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The seductiveness of Power BI

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A CEO I hear from has for years embedded Tableau in his BI platform. Tableau is the best choice by far, he says. Lately, though, a new tool has caught the BI market’s fancy: Power BI, from Microsoft. It’s already a strong contender against Tableau, he says.

One more thing: for individuals with a gigabyte or less of stored data, it’s free. The next higher tier cost about $10 a month. At these levels at least, it’s far cheaper than Tableau.

He describes the tool’s seductive quality: “You get your feet wet,” he says, “then your head wet, your whole body wet, and pretty soon you’re drowning.”… Read the rest “The seductiveness of Power BI”

More tangible, less “smart”

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First came the prediction: “The whole ‘smart’ thing is about to get real.” Really? What made this apparent insider say so? The prediction, given in a forum where other predictions flew in the breeze, was on the record. Then two months later, it had gone off the record.

What happened? Apparently, there had been a corporate-wide retreat from “smart” — as explained to me, a retreat from the aspirational to the tangible.

That’s unlike conventional marketing, which blows by the tangible in its rush toward aspiration. Does this portend a wider retreat from the term “smart”? Is it a shift toward a market that prefers the tangible over the dream?… Read the rest “More tangible, less “smart””

Tableau is the new Apple again

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Fourteen thousand people looked on earlier this month as Tableau’s new CEO, Adam Selipsky plodded onto the stage. The stage was 10 times wider than at the first conference, an audience 70 times bigger — and a CEO not even a quarter as fiery as the first one. But he seems to be a good fit for Tableau’s new era.

I’ve watched this show every year since 2008, when founding-CEO Christian Chabot paced the 20-foot stage and put on his first tent-revival style keynote. Back then, I talked to many of the 200 or so attendees in the jammed hallways at the Seattle’s Edgewater Inn and heard story after story — most of which went something like this: We had data we didn’t understand, and then someone in our group said we should try this funny tool he’d downloaded.… Read the rest “Tableau is the new Apple again”