Tableau Previous Solutions

Amir Tolba

Business Analyst at Educational Testing Service

I briefly explored Oracle Analytics, specifically a development tool called Oracle APEX. It includes some visualization features, but they're not as advanced as Tableau's.

In terms of visualization, Tableau is the best.

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reviewer2269986

Lead Business Analyst at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I use various BI solutions. Primarily, I work with Power BI. We use two services: the server to upload reports and the Power BI Service.

We also use Tableau for one client for reporting, dashboards, and reservations. Additionally, I use SAP Business Objects for reporting purposes.

One of Tableau's big objectives is reporting. It is superior compared to other tools.

For on-premises Power BI, the biggest challenge is it's not fully integrated. We need separate applications and deployments on different machines. That's cumbersome.

With the Tableau server, everyone can share reports on one server, which is much more efficient. Reporting with Tableau is amazing compared to Power BI Desktop.

As for cons, the application size is quite high, and 128 GB of RAM is needed for the Tableau Server so if we need a lighter version of Tableau.

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YAWANTWI-ADJEI

Data Visualization Specialist at Data Catalyst

I used Power BI before discovering Tableau in 2016/2017.

At first I did not like Tableau, because Tableau initially put me off considering that I have a problem with how Françafrique countries, like in West Africa, are controlled by France to not buy anything from Anglophone countries. I've worked in 15 African countries. And for instance, in Ghana, we are bordered by Françafrique countries but they haven't bought things from here because France tells them, "Don't buy." Which to me is wrong. Why should you sit in Paris and dictate to Africans?

I also decided that, "Okay. I'm not going to go into any French country and work." So, for my consultancy, apart from mainly Côte d'Ivoire, I also said, "Look. It is the attitude towards Anglophone and West African countries, I'm not going to help anybody." Because my contract with the World Bank was to build capacity. So I decided I'm not going to go there.

So, when I saw Tableau first, the word itself made me think that this might be the same kind of product, and I would not even look at it, because I was against it.

I kept on using my Power BI until a colleague, another consultant who we met from South
Africa, said to me while I was demonstrating Power BI, "I think you can use Tableau." I said, "What is Tableau? I don't want it." He said, "Oh I don't know much about Tableau, but somebody told me it's easier to use than Power BI." He said, "Why don't you look at that?"

We were working on the same project and I told him, "No, I'm not interested, I will not
look at it. It's a strange product, I don't want to look at a different product." And the guy insisted, "Oh please, you must take a look at it." Because we were looking at the project like we're a team, I said, "Okay, I'll look at it."

So that evening I downloaded it and I realized that all the things that I'm doing in Power
BI, that requires some level of IT background, well, I don't need that in Tableau. So then I decided, okay, let me really look at it. Who is behind Tableau? I asked where is the name Tableau from? Where did you get that name from? Okay.

So that was the time I changed my mind towards Tableau, and to be honest with you I've not regretted anything for doing it. I'm quite happy about it.

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DorianS

Lead Author at SFApps.info

I used a range of solutions to find the best one. I haven't switched; I'm using them at the same time.

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it_user1192905

Chief SAP - ICT (Digital & IT) at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Tableau is undisputedly the number one analytical product in the world. I have given a long presentation to management and the CEO about what differentiates Tableau over other products such as Cognos and Hyperion, SAP, etc. Lumira also is a strong contender, however, Tableau is way ahead because of the dynamic reporting that is possible and the whole virtualization that is very easy to produce, or reproduce. The business users themselves enjoy working on Tableau much better than other solutions like SAP, Cognos, Hyperion, etc.

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Gaurav Chakraborty

Senior Team Lead at Peristent Systems

I've used BusinessObjects and MicroStrategy as well. I used to use Power BI for a few months.

The main competitor to this product is Power BI, which I also use. This license is a bit costly compared to Power BI. Not more, but a bit costly from what I've seen.

There's not much of a difference between Power BI and Tableau. They have the same kind of interface and the features. The main difference between the BusinessObjects and the others is that its an enterprise tool. The licensing cost of the BusinessObjects is very, very expensive. The visualizations and objects etc., all have separate licensing for dashboarding. On top of that, the chart's not that interactive. If you click on one chart, it will automatically change the data of the several other charts related to that. That is not very interactive compared to Tableau or Power BI.

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Ahmed El Banna

Fintech Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I shuffle between available tools—I also use MicroStrategy, Microsoft Power BI, and Qlik.

Before using Tableau, I used Oracle BI, Oracle ODI, and Teradata.

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SriramNatesan

Tech Lead at MindTree

I've worked with SAP BusinessObjects. Tableau is a visualization tool built into the infrastructure for doing analysis. That's Tableau's focus. BusinessObjects is for doing analysis of some data and then sharing it on the server.

