Microsoft Azure vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$75
per month
Pricing
Microsoft AzureTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft AzureTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.All pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft AzureTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
Like I mentioned earlier, it is more user-friendly when compared to any of the other. It is more flexible with the system you are using that makes it easy to set up with the migration of data. If you can bear the extra price compared to AWS, Azure is more robust, works like a …
Tableau Desktop
Chose Tableau Desktop
the option is that Tableau Public has the features of Tableau Desktop available for free, at least for a trial period.
Features
Microsoft AzureTableau Desktop
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
8.5
27 Ratings
4% above category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime8.126 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling8.725 Ratings00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing8.624 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.225 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.326 Ratings00 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
Operating system support9.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Security controls8.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Automation8.224 Ratings00 Ratings
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
2% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.0145 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings9.1174 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.1151 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
3% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.5167 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.4170 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.0126 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.5165 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.0155 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.0154 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.6128 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.778 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
164 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.5162 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.5156 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.57 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
9.0
149 Ratings
6% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.0145 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.9125 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7136 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.283 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.9
141 Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.7130 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.3101 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.4122 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.7
67 Ratings
1% below category average
REST API00 Ratings8.259 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.753 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.851 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.248 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.354 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.148 Ratings
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User Ratings
Microsoft AzureTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(96 ratings)
8.8
(203 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(17 ratings)
7.5
(41 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(36 ratings)
8.2
(73 ratings)
Availability
6.8
(2 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(27 ratings)
1.0
(57 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft AzureTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
Read full review
Tableau
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
  • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
  • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
  • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
Read full review
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
  • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
  • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Pricing should be more user-friendly and usage-driven
  • Making edits to the production reports is fairly tough and has a vast scope of additional capabilities
  • Tableau Desktop should be able to differentiate itself from the Tableau server else there is no major meaning of two different products being offered
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
Read full review
Tableau
Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.
Read full review
Usability
Microsoft
As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
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Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Tableau
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
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Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
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Support Rating
Microsoft
We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
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Tableau
Tableau support has been extremely responsive and willing to help with all of our requests. They have assisted with creating advanced analysis and many different types of custom icons, data formatting, formulas, and actions embedded into graphs. Tableau offers a weekly presentation of features and assists with internal company projects.
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In-Person Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Tableau
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
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Online Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Tableau
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
Read full review
Tableau
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
Read full review
Tableau
I have used Power BI as well, the pricing is better, and also training costs or certifications are not that high. Since there is python integration in Power BI where I can use data cleaning and visualizing libraries and also some machine learning models. I can import my python scripts and create a visualization on processed data.
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
  • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
  • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
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ScreenShots