Power BI is obliterating Tableau

Reasons Why:

• Salesforce is gutting staff.

• Tableau is moving from a standalone product to a Salesforce “integration”.

• Microsoft Teams is killing Slack.

• ChatGPT is integrated into Power BI

• Microsoft smell blood - they have the money and platform to finish them off.

Salesforce is gutting staff

Salesforce bought Tableau in 2019, now they’re in the process of gutting the staff that came along with the deal.

“Tableau was hit harder than other units in the company’s largest-ever round of jobs cuts this week… signalling the $15.7 billion acquisition hasn’t lived up to expectations.”

“Job reductions at Tableau were greater, proportionally, than the company at large thus far.” Bloomberg.

The implications are obvious - Less people working on Tableau means less updates, less innovation.

But worse than that, Salesforce are signalling their priorities. Here is a study of how many times the executive team mention Tableau at corporate events.

Tableau is moving from a standalone product to a Salesforce “integration”

“Tableau is being treated as a visualization tool for data contained in Salesforce’s other services rather than a standalone program — co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff highlighted the new integrations in a December keynote speech. The division has trailed the rest of the company in sales growth since the acquisition.” Bloomberg

“Greater integration with Salesforce seems inevitable but could come at the cost of its status as a standalone product.” TechMonitor

Making great integrations with the rest of the Salesforce suite is great if you use Salesforce, but for everyone else?

Adding to this problem is the massive competition Salesforce have for their main CRM product. HubSpot and others have been eating their lunch lately.

So, Salesforce are making Tableau an integration into a product that is losing market share = bad.

Microsoft Teams is killing Slack

MS Teams was released in 2017. Just a few years ago, I’d never heard of it. Now, it’s everywhere and I’m having “Teams” meetings left right and centre. Its meteoric rise must be a shock even to the most bullish Microsoft executives.

Some companies still use Skype (Remember that). The word is that Microsoft will eventually move them all over to Teams.

Teams is killing Slack, see the graph below.

More companies using MS Teams, Less market share for Slack. Slack is owned by Salesforce = More people using the MS ecosystem, funnelling more people from Tableau into Power BI.

ChatGPT is being integrated into Power BI

Microsoft are major investors in OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, with an exclusive commercial partnership in place.

It’s being integrated into the whole MS ecosystem. With Power BI, you get Quick Insights, Smart Data Discovery, Natural Language querying, AI Powered Visuals, and automated Machine Learning.

And more integrations are in the pipeline.

Microsoft smell blood - they have the money and platform to finish Tableau

Ever heard of Excel?

The Microsoft ecosystem is a juggernaut, Windows is on 74% of computers.

Power Bi is on track to be to Data Analytics, what Excel is to spreadsheets.

An ecosystem of software and cloud-based products all interconnected is the staple of business life. Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Teams… Power BI literally integrates right into them.

The final word

The good news is that if you’re a Tableau user, all your fundamental skills, all the theoretical knowledge of data analytics and data visualisation are 100% transferable.

Yes, you’ll have to learn the Power BI interface, but you can do that quickly. Your underlying knowledge as an Analyst is the same, you’ll take that with you the rest of your career.

And if Power BI ever falters, and there’s another new “new” thing... Then you’ll take your skills to that as well. If you’re open to change, you can’t lose!

Cheers Shano.

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