BusinessObjects is an enterprise tool that needs an extensive infrastructure. It requires a proper IT team to configure the semantic layer and the universal support and then build the report. And the most significant advantage enterprise tools have is pixel-perfect reporting. You can create a pixel-perfect report and share it as a PDF or Excel file with the same format. Tableau is more or less a self-service analytics tool, so we do not have those kinds of features. There are a good amount of differences between these two.

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reviewer1160580

Assistant Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

We used OBIEE Oracle before, but it was very limited. We were moved on to a different solution because we saw it as a better option. Tableau is a better option when compared to OBIEE, and we have been using it for six or seven years.

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Daria Maslovets

Analytics Lead/Tableau Integrator at SOFTICO

In the past, I have also used Excel and some Power BI.

In our company we like to say that there is no perfect BI, only the tool that suits you and your goals. Therefore, most companies choose to work with a different set of tools, sometimes combining several different ones. The main thing is that they all work towards your main goal and the achievement of your results.

Despite the fact that the company sells both Tableau and Power BI, we mainly use Tableau.

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reviewer1642554

Manager BI/Analytics and Data Management at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

We used Tableau from the get go.

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IrfanHanif2

Independent Consultant at Agility Analytics

We also work with Power BI and an open-source solution. In comparison, Tableau has a sharp learning curve. It is intuitive and easy to use. It has less deployment time and impressive visualization features. We can connect different data sources, including SQL, Oracle, etc. View full review »

Ariful Mondal

Global Data Architecture and Data Science Director at FH

We also use Dimension, Power BI, and QlikView. Domo is also there, but Domo is a little bit more expensive. Microstrategy is also a little bit more expensive, and it has different media storage.

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YAWANTWI-ADJEI

Data Visualization Specialist at Data Catalyst

I have worked with Excel, SPSS, and Power BI.

Tableau is easy to use and the support from the community is awesome. Also, I see Tableau as a product for the future due to the commitment from the development team.

The Tableau Development Team listen to suggestions from the users and follow discussions on the community forum and factor that into product upgrades.

End users want things to be done quickly and intuitively and the only way that any product will survive is by listening to end users

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BenjaminArnulf

Senior Director BI & Analytics at Hertz Global Holdings, Inc.

We previously used Cognos and Power BI. We switched because with Tableau, you do not need IT support. Users can create their dashboard really quickly.

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it_user851796

Assistant Vice President - BICC - Development at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

The switch was driven by the end-user level. We discovered that people were actually getting the self-service tool without us really being aware of it. Once we found out that they were using it, we did some research and looked at the market, saw how popular this tool is and how easy it is to use compared to our existing tool. We said, "Okay, let's not fight the end-users. Let's help the end-users, let's adopt it and help them grow."

That is how we've moved to this level where we've actually built out of a center practice. We're now a group, not so much of developers, but of people that will help the individual businesses build their own projects.

The most important criteria when selecting a vendor are support, for sure, and their ability to advance in the technology. We have found with Tableau that there is such a community out there. They have a lot of information that is freely available. Those are the main things, support and that they advance their products, that they don't get stale.

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Mohamed AbdelRhman

Data Teamlead at Elmenus

I have previously used Power BI, Qlik Sense, and Qlikview. I switched because Tableau was better in working with different sources compared to Power BI which was the only one that was truly on par. Qlik Sense and QlikView were easy to use but didn't have most of the features that Tableau and Power BI offered. Then there's OBIEE which I have used for the past two years, but it is quite difficult for non-technical users.

I also didn't like that Power BI is typically coupled with Microsoft Azure, whereas Tableau works well with AWS and Google which are a lot easier.

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Djalma Gomes, Pmp, Mba

Managing Partner at Data Pine

In the past I worked with Oracle E-Business Suite while working with ERP markets over a thirteen or fifteen year period. Yet for the past five years I've been focusing mainly on artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and the use of other software, such as Tableau and Azure for the purpose of developing and building data to create algorithms and visual dashboards to show the data. It's been around five years since I have turned my focus solely to big data and machine learning.

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reviewer1329363

DW/BI Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

I have worked with SAP BusinessObjects, Domo, SAP, and Birst.

One of the reasons that I prefer Tableau is that it's very user-friendly. Anyone who is familiar with Excel can easily adapt to Tableau.

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RanvijayKumar

Application Development Assoc Manager at Eccenture

Initially, they were working on SAP BusinessObjects, and then they moved to Spotfire. After that, they moved to Tableau. SAP BusinessObjects was more for reporting purposes, whereas Tableau is for dashboarding purposes.

We also liked Tableau, and that's why we moved to Tableau. It is more user-friendly, and it is also better than SAP BusinessObjects in terms of look and feel.

