as of: 1/15/2020

Executive Summary:
Tableau vs. Microsoft Power BI
 Tableau Power BI

Mission dedicated to enabling self-service analytics with the A business analytics service that is a component of a large
goal of helping people see and understand data. Microsoft product portfolio.

According to a McKinsey study, only ~8% of organizations are achieving analytics at scale. These organizations are ‘breaking away’
from their competitors due to outperforming in several critical areas. Differentiators demonstrated by these organizations include:

● Increased analytics investments with a focus on the ‘last mile.’

● 2.5x more likely to significantly increase analytics spend over the next 3 years.
● 2x more likely to have strong data governance allowing them to identify and prioritize their most important data.
● 2.5x more likely to employ additional data and analytics talent.
● 4x more likely to devote more of analytics spend to embed analytics into organizational DNA.

This document illustrates why customers choose Tableau to improve data-driven decision making across their workforce:

Better Analytics
Keep your workforce more informed; enable users to efficiently drilldown multiple levels on questions about business data. This
helps lead to operational cost savings and better decision making.

Tableau Power BI

Tableau’s proprietary VizQL™ technology is built to interpret Power BI leverages two different computer languages.
natural human behavior for a computer to represent Mashup Query Language "M" and Data Analysis Expressions
graphically. The computer does the work freeing up people (DAX). Being successful requires people to turn their
to explore. thoughts into machine readable code. More time coding
means less time discovering.

Drag and Drop - explore data at the speed of thought. Watch Fill in the Blank - each step requires a decision: decide a
Tableau apply visual best practices to help see patterns, visual, decide what fields to put on each element, decide
explore outliers, and discover insights. formatting/sizing to see results.

Customized visualizations with a simple calculation language. Modifications of simple visualizations often require IT or BI
Users ask questions of their data without complex scripting support due to multiple query languages and inherent
or coding. complexities.

Learn it once, apply it a thousand different ways. While basic visualization can feel similar to Excel and
Tableau focuses on “flow”, creating a fluid/consistent user therefore comfortable, actual analysis requires DAX and M.
experience. This makes learning easily transferable. These languages are powerful but complex, making every
solution specialized and difficult to reuse.

Impact: Tableau users can explore their data to find unexpected insights and answer new questions without requiring support from
IT or specialists. Power BI users are reliant upon technical staff to write code to perform the custom analysis that they need, and
often require 3rd party software add-ons.

Flexibility and Choice

Tableau’s data agnostic approach minimizes the risk of having to redeploy or reconfigure systems over time with a modification of
data strategy, leadership change, or new data source investments.
 Tableau Power BI

Tableau can be hosted: Required to operate on Microsoft services. Public cloud

● on windows or linux, deployment is limited to Azure.
● on all major clouds or on-prem,
● and by the customer or as SaaS. Power BI is marketed to be a managed SaaS solution. Unless
These choices allow the customer to leverage their existing the data is fully in the cloud, customers also need to host and
technology investments. administer one or more On-Premise Data Gateways.

Same interface and functionality for any deployment model. Re-design all analytical content if your cloud or data strategy
changes due to lack of product parity.

Consistent feature capabilities regardless of connection Feature capabilities dependent on whether data is imported
type. Iteratively toggle between an extract and a live or connected live. Toggling between import and live
connection with just one click. connection not supported.

Impact: Tableau is a data agnostic solution that partners with your organization to drive your analytics strategy forward regardless of
your existing data investments. Power BI focuses on migrating customers towards Microsoft’s proprietary data ‘stack.’

Governance and Scalability

Internal research and client feedback have shown Power BI requires significantly more hardware to gain equivalent scalability and
performance compared to Tableau Server. Tableau’s visual interface and robust governance controls provide the ability for Tableau
Server admins to easily manage permissions to grow and adopt analytics at scale.

Tableau Power BI

Between Tableau Server’s centralized site roles and As administration is spread across different technologies, it
permissions, Tableau server can be administered can be difficult to know what roles/permissions exist.
collaboratively by IT and the business.

Holistic Data Management offering integrated into the Data preparation in Power Query requires a highly technical
platform. Provides end-to-end self-service data preparation skillset, while Azure Data Catalog is independent of Power
and data cataloging capabilities. BI.

Customizable Tableau Server architecture configurable to the Limited to a managed service, not allowing organizations to
organization’s needs and resources. control how the software is configured or installed.

Mitigate risk prior to purchase with the ability to trial for Power BI Premium offers no ability to trial the technology
accurate Server scoping and transparent hardware prior to purchase. A pricing calculator is provided as an
requirements. Integrated Server Management tools allow for estimate but tends to be conservative which can lead to
continued maintenance and monitoring. poor performance and unexpected costs.

Impact: The ability to implement, adopt, govern, and scale according to best practices is essential in deriving benefits from data
analytics. Tableau’s ease of use and transparency extends to its approach on governance and scalability.

Community and Support

Tableau’s user community is unrivaled in the Business Intelligence market. The 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant report states that
Tableau’s user community sets the industry standard for user enablement with its user groups, roadshows, online tutorials and
availability of skills in the marketplace. This allows organizations to maximize the value of their analytics investment by overcoming
roadblocks that slow the adoption of other analytics products.
 Tableau Power BI

Active Community of passionate users. Additional Developer-centric user community focuses on solving
Community resources include Tableau Public, Community problems largely related to coding and custom integrations.
Forums, Iron Viz, Makeover Monday and events to help
upskill users.

Community resources paired with breadth of training Learning DAX and M requires technical expertise and
options ensures users of all technical abilities are extensive time and spend to achieve competence. Non-
empowered and successful. technical users are reliant on technical specialists to
complete more advanced tasks.

Tableau and its Community are solely focused on customers While Microsoft’s community and partner ecosystem is
and their success. Tableau Conference attracted over 18k extensive, there is comparatively little dedicated expertise or
customers with over 400+ sessions dedicated to Tableau. focus on Power BI.

According to Indeed as of 2019, Tableau is the fastest Due to the technical aptitude required, organizations often
growing BI job skill set in the marketplace, making it easier are limited in talent pool. This requires headcount who
for organizations to attract and retain top talent. specialize in the Microsoft stack, not in Power BI, resulting in
a lack of depth.

Impact: According to a recent Gartner study of Agile BI products, the proportion of costs spent on licensing (11%) is drastically
outweighed by the spend on People (43%). Key elements to successfully deploying analytics at scale, are investing in employees,
making sure the organization can attract and retain top talent, while ensuring users are adequately supported.