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Is Tableau Dead?

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Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#51

Post by aaronharnly »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #22
oxfordmale wrote: post #20

I hate Tableau with a passion. The main bugbear is that viewers can't see the SQL code the dashboards execute. I am no fan of Looker, but the "Explore here" allows other users to see the SQL and tweak it if needed. Most intermediate data stakeholders are confident enough to modify the where clause to suit their custom needs, allowing them to self-serve. The licensing costs are prohibitive, too. It is almost unafforda…

Looker is obscenely expensive compared to Tableau. Also the UI is bad. The caching of Tableau is a huge money safer and huge performance boost if you e.g. use it with BigQuery (cut our BG costs by 80%). As with every data tool, you need strong data governance, or everyone will define their own metric for revenue and then you have endless discussions about "why the data is wrong" (it isn't). The biggest benefit to me…

We use both Looker and Tableau. It’s astonishing to me how Looker has stagnated since being acquired by Google. It’s really moribund.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#52

Post by wokwokwok »

Anon_Admirer wrote: post #29

There seems to be a lot of shade here at Power BI. Forgetting Microsoft’s dominance in the market, I’ve much appreciated Microsoft’s approach to data visualization which is soft on the visuals, but gradually improving them and hard on the programming aspects, such as Power Query or “M” and Data Analysis Expressions (“DAX”). The former they have opened to anyone to create via Power BI visuals SDK. The reason I say thi…

Wow, you really love PoweBI huh.

I’ve done the microstrategy, powerbi, tableau dance for about 3 years and I wasn’t impressed.

It’s easy to do easy things and hard to do hard things.

The versioning is quite bad.

The powerBI gateways are complex to maintain, expensive and incomprehensible when they don’t work (update failed? Good luck! Out of quota? Times out? Haha…)

DAX is pretty; but when it’s big, it’s spaghetti. Worse than SQL.

The custom components are frustratingly difficult to get right because they have to be extremely flexible.

…but, sure; it is what it is.

The ecosystem is pretty good.

Lots of documentation on how to do trivial things.

It’s ok.

I would avoid it if I could though; there’s a deep well of suffering to anyone who has to look after the stuff that people “whip together quickly” in PowerBI.

So… I guess it’s fair to say opinions vary.

Maybe it’s better than the others?

…buuut, like it? Nah.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#53

Post by stuckkeys »

MissTake wrote: post #2

Our renewal got Shanghaied by an extremely greedy and over zealous sales rep who injected himself between us and our renewals reps, and wanted to turn a sub $80k renewal into damn near $200k this year and $300k next. Needless to say it got nowhere fast and, by the time he gave up and threw us “back” to renewals, the damage had been done. We elected to do what they thought was unthinkable and we just walked away. My o…

Just out curiosity, what did you end up replacing it with? Looking to shop for a client. They were hyped on Tableau.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#54

Post by monkeydust »

I was an early Tableau adopter and promoter in my org many years back.

At the time the incumbent, Qliksense, was lagging badly and there was genuine grass roots support for Tableau as our next gen BI tool. Adoption grew significantly and people were happy...for a while. I remember reaching out the founder/CEO at the time and getting responses back. It was great.

Fast forward today and its different, over time Tableau dissatisfaction grew, I think a lot of it was the fact that our use-cases got more advanced and performance dropped and not being able to understand the complex SQL it was generating didn't help. Also Qliksense got noticeably better UX and importantly was cheaper. Today, MS PowerBI which came from left field, is really the front runner for us.

Parking this situation for a second I think the real issue is that people are getting a bit overwhelmed with dashboards. I have access to near 100 across the three platforms, they more or less do the same thing and are thus somewhat commoditized, I don't feel passionate about any of them as I did back in the day with Tableau. Worse, I have to spend mental bandwidth figuring out which one I need to open to answer my query, then I have to spend time navigating the UX to get my answer so I can move on with the task in hand.

We don't necessary need more dashboards, just faster ways to go from question to reliable answer where information can be pushed rather than pulled, especially if data points start looking anomalous over time.