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reviewer1621350

Business Analyst at a media company with 10,001+ employees

My company currently uses Looker, not Tableau. I've been working on Tableau on my own time outside of work, trying to learn their free application, Tableau Public.

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reviewer1521363

Digital Strategy Manager at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

We are also using Power BI. We use both products currently.

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Tariq Raza (MS Certified)

Operations & BI Analyst at American Hospital Dubai

We also use Power BI.

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Peter Birksmith

(2IC) Senior System Analyst at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

We are still using another solution. However, this will be shutdown next year due to the decline in development on this platform. The development cycle on this legacy platform has been too slow for any type of turnkey solution and the end result did not provide a proficient self-service capability that satisfied the customer. Performance has been another factor in this platforms decline.

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ArchanaN

Solution Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Comparing it with Power BI, the main differences are the cost and the integration with Office 365. It is very easy to integrate Power BI with Teams or SharePoint because they all belong to the same company, whereas with Tableau, I have to integrate it with a third-party vendor. It is a little tough to integrate Tableau with SharePoint or Teams. Nowadays, everyone wants everything in one place; it could either be in SharePoint or in Teams.

I have been working with Spotfire lately, and it is very easy to integrate scripting in Spotfire.

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reviewer1048407

Senior tech architect at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The only other solution we use and have explored is Power BI from Microsoft.

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reviewer1258353

Lead of Business Intelligence at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

We also use Microsoft BI and Oracle OBIEE for reporting. I think that Tableau's features are much better than those of OBIEE and although Microsoft BI has better performance, Tableau is still the one that I like the best.

Tableau is much more expensive than Microsoft BI.

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Shady Mogawer

IT Manager at Arabian Cement Company

I used a little bit of Power BI. I know Tableau better, so I moved to Tableau Arabic.

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Cristobal Rodriguez

Director Consultoria at tecnoscala consulting

I'm also familiar with Power BI, SAP, and QlikView as well as Snowflake.

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RichardDuggan

Owner at Richard Duggan Pty Ltd

I also use Power BI. Tableau is very comparable to Power BI.

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reviewer1062786

MBA, MS Business Analytics at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have also used Power BI.

We found Power BI to be more useful than Tableau.

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reviewer1656066

Data Management Team Lead at a energy/utilities company with 201-500 employees

We did not previously use a different solution prior to adopting this product.

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reviewer1456341

Director of Professional Services, Analytics at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

In addition to Tableau, we're a licensed Cognos user and we also use Microsoft BI.

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it_user251337

DHS HQ at a government with 10,001+ employees

I didn’t switch. It was just a matter of seeing where Tableau makes sense as a service to use in our environment, which is for the simpler, not so complex, but quick turnaround. Worked with other technology stacks that are similar, like Information Builders, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, SAS, MicroStrategy, IBM, Salesforce, Qlik, etc. I find Tableau the easiest on visualization and its license model straightforward. But when it comes to scaling to other interoperation work, not so great on the wizard template, to do data mining/exchange. It doesn’t have that robust analytics and intelligence self-learning feature that comes with other tools.

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it_user206340

Principal Business Intelligence Analyst at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Back in 2012, we evaluated it against QlikView and MicroStrategy. MicroStrategy was more complex than our organization needed, and Tableau won out on ease of use and feature set, but I don't really remember the grittier details.

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it_user424317

Director, Business and Clinical Analytics at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

Qlik and Business Objects were used previously. Tableau was selected based on feedback from staff and other peers that are using the product, as well as all of the success we have experienced within our organization. The benefits and speed to develop were key decision factors. Licensure costs was also a key factor in selecting Tableau.

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Salma Hosni

Senior Customer Success Engineer at a educational organization with 51-200 employees

Previously, I worked with Power BI.

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reviewer930093

Director - Technology Operations at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees

This product was already in place when I was hired. I'm not sure if something different was used previously.

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DENNISSUNNY

Business Intelligence Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

We continue to use SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform.

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Pro3289Mng

Program Manager at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used Microsoft BI.

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it_user237714

Business Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I previously used R for data exploratory analysis. I'm choosing Tableau because it is quicker, and exploratory data analysis by its nature requires a large variety and volume of output.

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reviewer1545645

Data Management and Analytics Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using Qlik Sense before this solution.

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reviewer1384707

Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have worked with other BI tools including Spotfire and Power BI. There are not as visually appealing as Tableau and I would stay that purely from the UI perspective, Tableau definitely has the upper hand.

Conversely, Power BI has some capabilities that are missing in Tableau. Examples of this are charts and graphs. If you want to create something that's customizable, it's a very difficult and tedious task in Tableau. This is unlike Power BI or Sisense.

