Tableau Review - why 4.5 stars?

Tableau is a family of data visualization software designed for business intelligence that includes Tableau Desktop, Tableau Online, Tableau Server, Tableau Public and Tableau Reader. The Tableau suite is intended for viewing and understanding business data through interactive data visualization.

Tableau Software, the company behind Tableau solutions, is led by three people. The company was established in 2003 with an application that queries data and generates graphs to be matched with dashboards and shared online.

The rating of Tableau is 4.5 stars out of 5 and the total score is 90 out of 100. The ratings are based on our unbiased experts. Learn more in our rating methodology page

Tableau is ideal for small to large scale industries, freelancers and nonprofit organizations. It offers solutions that will benefit multiple industries. Tableau recognizes that different industries have various ways to express Key Performance Indicators and thus need to visualize data that makes sense for them. It offers a simple drag and drop interface and empowers each department of an organization to visualize data using its solutions.

Tableau is now used by thousands of companies around the world. Their clients include Citrix, Barclays, Pandora and Deloitte, to name a few.

Tableau is ranked 12 out of 532 software in their category (Business Intelligence systems).

Any business could explore data and visualize it in minutes through Tableau’s intuitive products that can be accessed online or mobile. Freelancers and online business owners can easily publish data to the web. Tableau’s best asset is that it is the fastest data visualization solution, and its drag and drop feature makes it a versatile option that cab benefit all types of industries. After developing data, it can be shared using the Tableau Server and viewed on iOS and Android devices.

The main competitors for Tableau are Birst and Sisense.

Birst allows users to access data from different on premise & cloud sources and combine them for analysis in one BI platform. The solution includes analytics for visualization, dashboards and reporting as well as a logical querying facility for ad-hoc requirements. Additionally the product provides a collaboration platform to share information and enable joint analysis & decision making. Birst also provides self service analytics with guided data enquiry which includes search facilities and recommendations to help in visualizing trends & information insights.

Tableau is a similar tool but is scalable for different types of requirements. Its desktop product is available for analysis by individuals, with its server product allows collaboration on data analysis. In addition to these on premise solutions there is an online product which is a hosted cloud solution. Tableau supports access to unstructured Big Data as well as the embedding of smart dashboards into customer applications.

Sisense on the other hand provides customers a proprietary in-chip data processing technology which results in comparatively faster querying and results, utilizing even normal hardware requirements. Another important feature is its crowd accelerated BI which improves response performance as the number of queries increase which is quite unlike its competitors.

Tableau does not currently support these features, but the product is mobile device access ready. In addition it provides a Reader product to view data visualizations & dashboards without querying or updating, as well as integration with GIS to support visual maps for location analysis.

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