Note - If your a startup in this field looking to upend the BI space reach out, I have spent a lot of time in this space over the years.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#55

Post by hjnilsson »

dataengineer56 wrote: post #35
kimi wrote: post #7

I don't know jack about Tableau, but if the alternative is Power BI, I got a feeling they may be safe. My current company sells telephony and call-center analytics for MS Teams using our software, and during pre-sales meeting, one of the staple questions is "So we can avoid Power BI entirely?" followed by a minor thanksgiving ceremony and presentation of credit card. I get a feeling it's not too dear to the hearts of…

There's Looker too which is a much more cohesive stack when paired with BigQuery and DBT/Dataform

Looker might look attractive, but it is missing so many basic features it is not competitive. You can't even query a view in BigQuery, you can't use window functions in data sources. All error messages are entirely opaque. Access management is very limited etc.

PowerBI / Tableau is much more full-featured.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#56

Post by hughess »

monkeydust wrote: post #54

I was an early Tableau adopter and promoter in my org many years back. At the time the incumbent, Qliksense, was lagging badly and there was genuine grass roots support for Tableau as our next gen BI tool. Adoption grew significantly and people were happy...for a while. I remember reaching out the founder/CEO at the time and getting responses back. It was great. Fast forward today and its different, over time Tableau…

I'm one of the founders of Evidence (https://evidence.dev) - would be great to hear about your experience. Reaching out now!

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#57

Post by codeulike »

The five stages of grief

Denial: "Tableau will become a tool in the Salesforce toolbox that major players will continue to use."

Anger: "Salesforce executives mentioning Tableau less than Slack or Mulesoft on their public calls ... Meanwhile, Microsoft's Power BI is on a hot streak."

Bargaining: "I believe it'll be a consistent player at large institutions who typically go through complex project and procurement processes."

Depression: "It will no longer be the hot new tool that will be embraced by SMBs. The community will not have the hope and excitement it had in the 2010s."

Acceptance: "The magic is no longer there and that's ok. Nothing lasts forever."

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#58

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

Rastonbury wrote: post #43
kimi wrote: post #7

I don't know jack about Tableau, but if the alternative is Power BI, I got a feeling they may be safe. My current company sells telephony and call-center analytics for MS Teams using our software, and during pre-sales meeting, one of the staple questions is "So we can avoid Power BI entirely?" followed by a minor thanksgiving ceremony and presentation of credit card. I get a feeling it's not too dear to the hearts of…

If you haven't used PowerBI recently, let me tell you it is better than Tableau. In my previous work, using PowerBI I can easily drag and drop dimensions and it can suggest data visualization in browser. Now I have tableau and I have to open the laggy Tableau Creator, wait for a sync, then build a visualization from scratch. Maybe its poorly implemented at the new place, but I avoid it when I can - its easier and fas…

neither qlick nor tableau ever came up with a language even remotely as powerful as DAX. that's all i need to know. the rest is excel.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#59

Post by KingOfCoders »

aaronharnly wrote: post #51
KingOfCoders wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looker is obscenely expensive compared to Tableau. Also the UI is bad. The caching of Tableau is a huge money safer and huge performance boost if you e.g. use it with BigQuery (cut our BG costs by 80%). As with every data tool, you need strong data governance, or everyone will define their own metric for revenue and then you have endless discussions about "why the data is wrong" (it isn't). The biggest benefit to me…

We use both Looker and Tableau. It’s astonishing to me how Looker has stagnated since being acquired by Google. It’s really moribund.

Yes, I thought the same.

Re: Is Tableau Dead?

#60

Post by blitzar »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #11
MissTake wrote: post #2

Our renewal got Shanghaied by an extremely greedy and over zealous sales rep who injected himself between us and our renewals reps, and wanted to turn a sub $80k renewal into damn near $200k this year and $300k next. Needless to say it got nowhere fast and, by the time he gave up and threw us “back” to renewals, the damage had been done. We elected to do what they thought was unthinkable and we just walked away. My o…

One can safely assume Salesforce has very well made internal Tableau visualizations of Salepserson performance. That sort of failure would almost certainly show up with crisp drop shadows. It is a shame, however, that the behavior of the sales rep probably made the renewals rep's chart look bad if not worse.

> the behavior of the sales rep

probably made the sales rep chart for "outreach activity" tick up

and the renewals rep's chart was fired because they didnt hit their target

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