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VP9887765

Vice President Engineering Intellicloud at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

We don't have any preference for other solutions. We depend on Tableau for the solutions based on the client's requirement. If a client requires Tableau, we develop the application and customize it.

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it_user712779

Works at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I really like the user-friendly (usability, user experience) layout of Tableau. The visual layout for me is very appealing.

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it_user493419

Product Manager - Emory University (Tableau) at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have the EBI tool, Oracle OBIEE. Although I never used it personally, our department has experience with several of the top competitors of this product. Despite owning licenses to those tools and using them, the decision was made that Tableau offers self-serve BI better than any of the others. (I was not a part of this decision process, but was moved over from another team to manage the product once the decision was made.)

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Syed Fahad Anwar

Principal System Developer at HHRC

We previously were using Microsoft BI and we switched to Tableau because of the increased level of customization it provides.

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Ayodele-Makun

Pre-Sales Technical Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

None.

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it_user569868

Data Analysis Team Leader at Viber

In the past, I used QlikView as the BI solution. It's also a great tool with many features and great support. The problem with QlikView is that it's expensive and it takes longer to implement inside organizations.

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it_user3678

BI Consultant, Author, Trainer on Tableau Software, Speaker with 51-200 employees

I was a Cognos and a Brio user / developer. Every update became more fragmented and harder to use - always seemed to be from acquisition, not smart & integrated, development. As an experienced BI consultant, I saw that Tableau's direction was where they all should have been going. Switching was the smartest business decision I ever made! View full review »

it_user338343

Advisor at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

Yes, we used MicroStrategy in the past. One of the reasons for the switch was to have more ad hoc data visualization and a more user-friendly tool for business; one which involved less coding and more GUI work.

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it_user72435

Solution Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For our PaaS data discovery needs at the time, we reviewed MicroStrategy 9.4 Visual Insight, which was not up to the capabilities/ease of use that Tableau had at the time.

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it_user403101

BI Analyst at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did a POC with Tableau for my current organization and compared this tool with other BI tools.

I recommended Tableau for the following reasons: truly mature product, price-performance balance, ease of use, lot of flexibilities in regrouping the data on the fly, most of the frequently used calculations are built-in and very easy to use - unlike some other BI tools, which are quite clumsy - and for best interactive data visualization capabilities. Most importantly, a non-IT person can develop a simple dashboard without any IT help.

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Arthur Kancelarovicz

BI Specialist at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

We used (and continue to use) SAP Business Objects 4.1 Edge (and all the embedded tools...). We acquired the SAP BO licenses to initialize our business intelligence project. But, our bigger problem is using lot-and-not-linked tools to generate insights. Some of our needs are only answered by Explorer, another only by Dashboard Design (Xcelsius – and it’s so old...), another only by Lumira (and can’t be viewed on LaunchPad – The Web-Portal of BO - forcing users to install the app on their machines without mobile support).

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Alberto Guisande

Director at Decision Science

I used Cognos, BusinessObjects, and QlikView. I switched because of the paradigm change to self-service capabilities and ease of use.

We also have a lot projects to change previous tools. For example, we replaced six Enterprise QlikViews in six different companies which had been working there for six or seven years.

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it_user494277

Director, Strategic Data Analytics at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

We didn’t have a data vis solution beyond Excel and MSRS before. I used Spotfire in my business school work.

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it_user357624

Manager Business Intelligence and Analytics at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have used Oracle OBIEE before and Tableau beats that product on cost, usability and ease/speed of development. I don't have to know how to develop the RPD or meta-data layer. Tableau does that behind the scenes when I import a data source. Tableau was also much cheaper than OBIEE.

We also own PowerBI and Tableau is significantly better at ease of use and the number of data sources.

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reviewer1478580

Senior BI Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Prior to using Tableau, I used Power BI.

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reviewer1497201

Principal Partner at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

We are currently using MicroStrategy along with Tableau. We began with MicroStrategy, and all of our reports were on it. We had been using it for about 15 years. Tableau is much easier to develop in, so with MicroStrategy, you needed more of an architect to manage the metadata. Because Tableau is a lot simpler to implement, we've been able to train people to do their own reports, so it's much better from a self-service perspective.

Security-wise, Tableau is not as robust as MicroStrategy.

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Cristobal Rodriguez

Director Consultoria at tecnoscala consulting

We previously worked with Qlik, but we switched to Tableau because of its visualization and simpler way of programming. Tableau is also good for data discovery.

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it_user91872

Senior HR Analyst at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

No - most of our reporting was done between MS Excel and MS Access.

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it_user349755

President at a non-profit with 51-200 employees

We were previously using SSR for reports and SSIS for retrieving the data.

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it_user291708

Data Warehouse Consultant Sr at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees

We evaluated a few other solutions, but we chose Tableau because of the speed with which we can build reports, the simple deployment (cloud), easy scalability and the cost factor.

