Power BI vs Tableau

Outline
• What is BI?
• Overview of BI lifecycle
• Tableau: products, features and pricing
• Power BI: products, features and pricing
• Comparing Power BI and Tableau

• Which one is better for your company?

What is Business Intelligence?
• Raw Data  Useful Information
• Uses a set of tools and skill sets to help business owners make informative
decisions
Common Business Areas
• Customer Profiling
• Product Profitability

• Marketing
• Inventory and Distribution Analysis
• Key performance indicators
Data  Information
• Data from multiple sources are organized and loaded onto a common storage (using
ETL)
• Reporting tools are then used to build reports based on user needs.
 Reporting Tools
• 100’s of reporting tools available for building visualizations
• Two main tools for discussion:
• Tableau
• Power BI desktop
 Tableau
• Visualization tool designed to support faster solutions
• Build reports in a matter of minutes using drag and drop

• No programming language knowledge needed

• Create customized dashboards to fit the need of the business.
• Create a story using a sequence of worksheets.
Tableau products
• Tableau Desktop
• Tableau Server

• Tableau Online
• Tableau Public
• Tableau Reader
Tableau Desktop
• The tool used to create visualization and analyze the data
• Create workbooks, dashboards and stories

• Two editions:
• Personal Edition:
• limited data sources: can only connect to flat files
• no ability to connect to Tableau Server
• Professional Edition:
• full enterprise capabilities
• Publish visualizations onto Tableau online or Tableau public.
Tableau Server
• An online solution for sharing, distributing and collaborating on content created in
tableau.
• Interactive dashboards on web browsers or tablets
• Subscribe to a dashboard and automatically receive updates
• Priced per user or server core
• Requires planning
• Optimal hardware and IT resources
• Security
• Ability to create user filter based on necessary field
• Behind firewall, hence provides the most security
Tableau Online
• Cloud based visualization
• Priced per user per year

• Hosted version of Tableau Server

• Automatically schedule refreshes and add data models
• Visualizations created on Tableau Desktop can be published onto Online within seconds

• No setup, no hardware, no management necessary

Tableau Public
• Allows to view visualization free
• Visualization will be public

• Free tool

Tableau Reader
• Free tool
• Desktop application viewing visualization
• No ability to edit visualization / Read-only
Data Connection
• Two kinds of connection to source data:
• Live Data Connection
• Used for real-time analytics
• Performance is based on database performance
• Extraction
• Data is brought in memory
• Performance is not based on database performance
• Used for interactive analysis
Dashboards
• Each tableau visualization is created on a
worksheet.
• Multiple worksheets can be combined to create
a dashboard

• Dashboards provide an over view of the

business system at a glance.
• Show multiple dimensions of the data
summarized in one page
• Efficient and quick to respond to critical issues
and/or opportunities.
 Stories
• Data-driven storytelling
• Sheets that contain a sequence of worksheets or
dashboards to convey information
• Story points are connected to underlying data
Example


 Pricing
• Tableau Desktop Personal Edition: $999 per user
• Tableau Desktop Professional Edition: $1,999 per user
• Tableau Online: $500 per user, per year
• Tableau Public: Free
• Tableau Server: two options:
• enterprise option: no restriction on number of users/ restriction on hardware
• named user: no hardware restriction / restriction on user / pay per user

• Free Trial Available

*****please contact Tableau for more pricing information (check Tableau website) *****
 Power BI

• Microsoft product

• Cloud-based business analytics service

• Share reports and dashboards across a wide range of browsers, and devices such as tablets
and mobile phones.

• Integration with familiar Microsoft products: Excel, PowerPivot, etc.

• Easy connection to multiple data sources: Excel spreadsheets, cloud
services, on premise databases, etc.

• Uses DAX formulas to create calculated columns, as well as Quick

Calculations such as % of grand total

• The Power BI team releases 20+ features every month: free to

incorporate.
 Features
• Real-time dashboards; helping business
owners solve problems as they occur

• Power BI Embedded: azure service that

enables applications to interact with Power
BI

• Q&A feature: allowing users to ask

questions using natural language to get
answers in graphical form.

• Content Packs: for sharing dashboards

with team
Power BI products
• Power BI Desktop

• Power BI Mobile
• Power BI Publisher for Excel
Power BI Desktop

• Application where all visualizations are created

• Transform and clean data with Query Editor
• 3 views:
• Reports
• Data
• Relationships
Query Editor

• Load data from multiple sources

• Transform data to meet analysis needs

• Create new columns of calculated results

• Remembers all applied steps
 Power BI Mobile
• Allows to view dashboards and reports anywhere.

