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Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

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Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#12
post #9
post #7

I never really understood tableu, it just makes fancy graphs from your data doesn't it? What's new about it?

It is what Excel should have evolved into. I still think Microsoft should have bought them and merged it into Excel.

Didn't Microsoft acquire the Vertipaq/xVelocity engine and then go to use that in Excel (Power Pivot), SSAS Tabular Models and Power BI?

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#13
post #9
post #7

I never really understood tableu, it just makes fancy graphs from your data doesn't it? What's new about it?

It is what Excel should have evolved into. I still think Microsoft should have bought them and merged it into Excel.

Microsoft has PowerBI which is already almost magic for many business users with it's ease of connectability with different databases and SaaS services. Transformations, parsing, mixing data from different sources and reporting capabilities are also easy to start with and quite powerful in the right hands. It's not integrated into Excel directly but sits quite well imho in the MS ecosystem.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is what Excel should have evolved into. I still think Microsoft should have bought them and merged it into Excel.

Microsoft has PowerBI which is already almost magic for many business users with it's ease of connectability with different databases and SaaS services. Transformations, parsing, mixing data from different sources and reporting capabilities are also easy to start with and quite powerful in the right hands. It's not integrated into Excel directly but sits quite well imho in the MS ecosystem.

Power BI also has a free version that is quite capable. I find the charts easier to work with than Excel.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#17
I love this. Mulesoft, Tableau -- there's a very clear strategy here for Salesforce. You're running all of your customer-facing operations on Salesforce, so why not also integrate the BI stack into everything?

I've worked with a lot of companies who spend months (if not years) integrating their data into a few disparate systems... The finance team has one system (and underlying data lake), the commerce team another, the marketing team another... If Salesforce thinks they can run the entire underlying data infrastructure in addition to the actual customer-facing functions, then this is a smart play.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#19
post #7

I never really understood tableu, it just makes fancy graphs from your data doesn't it? What's new about it?

> I never really understood tableu, it just makes fancy graphs from your data doesn't it? What's new about it? It's really easy for business users to point it at a database and get started on their own, exploring the data. It feels like it has a much lower barrier to entry than many other reporting tools. And once you win the hearts of executives, that's kind of the end of that discussion. It's a really sticky produc…

Also, the business users can combine data sources and do joins. Instead of waiting for IT to produce the right views.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#20
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is what Excel should have evolved into. I still think Microsoft should have bought them and merged it into Excel.

Microsoft has PowerBI which is already almost magic for many business users with it's ease of connectability with different databases and SaaS services. Transformations, parsing, mixing data from different sources and reporting capabilities are also easy to start with and quite powerful in the right hands. It's not integrated into Excel directly but sits quite well imho in the MS ecosystem.

PowerBI wants to be Tableau based on the number of times Microsoft sales has demoed and whatnot.

But I haven’t met databiz people who switched from tableau to PBI. I’m not sure why as they look pretty similar on paper.

I think Tableau’s mental model is about exporting and storytelling while PBI is about reporting.

Personally, I find it harder to work with PBI because it’s the only license model more confusing that Tableau. And there’s no Tableau Public equivalent.

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