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it_user176814

Director

The client has a large Cognos footprint and they were looking to Tableau as a more agile reporting & analytics tool. For this project, we used Cognos 11 and were experimenting with IBM Watson Analytics. We were able to perform all the analytics they were doing in Watson Analytics, using Tableau.

In prior projects, I have experience with SAP BusinessObjects, SAS and QlikView.

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it_user164856

Financial Analyst at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

No, not for this purpose.

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reviewer2236278

Software Developer at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

I am also using QuickSight. When we create multiple visualizations and multiple sections using Tableau’s dashboard, the way of executing the visualization is quicker in Tableau compared to other tools. We can pull millions of data and create millions of tables. Apart from the performance issue, compared to other tools, the product provides the best and most advanced features.

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reviewer1010763

IT Manager of Integration at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We were using mainly SAP Business Warehouse and also the model solution, however, the biggest solution was based on SAP Business Warehouse and we are replacing that one due to the end of support for that tool.

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reviewer1645335

Director of Product Management at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

I also have used Teradata previously.

The front-end of Teradata is not so well used and therefore I cannot talk about it much, however, the dashboard is pretty good. Much like Google, which uses ML and AI to help answer questions, both solutions could benefit from extracting intelligence to answer questions.

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Jerry Paul

Product Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have used SQL on different platforms. I have also worked on Python and R to generate plots. I can't stress enough on the fact that as compared to other solutions, Tableau is much easier, clearer, and more intuitive while using your data. You can actually see every bit of your data. They are able to achieve their mission and help people see and understand data.

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it_user614262

Software Development Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

We used SSRS as our reporting solution. We switched because the deployment was archaic.

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it_user244335

Program Manager (Graduate Assistant) at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

I have previously used Excel and SSRS. Tableau provides more flexibility than these tools and is very intuitive to learn.

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it_user374601

Assistant Vice President, Institutional Analysis at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

While we use several BI tools, this was the first visualizations platform we purchased.

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it_user204687

Senior Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

We previously used SSRS and other analytics tools. We moved to Tableau because of its visual effects and because it was easy to develop with it.

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it_user387408

Consultant Director at DataBound Solutions

I have helped customers migrate from MS Pro-Clarity and Oracle Hyperion.

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reviewer1595463

Project Manager at a local government with 51-200 employees

Some of our clients also work with Microsoft BI. I'd personally worked with Talend, SAP HANA, and Power BI. I personally prefer Tableau due to its ease of use. With SAP HANA, I don't really have easy access to it. However, with Talend, if I wanted to, I could easily go to its website and download a copy of it.

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reviewer1590450

BI technical analyst at a government with 11-50 employees

I previously used another solution and switched because Tableau is easy to use, support is good, lower price, and for their community.

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Muhammed Shafad

Senior Data Analyst at 6d Technologies

I have worked with Pentaho and Microsoft BI. I found that the performance of these products didn't compare with that of Tableau.

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it_user110451

Works at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Initially used Tableau at a large electric utility where we were largely using Excel. Utility had bought into SAP BusinessObjects but IT had locked down these tools so much that all we had was Excel. Used to work at BOBJ myself but I haven't used their tools in while. We're going with Tableau right now because it works for our dept and we could get it working quickly and without an enormously long and expensive project to get IT involvement.

Now I work for a small start-up but one of the first things I did was to get a copy of Tableau.

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it_user205026

BI Architect at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Yes. I have prior experience with SAP Business Objects, Lumira, Sisense, as well as javascript charting tools such as Highcharts, D3JS, etc. The biggest reason for switching are: ease of use, agility to deliver insightful answers from your data, and large number of chart types.

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it_user203766

Lead Business Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

We were using OBIEE for generating dashboards and wanted to upgrade our system with better visualization tools.

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it_user193086

VP Associate Director at a marketing services firm with 501-1,000 employees

We primarily used Excel prior to Tableau. We are aware of some of the others, but for us, it is not worth investing the time re-inventing our process.

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it_user5220

Senior Manager of IT at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

No previous solution was in place.

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it_user163215

BI Analyst/Engineer/Process lead at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Our company used Cognos Planner and a few other BI solutions before. Tableau is less expensive and easier to use. An easy choice to make the switch.

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reviewer1754874

Anonymous at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees

In a previous company, I worked with IBM Cognos to focus on data, for instruction saving and loading that data in a very efficient way.

I also use other types of data extraction, such as Vanilla. It's a new software from France that is being used by a number of non-government organizations to restore data.

