableau is an end-to-end analytics platform, and it is doing a pretty good job in terms of connecting to the data and analyzing it. It can, however, do better in terms of data management and the ETL features, which are not on the advanced analytics or machine learning side. Tableau Prep is where users would want to see more advancements. They can improve Tableau Prep, which is an analytic platform tool for data cleansing. People who work with data spend most of their time curating the data. Cleaning up the data and getting it ready for analysis is what takes the most time. If Tableau can invest more time in improving the Tableau Prep platform, it would be great. Previously, Tableau didn't have the functionality for writing to a database. So, you couldn't really alter the database tables and write to your database, but they fixed that in one of the very recent releases. However, it isn't really advanced and should be improved.""More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement.""The architecture should be improved to better handle the data.""Many things have to be improved in Tableau. Right now, we make the calculation, and then we get that information. It would be better if business users could do that. I would ask the people at Tableau to provide that option to business users to get that information in one click. It would be better if they automated some calculations. There should be more automation in Tableau. However, there are many things in automation mode, but it is very limited at the moment. We need automation for people who do not know much about Tableau. It would also be better if there were good community support like in Alteryx."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Free and commercial versions are available."
  • "Pentaho is expensive ."
  • "We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
  • More Pentaho Business Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For big business, Tableau could be expensive as having a lot of Tableau server users (entering with a browser to reports) could be a bit expensive."
  • "Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."
  • "Paying for users you never setup or buying expensive desktop licenses for users who can solve their users with web editing on the server are the two biggest expenses."
  • "Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
  • "Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"
  • "I wish there was more of a subscription model with the pricing when it comes to Tableau, so you can get all the latest version upgrades/features if you pay monthly/annually."
  • "The cost is high."
  • "Deployment of dashboards to viewers and unit supervisors can be prohibitively expensive."
  • More Tableau Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows:  1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle  - look for SAP… more »
    Top Answer:The organization has both options based on their needs and budget constraints. The Enterprise Edition is expensive with references to an added number of features.
    Top Answer:The product to me is not as user-friendly as other players in the market. It also still needs improvement in the reporting module. You will need to search for deployment examples or need to have a… more »
    Top Answer:It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos… more »
    Top Answer:Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it… more »
    Top Answer:Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies… more »
    Ranking
    16th
    out of 50 in Reporting
    Views
    1,444
    Comparisons
    1,055
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    526
    Rating
    7.0
    2nd
    out of 50 in Reporting
    Views
    17,550
    Comparisons
    14,973
    Reviews
    14
    Average Words per Review
    534
    Rating
    8.5
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
    Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
    Learn More
    Overview

    Pentaho is an open source business intelligence company that provides a wide range of tools to help their customers better manage their businesses. These tools include data integration software, mining tools, dashboard applications, online analytical processing options, and more.

    Pentaho has two product categories: There is the standard enterprise version. This is the product that comes directly from Pentaho itself with all of the benefits, features, and programs that come along with a paid application such us analysis services, dashboard design, and interactive reporting.

    The alternative is an open source version, which the public is permitted to add to and tweak the product. This solution has its advantages, aside from the fact that it is free, in that there are many more people working on the project to improve its quality and breadth of functionality.

    Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights. 

    Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

    Tableau has many valuable key features:

    • Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
    • Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards. 
    • Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions. 
    • Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data. 
    • Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries. 
    • Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

    Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

    Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

    Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.

    Sample Customers
    Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
    Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    University13%
    Educational Organization6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Government12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Educational Organization9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Healthcare Company7%
    University7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise39%
    Large Enterprise47%
    Buyer's Guide
    Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Tableau
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Pentaho Business Analytics is ranked 16th in Reporting with 42 reviews while Tableau is ranked 2nd in Reporting with 290 reviews. Pentaho Business Analytics is rated 8.0, while Tableau is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Pentaho Business Analytics writes "Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tableau writes "Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time". Pentaho Business Analytics is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Databricks, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, SAP Crystal Reports and KNIME, whereas Tableau is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Amazon QuickSight, Domo, SAS Visual Analytics and Databricks. See our Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Tableau report.

    See our list of best Reporting vendors and best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.

    We monitor all Reporting reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.