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Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

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Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#31

Post by itslennysfault »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #28

Anyone checked PowerBI from Microsoft? I think it's a great BI solution that isn't widely known yet. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgam9M8I0xA

Isn't widely known? It was the top rated BI solution by Gartner in 2017 and 2018. Full disclosure I used to work on it, and when I left we had over a million users so some people might have heard of it.

[2017](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-positions-m...)

[2018](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-recognizes-...)

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#32

Post by olivermarks »

kgc wrote: post #26
olivermarks wrote: post #4

Growing a startup '70%' is very different to running a publicly listed global company '...Looker is trying to become cash flow positive -- and its revenues are growing faster than its headcount. "We have visibility to cash flow break even over the next couple of years. We plateaued in spending. We now have 600 employees and expect to add 200 in 2019. We are seeing our cash burn rate decline," he explained.'

How can they add so many employees and have costs decline? Are employees not their majority cost?

making more revenue

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#33

Post by xemdetia »

manigandham wrote: post #24

Tableau is the best at getting non-technical users to be instantly productive, and is completely unmatched in pure analytical abilities and visualizations. They aren't standing still here either. However Tableau has absolutely screwed up their evolution into a cloud-based service. The current single-user desktop software with client/server design is painful and archaic, and the Tableau cloud is just a hosted server r…

Something I want to complain about here is the complete lack of due diligence that product-based, enterprise-focused companies fail at as they move to SaaS. If your primary customers are Federal/Finance/Health Care, you can't pull the plug on a product that is on prem and put it in the cloud until you get the compliance ducks in a row. I had hoped that GDPR would have fixed that but I am still seeing several companies making the same mistakes even today where this playbook should have been figured out.

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#34

Post by manigandham »

xemdetia wrote: post #33
manigandham wrote: post #24

Tableau is the best at getting non-technical users to be instantly productive, and is completely unmatched in pure analytical abilities and visualizations. They aren't standing still here either. However Tableau has absolutely screwed up their evolution into a cloud-based service. The current single-user desktop software with client/server design is painful and archaic, and the Tableau cloud is just a hosted server r…

Something I want to complain about here is the complete lack of due diligence that product-based, enterprise-focused companies fail at as they move to SaaS. If your primary customers are Federal/Finance/Health Care, you can't pull the plug on a product that is on prem and put it in the cloud until you get the compliance ducks in a row. I had hoped that GDPR would have fixed that but I am still seeing several companie…

Sure, but I don't think that's the problem here. Tableau's architecture is client/server using "workbook" files instead of a central server accessible via the web. They need to change that first, then they can make on-prem and hosted versions of it.

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#35

Post by mbesto »

feydaykyn wrote: post #23
tensor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going through the process of getting a BI solution. There are many players and Tableau doesn't fair well against them. I can see them holding on to existing customers because switching is hard, but they absolutely have a lot of competition for new sales.

Would you share the ones you found worthwhile? Our business wants PowerBI, but the sys admin side sounds like a pain : it seems we need: 1) a consultant to setup the visualisations 2) either a vm running windows server or create a db on azure to update manually because powerbi doesn't allow aws databases 3) the api automation capabilities are unclear says the expert (eg: create a new dashboard for a new customer ? Up…

PowerBI is really an amazing for the price point (free-ish for O365 accounts) for most businesses out there (10~300 employees). It's not one size fits all and YMMV.

1) You have this problem regardless

2) Huh? Why not just the cloud version? Are you trying to report directly on a productive transactional database for a software app? See #3 about source of data.

3) Depends on your source data. I build a dashboard for sales in with data from SalesForce in like 2 hours.

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#37

Post by rchaud »

mwexler wrote: post #10

This is another "Forbes Contributor" post. This means that it's just a blog post, though, admittedly, Cohan is a smart guy. Does anyone else think Forbes should do more to separate volunteer content from editorially directed and reviewed journalistic content? Or is this just a moot point since folks don't trust "Forbes" as a brand? It feels like, to me, someone saying "I went to Stanford" in a conversation because th…

> Or is this just a moot point since folks don't trust "Forbes" as a brand?

That's the stage I've been in for a while now. Forbes.com now has the same value to me as Huffington Post or Inc.com. It's a content mill with no clear brand voice that anyone can write for.

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#38

Post by nomel »

manigandham wrote: post #24

Tableau is the best at getting non-technical users to be instantly productive, and is completely unmatched in pure analytical abilities and visualizations. They aren't standing still here either. However Tableau has absolutely screwed up their evolution into a cloud-based service. The current single-user desktop software with client/server design is painful and archaic, and the Tableau cloud is just a hosted server r…

> completely unmatched in pure analytical abilities and visualizations.

Have you tried looked at Tibco Spotfire? I'd say it's a very good match. I find it much more intuitive than Tableau.

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#39

Post by georgewfraser »

numbsafari wrote: post #22
georgewfraser wrote: post #18

My company shares a lot of customers with Looker, and from my point of view there’s a couple reasons why they’re so successful. First, Looker has two layers. The dashboard layer gives you tables, charts and filters. The explore layer allows you to go in and build your own pivot tables off the same underlying models. No other BI tool has built an explore layer that’s as successful in practice as Looker’s. Second, the…

The version control and pull request design is exactly why I've selected Looker. LookML enables the power of the explore functionality as well. Looker's visualizations, however, are very weak when compared to the competition. It's been their weakness for years now, and they've really failed to address it. One aspect of Looker that I've also generally enjoyed is their on-boarding and support processes. They do a super…

I agree that their viz is weak. I comfort myself by saying that this is the easy part and they'll surely fix it eventually...still waiting after two years.

Re: Tableau Software Threatened? Rival Growing at 70% Just Raised $103M

#40

Post by rchaud »

manigandham wrote: post #24

Tableau is the best at getting non-technical users to be instantly productive, and is completely unmatched in pure analytical abilities and visualizations. They aren't standing still here either. However Tableau has absolutely screwed up their evolution into a cloud-based service. The current single-user desktop software with client/server design is painful and archaic, and the Tableau cloud is just a hosted server r…

> Tableau is the best at getting non-technical users to be instantly productive

I keep hearing that this is Tableau's big selling point. And yet, as exactly the kind of "non-technical" user coming from the world of Excel, it has been astounding to me just how user-unfriendly Tableau is.

Want to create a line chart? No clear way of doing it other than messing around with Tableau's implementation of pivot tables, randomly dropping metrics and dimensions into boxes until it resembles a chart.

Want to not guess blindly and follow Tableau's tutorials? Prepare to sign in on every single video tutorial page. Opened multiple tabs? You'll have to sign in on each one. Refreshing the page won't do anything.

I have no idea how they compete with something like PowerBI.

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