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it_user336630

IT Admin at a real estate/law firm with 501-1,000 employees

We did evaluate a number of other BI solutions before selecting Tableau Desktop. In the end, we chose Tableau Desktop because of its flexibility and superior graphics. We are a fairly small organization. While we do not currently have a data warehouse, we are planning to build a BIDW within the next three years. Once the data warehouse has been rolled out, we will transition from Tableau Desktop to Tableau Server. In the era of big data, Tableau Server offers a number of attractive features including the built-in interface with both the R Project and various open source big data applications.

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it_user161736

Industry Analyst at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In late 2013, we tested QlikView Desktop and Yellowfin Analytics. They did not seem quite as powerful at the time. However, I have not evaluated those products since. In early 2016, I explored Microsoft Power BI and found the interface clunky compared to Tableau. It is, however, much cheaper.

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it_user150693

Developer with 501-1,000 employees

Previously, we had been using the SAP BusinessObjects suite for BI reporting. There were too many issues regarding the complexity in development, the deployment of reports and, mostly, the performance and stability of dashboards.

After the bad experience with SAP BusinessObjects, we evaluated and adopted Tableau for its amazing straightforwardness in the representation of geo-referenced data on maps, which was a strict requirement from our sales & marketing department.

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it_user416991

Tableau/Data Visualization Specialist, Reporting & Analytics at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

I used IBM Cognos 8 with a previous employer, and I found that tool to be slow and clunky.

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it_user90408

Business Intelligence Specialist with 5,001-10,000 employees

I was using SAP BusinessObjects for four years, then I met Tableau and I realized how discontinued the SAP product was. Of course, all the BI platforms think that way, they were discontinued with the monolithic vision of data warehousing.

Then, all of the data-discovery tools appeared and all of us were amused.
I chose Tableau because it can give you answers very fast without the intervention of IT (most of the cases).

As we can see in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, Tableau is the leader among all the data-discovery tools, Tableau defined the BI trend, and now the rest of the BI platforms are incorporating these functionalities and improving them.

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it_user158718

Sr. Tableau Architect at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Business Objects. I switched to Tableau because of self service capabilities and quick turnaround on dashboard development.

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it_user94263

Senior Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 501-1,000 employees

We used a combination of custom webpages written in perl and the Jaspersoft reporting webapp. View full review »

reviewer1654785

Global Head of Professional Services at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

We had previously used Cognos to do the exact same thing. The only reason why we replaced it was that the business decided to go towards Tableau. Otherwise, there really wasn't any real reason to replace it. It was probably a little bit easier and more interesting for people to learn and to develop applications in the program than in Cognos. The ramp-up time to get to reasonably proficient in Tableau plus the support through Mr. Google made it a lot easier for me to get resources and do development on Tableau as compared to Cognos.

The organization decided to move away from the old platform. So, basically, I was lost when they asked me to shift off so that they could shut it down. I personally prefer the previous platform. I understood it very well. I had used it for years, and it worked just fine. For the most part, the challenges that we had on the old platform were not resolved by Tableau, which just reinforced to me that it wasn't a tool problem. It was a people problem.

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it_user454167

Manager, Business Intelligence at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I used QlikView but switched; the UI was not that great.

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it_user366207

Partner at a tech services company

I did not previously use a different solution. This is my first time with this. I did a lot of research into the final result of my BI work.

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it_user125886

VP Strategy, Global Delivery & Operations at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I previously used MicroStrategy, QlikView, SQL Server Reporting Services, SQL Server Analysis Services, Panorama, SAP BusinessObjects, and in-house Java-based reports.

The reasons I chose this product were: ease of doing things, faster performance, and it is an all-in-one tool.

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it_user243885

Business Intelligence Analyst at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

No previous solution was used in this company, but I do have experience of Domo.

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Daniel Ragot

Presidente at EDR

We are also experienced in using Oracle OBIEE. We have the same application ruling in both technologies.

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it_user720510

Consulting Head

I have experience with other BI solutions, but all of them had many limitations with respect to all my customers' requests. But Tableau is able to handle them.

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it_user145740

Consultant at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Currently use an alternative provider, looking to switch to a newer more empowering piece of software, an alternative to Tableau was selected at a Global CIO level.

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it_user149223

Senior Engineer, Big-Data/Data-Warehousing at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Domo: inflexible due to lack of expertise and confusing with blurred demarcation between DWH, ETL and BI layers.

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it_user231165

Deputy Director, Global Sales Planning & Policy at a renewables & environment company with 10,001+ employees

I previously used MicroStrategy. I chose Tableau for three reasons:

Powerful functionality
User-friendly interface
Great community

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it_user257478

Performance Management Analyst at a local government with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have SAS (Enterprise Guide) as our main data extraction tool. Some areas of the ministry also use MicroStrategy. After reviewing all three BI tools, it became evident that Tableau offered the best solution for the kind of work we do.

