Struggling to decide between Power BI and Tableau analytics tools? We've got all the info you need to make the right choice.

Data visualization and analytics have been evolving at a rapid pace in the last few years with the advent of analytics and data science initiatives at companies in order to drive growth. Every year we see new tools in the market competing against the older, more established players in the Data visualization space.

Tableau and Power BI are of the first-class organization visualization equipment to be had with inside the marketplace today. Gartner has continuously positioned those equipment with inside the leader’s quadrant of their analytics and enterprise intelligence systems Magic quadrant for the previous few years. There were many records groups and groups which discover themselves evaluating the 2 equipment for the identical reason, which will select the first-class records analytics device for his or her groups.

In this two-part series, we compare the two tools from two perspectives of how the tools approached. The Analyst and the Developer. The two perspectives differ in the fundamental approach of ownership.

Microsoft Power BI:

Microsoft Power BI is a commercial enterprise analytics device that transforms information from distinctive reasserts into beneficial commercial enterprise intelligence reports. The information analytics device plays an in depth evaluation of facts and presents you a tabular and graphical show of information in devoted dashboards.

It additionally updates those dashboards robotically and in real-time. You can use Power BI to create custom content material packs for an unmarried crew or the complete organization. That consists of reports, datasets, and dashboards.

Power BI advantages from the corporation it is element of---Microsoft. It makes use of the prevailing Microsoft systems (Azure, SQL, and Excel) and builds information visualizations that do not destroy your budget. So, in case you already use Microsoft merchandise like Office 365 and Excel, Power BI is probably higher proper for you.

Why do people use Power BI?

For companies who need greater reporting energy and analytical muscle than that presented via way of means of Excel, Power BI is the following degree in enterprise intelligence. With Power BI, companies can assemble, scrutinize, and visualize facts from throughout the company, giving them extra perception into their operations and performance, and letting them make greater knowledgeable selections primarily based totally on actual facts.

Here are some of the key benefits of using Power BI:

• Businesses can input huge quantities of data into Power BI that many other platforms would struggle to process
• Built-in machine learning features can analyze data and help users spot valuable trends and make educated predictions
• Information can be visualized using powerful templates to allow businesses to better make sense of their data
• Power BI is cloud-based, so users get cutting edge intelligence capabilities and powerful algorithms that are updated regularly
• Powerful personalization capabilities allow users to create dashboards so they can access the data they need quickly
• Alerts can be set up on KPIs to keep users up to date important metrics and measurements.
• Power BI has an intuitive interface that makes it far more user-friendly and easy to navigate then complex spreadsheets
• The platform integrates with other popular business management tools like SharePoint, Office 365, and Dynamics 365, as well as other non-Microsoft products like Spark, Hadoop, Google Analytics, SAP, Salesforce, and Mail Chimp
• With data security a massive talking point for modern businesses, Power BI ensures data is safe, offering granular controls on accessibility both internally and externally.

Who uses Power BI?

• Though business intelligence products tend to be mainly the remit of business analysts and data scientists, thanks to its user-friendly nature, Power BI can be used by a range of people within a business.

• How you use it depends on what your role is; Power BI can generate custom dashboards depending on what data is relevant, and what information you need access to.

• It’s primarily used by business intelligence professionals, who use it to create data models and reports which are then shared throughout their organization. Not all businesses will have the scale or the need to support a full-time data whiz, however, so Power BI is often used as a self-service tool by various branches of the business to check up on progress and turn up insight into their team’s performance.

• Power BI works with whatever data you tell it to, so you can report on pretty much anything. It’s often most popular with departments like finance, marketing, sales, human resources, it, and operations.

What components make up Power BI?

The Power BI product is made up of a number of apps, each with their own features and uses. These include:

• Power Query: a data connection tool that lets you transform, combine, and enhance data from several sources
• Power Pivot: a data modeling tool for creating data models
• Power View: a data visualization tool that generates interactive charts, graphs, maps, and other visuals
• Power Map: another visualization tool for creating immersive 3D visuals
• Power Q&A: a question and answer engine that lets you ask questions about your data in plain language

What versions of Power BI are available?

There are a handful of versions of Power BI to choose from, depending on your budget, your needs, and how you want to deploy it. These versions range from light use to comprehensive features, free to premium, so users can select the one that best meets their requirements.

