ibi WebFOCUS vs. Tableau Public

WebFOCUS is a good comprehensive tool for BI for companies. I feel that scenarios where you want the user to interact and be able to ingest data in different formats would be a good use of the tool. Performing data discovery is easier with InfoAssist, especially the most recent versions, and allows users to customize their views and provide comments.

Incentivized

Tableau Public is great, especially if you're new to the platform or considering implementing it within an organization. The Public version has most of the capabilities of the full version, with extensive community documentation to troubleshoot issues you may run into. Additionally, there are many resources to check out Public workbooks from other users and communities: a GREAT learning resource to figure out new, innovative ways to visualize and present data. It is perfect for evaluating public datasets, for doing exploratory data analysis, or contributing to cross-organizational or extracurricular projects that may benefit from more sophisticated data analysis and exploration. Tableau Public, because it stores to the cloud and has limitations on connectivity (ie, cannot connect to SQL servers) is not suited for confidential, financial, PII, etc., data, and care should be taken to avoid including sensitive data in any of the Tableau Public workbooks used by an individual or organization.

Incentivized

• Webfocus reports all have the option to export to Excel. The excel spreadsheet is always very organized and clean, and the information is very easy to read.
• Webfocus is able to maintain data from years prior. We can look up what we featured in catalogs and all the sales history attached with it.
• Webfocus is able to provide support to a variety of departments. For example, our buying team uses it for planning in advance and our marketing team uses the tool to see how categories and products as the selling

Incentivized

• Tableau Public can work with data that are differently formatted, such as MS Excel, .txt file, Google Sheets, not sure about MS Access.
• GUI interface of Tableau Public is not that hard to start working on; Also, it can generate codes for the operations and so it is relatively easy to visualize and correct mistakes.
• Lots of Tableau Public users upload their work to the online community, users can easily find very good figures/graphs that are similar to their problems and so they can use these figures/graphs as templates to modify and make their own ones.

Incentivized

• The Developer Studio has some bugs. I've faced errors where swapping between our DEV and PROD servers causes that the software stops responding.
• Easy to find documentation and examples. WebFOCUS has some help with this but it'd be better to provide more real life examples.
• Sometimes it's harder to code the graphical interface of the report because of the HTML styling.

Incentivized

• The biggest drawback to the Public version of Tableau is that any data used in the program is 'public' and therefore not secure: workbooks are saved to the cloud, rather than locally
• Tableau Public limits data ingestion to 10 million rows per source
• Limited connections - can't connect to SQL databases to ingest data (must be through CSV, Access, TDE, or text files)

Incentivized

This software is deeply engrained with my organization and has become a tool that would not easily be replaced without spending more money and resources to get the same results. License cost is comparable to other report writing tools and the capabilities are greater than the competition without having to buy multiple apps to do the same thing.

Incentivized

It's free, right? I'll keep using the free version. So the real question to ask is this? Will I pay $999 for the Personal version or $1,999 for the Professional? Yikes! That is a big stretch. I'm not sure about that. The product comparison chart is at: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/comparison

Best BI tool/product I have used. The others don't compare overall. Some can look fancier, but when you actually use them with large data and data from numerous systems/sources that is where most of the competition falls away. I also don't like downtime. I have basically none for a large user base with WebFocus. Even SAP Crystal Reports went down for 4 days once - 4 days because the admin password got locked out due to a glitch and we had zero reports for 4 days. WebFocus has never had more than a few minutes of downtime. It's like a tank that just keeps rolling. There is no other choice for reliable BI.

Incentivized

Tableau public is a great training tool to understand the basics of Tableau before buying it. A great tool to extend Excel's visualization and to publish data for others. Not useful for anything you need secure. No ability to access databases. Static information only.

Tracking availability formally for almost two years and we are at 99.8%

Incentivized

They have extremely knowledgeable techs that I have worked with over the years. Some have actually become really good friends of mine. I see them often at local user groups and when we show them how we are using their tools to save millions of dollars throughout the company

Incentivized

I have not yet required to contact support as the documentation and help i found online has always worked so far

Incentivized

It's hit and miss, the last class was overcrowded and people were having trouble connecting which took up much of the time. Instructors vary

Incentivized

I found it sufficient, and fast. I could easily "kick the tires" with Tableau on my data so I got up and running fast.

Plan ahead on what data will be accessible and the type of security required on the database and if you will want to use security that is built into the software. It is worth consulting with the vendor on what your plan is and how they recommend you proceed in order to get results you are happy with.

Incentivized

Start at the end and work backward. Identify the business case / issue and questions the end users have, then identify the data needed, and where to get it.

Incentivized

Above average. Feature wise [Information Builders WebFOCUS] stands out. User friendliness is OK. It can handle the most complex tasks and its extensions with for example R make it extremely versatile. Support is lagging in western Europe, although i am more than happy with current level. With takeover by tipco it remains to be seen how European strategy will evolve

Incentivized

Tableau public is Free and no subscription is required whereas Tableau Desktop is a paid subscription. if there is no private or confidential data it's easy to Tableau public and share reports with people. Tableau public has same features and options same as desktop. its easy for students or beginners to signup and start learning/build reports.

• We are not yet a success story. Though we've been implementing WebFOCUS for over a year, we have very few products in our Production portal. Of course, this is not all the responsibility of Information Builders, but we were ill-advised by our 'training coordinator' in our training of staff and coming up to speed with the tools has been very slow.
• Once skilled analysts and professional IT staff achieve a grasp of the products, they are able to very quickly create polished and well-received products.
• The DW/BI project has helped us to establish standards and protocols of communication that will allow us to more quickly meet knowledge transfer requirements

• We have saved costs on Dashboarding tools thanks to the free tools within Tableau Public
• Streamlined reporting
• Time saved with easier data preparation features
• Professional looking dashboards and visualisations

Incentivized