I work in the Performance Measurement and Evaluation Branch and our main task is to monitor and report on the health system’s performance. We get data in a variety of formats from a variety of sources, and at various times throughout the year. In order to analyse and report these types of data, Tableau proved to be the most nimble and flexible of the three.

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it_user357498

Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I've previously used Oracle Business Intelligence and SAP BusinessObjects. Both of them lack the rich viz that Tableau offers.

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Pete Marshall

Operations Manager at iWantGreatCare

I've looked briefly at Google Data Studios (good basic solution) and Amazon QuickSight which also looks good.

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Saumya Jain

Product Manager at TCG Digital Solutions Private Limited

People who have always used Tableau want to stick with it but those just getting into the field will look at options that can provide almost a similar functionality with the main difference being the cost. It's a trade-off between the different features offered on the solutions in this market and the cost.

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reviewer601230

Business Intelligence Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

This is our first visualization solution being used. Attempts were made on another platform, but setup and use of tool were a huge challenge for the team.

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it_user639489

Enterprise Risk Manager at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have used (and continue to use) ACL for data analytics. However for simple analytics, and in particular, data visualization, we prefer to use Tableau. We have also seen that users are able to understand Tableau faster than ACL.

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it_user151629

BI Expert at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Several companies ago, we were using Cognos and switched to Tableau due to ease of deployment, total cost of ownership. At my last three places, Tableau was already in-house.

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it_user286257

Director of Analytics at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

I previously used QlikView and MicroStrategy, and they are not as friendly as Tableau for the end user. If you do not have IT skills, you probably will be stuck with a basic level of visualization.

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it_user239409

Senior Analyst at a government with 501-1,000 employees

We chose Tableau for its simplicity and ease of use.

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it_user92844

Director at a tech services company

We evaluated others, but Tableau is the business intelligence platform which allows everyone to use the product in a way that supports how they work with data.

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it_user372978

Business Intelligence Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We evaluated other solutions, and selected Tableau mainly because of the licensing costs.

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reviewer1752162

Cloud Solution Consultant at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

I have previously used Amazon QuickSight, and Tableau is easier to use.

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AlexC

Project Manager at a government with 51-200 employees

I am from a Oracle database background and I have used Oracle Reports.

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reviewer843948

Subject Matter Expert, IT Operations Management, CS Professor at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

We were using Azure, but we're trying to get away from that because Microsoft is very expensive. We're trying to keep our expenses down while trying to find some decent products.

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LUCAS GIANPAOLO

Project Development Coordinator at ALIMENTOS ITALIA

I have never used a similar solution. It is my first time using this tool, and from the time of usage, it facilitates the process of information analysis.

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it_user851040

BI Operations Support Leader at General Electric

Analysis is now more visual than in the past, which was only long operational support reports with bunches of info.

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it_user332121

Senior Marketing Manager, CRM at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

We used QlikView. I’m not 100% sure what drove this selection over QlikView.

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it_user120990

Manager - CRO at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

We did not evaluate any other solutions. We only worked with Tableau, as it was industry ready.

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it_user195087

EMEA Business Operations Analyst at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Qliktech. We switched because the licensing strategy they used was not useful. It was a per dashboard license which means that if we develop several different dasbhoards the solution was becoming too expensive.

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it_user278760

Portfolio Analyst at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

We were using Excel-based solutions. Tableau was much more advanced and user-friendly at that time.

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it_user348144

IT Specialist at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

We have used SAP BO BI for many years. We liked the WebI /BO dashboard. We also evaluated Microsoft PowerBI and QlikView. Finally, our IT and project team chose Tableau because its UI/user experience is the best.

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Miroslav Kosecek

Consultant at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

I used IBM Cognos for many years, I am now working with BO, and I have evaluated many others. I choose this product for a particular customer because he needed analytical access to data for managers without having an IT department in the company.

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it_user168822

Director with 501-1,000 employees

I have historically developed using SAP BusinessObjects and IBM Cognos for visualization and various tools for ETL. I have trialed Qlik and Power BI, but this has a much higher level of maturity at this stage.

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Ed Dallal

Founder, CEO, & President at Krystal Sekurity

We used Cognos BI which was fast but a bit complex.

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it_user211788

Business Consultant at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

At my last company I tried to encourage the IT team to adopt these tools, but they were very focused on developing everything themselves. This turned out to be quite an expensive error and I would encourage companies - even those with their own in-house analyst teams - to consider using these tools as a way to quickly build models. They should only consider building models themselves if they know they have a product and solution that justifies it.

