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Tableau vs ibi WebFOCUS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

ibi WebFOCUS
Ranking in Embedded BI
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (7th)
Tableau
Ranking in Embedded BI
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Twanette Jurd - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Intelligence, reporting, data integration, ETL, data migration - everything is handled within one unified platform and highly scalable solution.
WebFOCUS goes beyond just dashboards. It's also used for operational reporting, making it crucial for mission-critical systems. In fact, a core strength is that it's not "just" a BI tool; it can be used to build complete applications. It is the best tool because of its all-in-one nature. Data integration, ETL, data migration, everything is handled within the same platform. Then, on the front end, it offers portals, reporting, distributed analysis, and more. For customers who have data in the right structure and right format, the WebFOCUS Designer tool is very powerful. It allows them to create self-service reporting applications.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"It stands out for its ability to work across different platforms, support mainframe data, offer cloud integration, automate report scheduling, and provide a robust scripting language."
"The solution can read and write 500 different types of outputs."
"The most valuable feature is building ad hoc reports."
"I would rate the scalability a ten out of ten. It's highly scalable and can handle significant data volumes."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"There are already connectors to almost every single major database and service that you can possibly think of."
"I love the customization skills that Tableau has, it is not restricted to what is built-in already."
"One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be. As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been."
"Easy to create graphs and visualizations."
"I like the solution's web version, more so than Power BI's web version. It just makes it easier to drag and drop things and to blend data on the backend. It simplifies the process."
"Tableau's most valuable features are user-friendliness and have a connection between multiple source systems. You can publish a report by using Tableau Public and there you can make your data online, not only batches of data, you can use it as an online analytical tool."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the permission management and the user management."
 

Cons

"When it comes to customer support, we don't always reach the right person. Sometimes, we get junior-level reps who aren't as knowledgeable as we are."
"If there were to be any improvements right now, their documentation needs to get in sync with their product."
"The challenge lies not in what the tool can do but in how you use it and understand the data."
"The solution can be improved by adding more automated options for reporting."
"The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities."
"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."
"There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features."
"It needs more ETL capabilities, to be able to address the end-to-end BI need."
"Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau."
"Bursting email is needed to deliver the reports to many people in their inboxes and this functionality is not provided by Tableau."
"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."
"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"Tableau is a little cheaper as compared to Power BI and other technologies that we have used in the past. However, if the business users in our organization want to make presentations, Tableau has been asking us to purchase a Tableau Creator license, and $35 per month is expensive for business users. Power BI is giving a free desktop version for business users to connect to any data source and build their own dashboards. That's why we have proposed to use Power BI for most of the business users in our organization."
"There is a license for the use of this solution and it is on a per-user basis. The server is free but the users you have to pay for."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"In general, if someone is new and wants to learn Tableau, it's around $70 per month."
"The price is definitely a point because smaller firms don't use Tableau as it's an expensive tool."
"Tableau has core-based and user-based licensing, and it is tied to scalability. The core-based licensing is about you buying a certain number of cores, and there is no restriction on the number of users who can use Tableau. The restriction is only on the number of cores. In user-based subscription licensing, there is a restriction on the number of users. Big companies and government organizations with a lot of users typically go for core-based licensing. User-based subscription licensing is a more common model. It has user roles such as creator, explorer, and viewer. A creator is someone who does the groundwork or development work. An explorer is someone who is into middle management but is not technically savvy, such as a category head. A viewer is like a typical decision-maker in senior management. For each role, Tableau is priced differently. The viewer role has the minimum price, and the creator role has the highest price. This pricing is available on their website. Everybody can see it."
"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."
"The price of this solution could definitely be lower. It's quite expensive."
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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
22%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
42%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Information Builders WebFOCUS?
I would rate the pricing a five out of ten, with ten being expensive.
What is your primary use case for Information Builders WebFOCUS?
I use it for supplying and developing business intelligence (BI) solutions, data management and reporting applications, and for the development of complete web-based applications. It's a versatile ...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebFOCUS
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ace Hardware, AutoZone, Fred Hutch, MasterCard, OFS Brands, PostFinance, Real D, Yellow Pages, ABC Financial, AcuSport, BBVA, Babcock
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 Tableau vs. ibi WebFOCUS and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.