You can opt for a Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop, an online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Power BI service, a mobile Power BI app available on iOS and Android phones and tablets, or an on premise version known as Power BI Report Server. There’s also a white-label service for software developers.

Here’s a quick overview of the different versions, before we drill down further into each one:

• Power BI Desktop — Free, intended for small to midsize businesses
• Power BI Service
  • Power BI Pro — Paid per-user license, needed to get access to advanced features and the ability to share reports
  • Power BI Premium — Licenses by scale, intended for large businesses and enterprises
• Power BI Mobile — Device-based app for phones and tables
• Power BI Embedded — A white-label version of Power BI which Independent Software Vendors can embed in their own apps, rather than build their own analytical features
• Power BI Report Server — an on premise version of the Power BI Desktop app for businesses that need to keep their data and reports on their own servers.

Analytics:

• Statistical Summary that includes Histogram, Top N
• Outliers using Scatter plot
• Grouping and Binning
• Clustering
• Time series analysis

What kind of jobs are available working with Power BI?

• Business Intelligence Architect
• Business Analysts
• Data Analysts
• BI Developer

Tableau:

Tableau is a powerful and fastest growing data visualization tool used in the Business Intelligence Industry. It helps in simplifying raw data in a very easily understandable format. Tableau helps create the data that can be understood by professionals at any level in an organization. It also allows non-technical users to create customized dashboards.

Data analysis is very fast with Tableau tool and the visualizations created are in the form of dashboards and worksheets.

The best features of Tableau software are

• Data Blending
• Real time analysis
• Collaboration of data

The great thing about Tableau software is that it doesn’t require any technical or any kind of programming skills to operate. The tool has garnered interest among the people from all sectors such as business, researchers, different industries, etc.

Tableau Product Suite

The Tableau Product Suite consists of

• Tableau Desktop
• Tableau Public
• Tableau Online
• Tableau Server
• Tableau Reader

How does Tableau work?

Tableau connects and extracts the data stored in various places. It can pull data from any platform imaginable. A simple database such as an excel, pdf, to a complex database like Oracle, a database in the cloud such as Amazon webs services, Microsoft Azure SQL database, Google Cloud SQL and various other data sources can be extracted by Tableau.

The pulled data can be either connected live or extracted to the Tableau’s data engine, Tableau Desktop. This is where the Data analyst, data engineer work with the data that was pulled up and develop visualizations. The created dashboards are shared with the users as a static file. The users who receive the dashboards views the file using Tableau Reader.

The data from the Tableau Desktop can be published to the Tableau server. This is an enterprise platform where collaboration, distribution, governance, security model, automation features are supported. With the Tableau server, the end users have a better experience in accessing the files from all locations be it a desktop, mobile or email.

Tableau Uses:

Following are the main uses and applications of Tableau:

• Business Intelligence
• Data Visualization
• Data Collaboration
• Data Blending
• Real-time data analysis
• Query translation into visualization
• To import large size of data
• To create no-code data queries
• To manage large size metadata

Benefits of Tableau:

1. Quickly Create Interactive Visualization:

2. Comfortable Implementation:

3. Easily Handles Large Amounts Of Data: 

4. Ability to Use Other Scripting Language: 

6. Mobile-Friendly: 

7. Extensive Customer Resources: 

8. Excellent Mobile Support:

10. Low Cost: 

Analytics:

• Summary Statistics
• Trend analysis
• Basic Forecasting
• Clustering

Feature-by-Feature Comparison of Power BI vs. Tableau

Tableau or Power BI: Which one is better?

Both the tools have their own specific features. To select between these two, one needs to think about parameters like which person will use the tool (stakeholders or data analysts), what are their requirements, the size of the organization using the tool, the volume of data being used, etc.

Power BI comes up with intuitive features, therefore it is easy to learn. So it can be used by stakeholders who don’t have much knowledge as data analysts but want to do data analysis. In the case of Tableau, the interface is not very intuitive; therefore, quite challenging to learn. So, it can be used by data analysts who know data science and visualizations.

So, Power BI is better for its ease and Tableau for its speed and additional capabilities.

Conclusion

Both Power BI and Tableau have their pros and cons but making the right choice between them depends on your business requirements. If you need to analyze small data sets with basic visualization features, Power BI is the right choice for you as it is cheaper than Tableau.

On the other hand, if you need to analyze large datasets from multiple sources and require advanced data visualization features, Tableau is more capable and offers better drill-down options but it’s also more expensive.

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