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it_user176937

Oracle OBIEE v12.x, v11.x SME Administrator at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

I have used many other solutions as a BI consultant including Discoverer, Brio Query, Impromptu, Bus Objects, etc. Tableau seems to be popular right now as, again, the presentation and data model are quite different than the others

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it_user150654

Consultant with 501-1,000 employees

Oracle Discoverer. Switched because we needed to move to a partnership model between IT and Business units. While Discoverer allowed for power users in the business to author reports its metadata layer and underlying database technology required more intensive IT support. Tableau enables the business user while giving more agility to work together to deliver ranges of enterprise solutions. View full review »

it_user722229

IT Instructor at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

I did not switch. I use QlikView, SAS Analytics, TIBCO Spotfire, and IBM Watson for college instructor roles.

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it_user152976

Business Intelligence Analyst at a university with 501-1,000 employees

I have used Report Builder and Crystal Reports. Switching wasn't really my decision, as the other tools used were at different organisations. Since then, I have tried to move back to other reporting tools, but found them lacking in functions I hadn't even realised I had come to rely on!

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it_user163569

Engineer-Product Development with 5,001-10,000 employees

I’ve used OBIEE. When compared to Tableau, visualizations are not visually appealing and I also had performance issues.

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reviewer1240239

Business Intelligence at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The very first data visualization tool I used was Tableau. Tableau was how I was introduced to the field of data. Before Tableau, I hadn't actually explored any other data visualization tool.

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it_user512082

ProductEngineer with 51-200 employees

We used IBM Cognos back then, but it’s really not easy to use and since it’s an integration of variety of services, it’s quite confusing sometimes. Plus it required training lessons, which aren’t cheap at all.

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it_user296670

Sr Programmer Analyst at a construction company with 1,001-5,000 employees

No.

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reviewer1499169

Research & Development Expert at a energy/utilities company with 11-50 employees

I've worked a bit more with Power BI.

Our organization also works with Oracle's Analytics.

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it_user147069

Tableau Lead with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used another solution. We switched to Tableau because, in my opinion, it has some of the best features available. It will take five years for other tools to catch up to where Tableau is right now.

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it_user193389

Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We evaluated Microsoft Excel and IBM Cognos: they are more time consuming, less efficient for generating reports, and more expensive.

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it_user261888

Analyst at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

I have used QlikView, but I have always found Tableau simpler to use.

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it_user90192

IT Manager with 1,001-5,000 employees

We previously used Cognos, and Microsoft BI. We chose this due to user-friendly structure. There aren't too many components to manage and understand like in Cognos or Microsoft BI, etc.

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it_user410031

Business Analytics Specialist at a tech consulting company with 1,001-5,000 employees

There was no other solution in place.

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Venkateswarlu Paturu

Service Delivery Manager / Architect at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

We started with Tableau.

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it_user563166

Business Intelligence Manager at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees

Yes, QlikView.

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it_user261768

Senior Manager - Analytics at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I have tried multiple solutions so far, and this is by far the best and fastest.

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it_user139296

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

SAP BusinessObjects does not offer similar visualization. Tableau’s visualizations are definitely a plus.

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it_user354975

Sr. Database Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

I also evaluated MS Power BI, but Tableau is more user-friendly, not as complicated and not buggy like MS Power BI.

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it_user136791

CRM Manager at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees

QlikView and Microsoft. Switched because there aren't any cubs, user friendly interface and lower cost. View full review »

reviewer1481310

Lead Data Scientist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees

Previously, we had not used another solution.

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it_user347076

Senior Consultant at a tech company with 51-200 employees

I use a lot of other tools, such as QlikView, because we deal with different clients who use different tools, so we need to have expertise in the different tools provided by the market leaders.

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it_user187248

Assistant Manager at a pharma/biotech company

I had been using SSRS, but the company where I worked had started using Tableau before I joined it.

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it_user449397

Business Intelligence Specialist

Yes, I did. It had the same functions with a value of four questions.

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it_user284769

Data Visualization and BI Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I have used other visualization tools in past. However, Tableau is much better than they are; much better compared to QlikView and Spotfire.

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it_user243900

Web Administrator at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We already had OLAP Cubes in place, but we haven't switched and are currently using both.

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it_user221220

Analyst in XBRL Projects at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

We used Infobeacon and now we are using Cognos and Microsoft BI. We are currently looking for a better product.

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it_user339261

IT Admin at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

We used Microsoft Excel.

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it_user494052

BI & Digital Transformation Consultant at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

I previously used MicroStrategy, which is a real BI tool.

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it_user349221

GSDC Consultant at a consultancy

I have used Spotfire. The two main reasons to use Tableau over Spotfire are the ease of working with it and the availability of an in-depth knowledge database.

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it_user570318

‎R&D Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Yes. SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards/Xcelsius. Switched because of easy adoption of Tableau, and minimum knowledge required.

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it_user123252

Tableau Specialist, BI and ETL Developer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

We previously used Enterprise standard.

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it_user690216

BI & New Project Profesional at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Excel.