ibi WebFOCUS vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
ibi WebFOCUS
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
The ibi™ WebFOCUS® product is an enterprise business intelligence and analytics solution equipped with data management, visual discovery, predictive analytics, and visualizations. Combining these capabilities and data science in one unified containerized platform, the WebFOCUS® solution can be used to make data-driven decisions across the enterprise and provide reports, dashboards, and customer-facing applications at scale.N/A
Tableau Server
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
7.7
11 Ratings
6% below category average
Tableau Server
9.2
95 Ratings
12% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.06 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.011 Ratings9.494 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.011 Ratings9.381 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
9.3
13 Ratings
14% above category average
Tableau Server
8.9
95 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.013 Ratings8.795 Ratings
Formatting capabilities10.013 Ratings8.493 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.08 Ratings8.959 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration10.012 Ratings9.489 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
8.2
11 Ratings
2% below category average
Tableau Server
7.9
91 Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web10.09 Ratings9.585 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.09 Ratings9.284 Ratings
Report Versioning6.010 Ratings8.070 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling10.011 Ratings7.477 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers7.03 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
6.3
10 Ratings
25% below category average
Tableau Server
8.4
90 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)6.08 Ratings8.886 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization7.09 Ratings8.885 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.07 Ratings7.764 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
9.0
11 Ratings
5% above category average
Tableau Server
7.3
95 Ratings
16% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.011 Ratings7.393 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model10.011 Ratings7.390 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.011 Ratings7.392 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.04 Ratings7.362 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
5.9
11 Ratings
30% below category average
Tableau Server
7.5
79 Ratings
6% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.011 Ratings7.177 Ratings
Mobile Application3.32 Ratings7.061 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.08 Ratings7.768 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
ibi WebFOCUS
8.6
3 Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Server
7.3
46 Ratings
8% below category average
REST API10.01 Ratings9.040 Ratings
Javascript API8.02 Ratings9.137 Ratings
iFrames8.02 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.03 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.01 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(16 ratings)
7.1
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(5 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
5.4
(17 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(3 ratings)
3.4
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ibi WebFOCUSTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
IBI (Information Builders)
I would less recommend it because it looks like IBI is receding a bit from the European market. I would not be certain for future support. Knowledge in the market in western Europe is limited Functional wise the application suits almost all situations. I would for sure recommend it purely based on its capabilities
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Tableau
Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
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Pros
IBI (Information Builders)
  • One thing that has always been good at WebFOCUS is how they interact with the customer on items. They take suggestions and implement them. In addition technical support is timely and very detailed.
  • I think they keep up with and lead in implementing new technologies in the BI space. One case of this are the ability for user to create their own easy dashboard using the green plus buttons. Also the ability to link d3 into and have the ability to implement new types of graphs is nice.
  • I have been to a spoke at one of their user conferences and they are worth going to. In addition to all of the great seminars the interaction you get with vendors and other users is key in the growth of your knowledge. I've learned so much for my time at these conferences.
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Tableau
  • It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
  • Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
  • Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server
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Cons
IBI (Information Builders)
  • The newest versions of WebFOCUS have an unnecessarily complicated security layout that makes configuration difficult to accomplish without bringing in the vendor for installs.
  • This software tries to cover too many bases allowing you to switch from writing code manually to creating reports using only GUI tools. This sometimes complicates screens and functionality where the two methods don't always work well together. -though its nice to have the choice.
  • The sales force is not as top notch as many software companies
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Tableau
  • Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
  • Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with
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Likelihood to Renew
IBI (Information Builders)
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.
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Tableau
It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
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Usability
IBI (Information Builders)
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.
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Tableau
Tableau Server is unbeatable at creating easy to use, interactive dashboards for busy executives. The software also saves time for the busy analyst that is tired of always using Excel. Tableau Server is a head and shoulders improvement over Excel.
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Reliability and Availability
IBI (Information Builders)
Tracking availability formally for almost two years and we are at 99.8%
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Tableau
Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues
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Performance
IBI (Information Builders)
No answers on this topic
Tableau
While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
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Support Rating
IBI (Information Builders)
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
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Tableau
We have consistently had highly satisfactory results every time we've reached out for help. Our contractor, used for Tableau server maintenance and dashboard development is very technically skilled. When he hits a roadblock on how to do something with Tableau, the support staff have provided timely and useful guidance. He frequently compares it to Cognos and says that while Cognos has capabilities Tableau doesn't, the bottom line value for us is a no-brainer
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In-Person Training
IBI (Information Builders)
No answers on this topic
Tableau
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
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Online Training
IBI (Information Builders)
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
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Tableau
The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.
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Implementation Rating
IBI (Information Builders)
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.
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Tableau
Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either
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Alternatives Considered
IBI (Information Builders)
Webfocus handles the side of our business that is involved with our catalogs. Our catalogs is a huge revenue driver for us and this tool has been extremely useful with planning feature catalogs. Tableau is used more for marketing and merchandising purchases since we can filter data based on website sales.
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Tableau
Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, and model data is superior to Tableau. Tableau still has the lead in some visualizations, but Power BI's rise is evidenced by its ever-increasing position in the leadership section of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
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Return on Investment
IBI (Information Builders)
  • 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
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Tableau
  • Tableau does take dedicated FTE to create and analyze the data. It's too complex (and powerful) a product not to have someone dedicated to developing with it.
  • There are some significant setup for the server product.
  • Once sever setup is complete, it's largely "fire and forget" until an update is necessary. The server update process is cumbersome.
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ScreenShots

Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.