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Google Cloud Datalab vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud Datalab
Ranking in Data Visualization
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Science Platforms (15th)
Tableau
Ranking in Data Visualization
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Datalab is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 30.3%, down from 32.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

Nilesh Gode - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 1, 2023
Easy to setup, stable and easy to design data pipelines
Currently, we're currently provisioning some ML models into Vertex AI. The sales team will likely start using the other resources in a month or two.  When deploying the model on-premises, with a global team, we faced time lag issues. On Google Cloud, there is a facility to select different…
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 22, 2022
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"All of the features of this product are quite good."
"In MLOps, when we are designing the data pipeline, the designing of the data pipeline is easy in Google Cloud."
"The infrastructure is highly reliable and efficient, contributing to a positive experience."
"The APIs are valuable."
"Google Cloud Datalab is very customizable."
"For me, it has been a stable product."
"Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."
"I have found the solution easy to use and the interface is very good."
"It is an excellent tool for data capture, processing, and visualization."
"Good data flow and management."
"It has a shallow learning curve and so you can go to market very, very, very quickly."
"Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good. It is a very good tool, and it basically brings life into data with good design. We have been creating a lot of interactive visualizations and dashboards. It has a public version. There are public communities from where you can get a lot of examples for practice."
"The ability to deploy is the added ability to centralise the Tableau repository for all Tableau Developers."
"The data blending capabilities is a huge factor for our team."
 

Cons

"The product must be made more user-friendly."
"Even if your application is always connected to its database, the processing can be cumbersome. It shouldn't be so complicated."
"We have also encountered challenges during our transition period in terms of data control and segmentation. The management of each channel and data structure as it has its own unique characteristics requires very detailed and precise control. The allocation should be appropriate and the complexity increases due to the different time zones and geographic locations of our clients. The process usually involves migrating the existing database sets to gcp and ensure data integrity is maintained. This is the only challenge that we faced while navigating the integers of the solution and honestly it was an interesting and unique experience."
"Connectivity challenges for end-users, particularly when loading data, environments, and libraries, need to be addressed for an enhanced user experience."
"There is room for improvement in the graphical user interface. So that the initial user would use it properly, that would be a good option."
"The interface should be more user-friendly."
"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."
"Tableau's automatic insight could be improved. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data, but I think they need more. Customers need more insight automatically from data—they don't want to discover them, they want to get the forecast automatically. The data preparation should also be improved because it's not easy. Tableau tries to focus on the business side, but the backend side has not improved much. They also have an ETS solution, but it's limited."
"An area needing improvement involves the complexity of the product should you need to alter a lot of parameters. If you have technical servers, much interface, different providers and more serious processes, that will be time consuming."
"Its price should be improved. Its price is much higher than Power BI and QlikView. Programming is not easy on Tableau. For programming, you have to have a separate model. They should include programming directly on the web portion of the Tableau desktop so that people can write Python or JavaScript code for customizations instead of using a different model. Currently, Tableau Data Prep is a separate application that you have to purchase. It would be helpful if they can include Tableau Data Prep and programming languages such as R, Python in the next version. Tableau Public, which is a community version, doesn't allow you to save your work on your desktop. They should allow it. Currently, you can only upload it in the community."
"The user experience for less savvy or non-technical people (from my experience)."
"If they could add global filters in the stories, more chart types, and default colours, it would help."
"We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable."
"Tableau is an end-to-end analytics platform, and it is doing a pretty good job in terms of connecting to the data and analyzing it. It can, however, do better in terms of data management and the ETL features, which are not on the advanced analytics or machine learning side. Tableau Prep is where users would want to see more advancements. They can improve Tableau Prep, which is an analytic platform tool for data cleansing. People who work with data spend most of their time curating the data. Cleaning up the data and getting it ready for analysis is what takes the most time. If Tableau can invest more time in improving the Tableau Prep platform, it would be great. Previously, Tableau didn't have the functionality for writing to a database. So, you couldn't really alter the database tables and write to your database, but they fixed that in one of the very recent releases. However, it isn't really advanced and should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is quite reasonable, and I would give it a rating of four out of ten."
"The product is cheap."
"It is affordable for us because we have a limited number of users."
"Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI."
"Tableau is an expensive solution."
"It is reasonable based on what it offers."
"If they want to be competitive in the market, the price must be improved."
"Buy 50 at a time. Project your use base every three months, and project your requirements forward."
"We are paying an annual licensing fee."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"In Korea, the tool's pricing depends on the scale of usage. For instance, it's reasonable for a department with fewer than 50 users to adopt Tableau, like sales. However, the pricing becomes an issue when considering an enterprise solution for a larger user base, say 10,000 people."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
8%
Educational Organization
40%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Cloud Datalab?
Google Cloud Datalab is very customizable.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Datalab?
Access is always via URL, and unless your network is fast, it would be a little tough in India. In India, if we had a faster network, it would be easier. In a big data environment, like when forcin...
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Datalab?
It's for our daily data processing, and there's a batch job that executes it. The process involves more than ten servers or systems. Some of them use a mobile network, some are ONTAP networks, and ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud Datalab vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.