What is Tableau?

Let's go over some of Tableau´s features to understand how it works.

• Connectors: Tableau allows to connect to a variety of databases using its ODBC* (scroll down for a little explanation on this) connector, it has over 20 APIs (application programming interface) and tools you can explore. Because this tool is designed to work for big enterprises it is set up to integrate easily with a lot more sources that other tools, however, this is something that the normal user in a standard business would probably not benefit from and that makes the tool a bit more complicated to use.
• Performance and data management: This is where Tableau stands out for large companies that need to handle millions of rows of information and data sets. Like we already mentioned Tableau works great if managing big amounts of data at speed is something that you have to have. It has fantastic animations and visualization options to choose from that are great for interactive reporting. Their performance is overall very strong and reliable and the drill-down capacities (a feature used to get a more granular overview of the data rather than a general view. E.g in sales by region→ country→ city) reach incredible levels of detail.
• Ease of learning: Even though Tableau has worked hard on natural language processing, which does facilitate searching, exploring and understanding graphs and data, it is still not the easiest one to get the hang of. Analysts with previous experience might find it very easy but because it has extra functionalities that other tools ( Power BI for example) do not have, it is a bit harder to understand. Getting your employees to learn it is probably worth it if your enterprise is big and has very specific and advanced needs though.
• Price: Tableau also offers a free version of their Software called Tableau public currently available for Windows and Mac.
  The price range of Tableau is wide and it really depends on your personal needs. It offers options for a variety of users, for example for the ones that do not need to create, but just “view” (Tableau View $12 per user per month, billed annually), and options for individual analysts ($70 per user per month, billed annually). Apart from the available products they offer a variety of add-on´s, such as a data management feature to Tableau Server, an add-on server management feature as well as resource Blocks (units of compute capacity in Tableau Online) for running flows. In Gartner words:
  
  “Tableau customers will be faced with a la carte pricing, which means they should expect to pay extra for new functionality.”

We hope that you enjoyed and that you can use this information while choosing the best BI-Tool for you and your business. Remember to always take what you read with a grain of salt and always consider your business's specific characteristics and needs!

Join us next week to find out about the next BI-Leader: Qlik!
Until the next time,
Your Statistance team!

*ODBC: Open Database Connectivity is a standard application programming interface, or API, for accessing database management systems (DBMS). An application written using ODBC can be ported to other platforms, with only little changes to the data access code.