• Interact with data easily in a touch-optimized experience with Power BI native windows, iOS
and Android apps.
• Data-driven alerts
Power BI publisher for Excel
• Add-in for Excel

• Allows to pin pivot tables, charts and ranges in excel onto Power BI.
• A new tile will be created on a Power BI dashboard when snapshots have been pinned
• Note: new tile is a snapshot (not dynamic) – no automatic update
• Allows for manual update
Publish to Web
• Easily embed interactive visualizations online such as blogposts, websites
• Creates an embed code (iframe to use in web page)
• Creates link(to share via email)
• Allows for narrating stories over the web and to use visualizations in blogs
• Automatic data refreshes (unless disabled)

• Can not publish to web with reports shared with you (security)
Data Connections
Two kinds of connection to source data

• Direct Query
• Live connection to data source
• Performance will be based on data source
• No need for data to be refreshed on schedule

• Import
• Brings data in memory
• Refresh needed to view changes that occurred in the underlying data.
Content Pack Libraries
• Requires Power BI Professional version
• Integrates with existing office 365 Active Directory Configuration

• Centralized repository for sharing dashboards with team

• Makes it easier for members to browse and discover dashboards
• No need to email dashboard to team mates
• Just notify of new content pack
• Report developer can change security settings
Pricing

• Power BI – free version

• Limited data capacity limit (1GB/user)
• Data refresh- daily vs multiple times a day with Power BI PRO
• Limited data sources – cannot connect to on-premise database server
• Power BI PRO - $9.99 per user per month
• Data Capacity limit : 10GB/user
• Data refresh- up to 8 times per day

***** Please contact Microsoft for more information on pricing *****

 Tableau Power BI
• Supports SSBI (Self Service BI) • Supports SSBI

• Can connect to multiple data sources • Can connect to multiple data sources

• View visualizations on different devices • View visualizations on different devices

• No technical knowledge required hence less training cost • High level of DAX knowledge hence more training cost

• Customizing user-specific dashboards • Licensing is based on a Per User Model

• Licensing is based on a Per Processor Model • Plotting limitations of 2500 marks (takes away plotted points)

• Story-telling feature • Q&A Feature

• Ability to customize tool-tip content per user needs • Ability to customize tool-tip content

• Easier grouping ability: creating a new field with groups • Allows for sharing of content through ‘content-packs’

• “What-if” Analysis using parameters • Applied steps visible (easy to undo)

• Data interpreter
 Which tool is better?
 Depends on budget and visualization needs

• Power BI pros
• Affordable
• Attached to a major brand: tight integration with familiar tools such as
Excel, Azure, etc.
• New features added frequently
• Great for excel users
• Extensive database connectivity capabilities
• Q&A feature
• Publish to Web

• Power BI Cons
• Most advanced calculations require DAX knowledge
• More training cost
• No solution for data quality
• Tableau pros
• Excellent user interface
• Less training cost
• very fast and easy to create visualizations
• Good customer support
• Data Interpreter
• Story-telling ability

• Tableau Cons
• Relatively high cost
• No change management or versioning
Summary

If budget is an issue and you have the right technical professionals to publish
reports, Power BI would be the more affordable option

If budget is not an issue and you have non-technical users publishing reports,
Tableau would be the easier option.
 Source
• https://www.quora.com/What-are-differences-between-Tableaus-Desktop-Server-Public-Online-versions-Does-
Tableau-server-online-versions-need-Tableau-Desktop
• https://www.interworks.com/blog/bfair/2014/08/26/tableau-online-vs-tableau-server-5-things-consider
• http://www.butleranalytics.com/microsoft-power-bi-vs-tableau/
• http://sqlmag.com/power-bi/introducing-free-power-bi-designer-desktop-app
http://public.tableau.com/shared/QH6PH5GMG?:display_count=yes&:showVizHome=no
• http://content.criticalpathtraining.com/blog/road-ahead-power-bi/
• https://onlinehelp.tableau.com/current/pro/online/mac/en-us/stories.html
• https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/
• http://www.marquisleadership.com/messages/tuesdays-with-tableau-tableau-server-vs-tableau-online
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/power-bi-embedded-get-started/