MS SharePoint / SQL vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
MS SharePoint / SQL
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
MS SharePoint / SQL refers to Microsoft Sharepoint, a web-based collaborative platform, being used in tandem with Microsoft SQL Server to provide business intelligence analytics and reporting. They can provide BI content such as data connections, reports, scorecards, dashboards, and more.N/A
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.1 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 per user
Pricing
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
Features
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
7.7
Ratings
6% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.3
Ratings
2% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.70 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.40 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
8% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.90 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.40 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.70 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
8.9
Ratings
7% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.1
Ratings
2% below category average
Publish to Web8.70 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.40 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Report Versioning8.20 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
8.6
Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.4
Ratings
5% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.30 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining8.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
8.2
Ratings
3% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
Ratings
3% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.30 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control7.90 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.70 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
9.4
Ratings
18% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.50 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Mobile Application9.50 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.70 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
MS SharePoint / SQL
8.8
Ratings
12% above category average
Tableau Desktop
9.0
Ratings
14% above category average
REST API9.30 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Javascript API9.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
iFrames9.00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Java API9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.10 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
Small Businesses
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 10.0 out of 10
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MS SharePoint / SQLTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
As I mentioned in my previous answers, MS SharePoint is very useful as a shared drive for the organization and is very easy to manage. It also helps us import data from SharePoint directly into PowerBI for creating reports. According to my understanding, only share link features should be improved.
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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
  • Flexible - able to make any changes we would like vs traditional service desk system.
  • ROI - We were already using SharePoint for internal intranet, so we are simply getting more use out of licensing we had already committed to.
  • Easy to use for end users.
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  • The Visualizations graphics are really good and the color options help in designing attractive charts. They help to convey more information and can be made interactive.
  • You can add filters with offer you to plug and play with values and understand different outcomes.
  • You can drag and drop options while creating charts and dashboards. also it is a very fluid layout.
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Cons
  • It is hard to setup and nightmare
  • It requires a of infrastructure, thus it could be costly because of requirement and licensing required for everything to run smoothly
  • If it is not setup and organized properly from the beginning it could be maintenance nightmare
  • It is hard to have "test" environment to do patches or similar
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  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
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Likelihood to Renew
This was a long-term buy-in from a corporate perspective, to remain in the SharePoint space. Migration is certainly possible, which is good for planning and having options further out. At this point, the only planned migration is to eventually move the architecture up to SharePoint/SQL 2013. At that point, we will be able to leverage some greater efficiencies, some enhanced content design and management features, and some more current social features. It is well worth a full consideration in any shop looking at a new implementation of or migration to SharePoint (although you will probably be considering 2013 versions or beyond in those discussions), but the platform should be a strong competitor to any alternatives. Realizing the capability of a fully-branded and customized website was not part of the original choice for the architecture at Lincoln, but seeing it implemented and functioning now with this capacity far beyond original expectations has certainly cemented plans to continue using it.
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Because right now its the best option out there (disclosure: I haven't used Qlikview or some of the other direct competitors of Tableau). The big investment is in Tableau Server not desktop. For the cost of the license of Tableau desktop, its a pretty good deal. You can hook it up to pretty much any data source easily. You can easily share the visualizations with your team/colleagues easily. Tableau Desktop is generally easy to use for business users. But the more advanced stuff is better suited for a analyst or someone with a IT/CS background.
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Usability
I gave this rating due to MS SharePoint being a big help with our userbase. We have a lot of users that are just old enough to not have much technical skills or they have been in this industry long enough to where they haven't really needed to utilize much technology. MS SharePoint helped us move beyond that barrier without too many bumps and bruises.
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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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
I've only had to call in to support on one occasion but they were able to work though our issue and find a solution that did fully resolve the issue in a timely manner. I can't always say the same about support from other companies so it was a refreshing change to have support that did help.
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The Tableau Desktop's support team has been very helpful and tend to response very quickly. After all you have paid very premium price for the product and it goes to the services. This makes using the tool much easier for these who doesn't have such experience to get help quickly.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
Mo major insight regarding the implementation if very well documented for standard products.
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Time needs to be spent ahead of implementation to make sure data sources are set up and ready. Consultants need to understand the data sources and the goals before setting foot on-site. Installation is easy, learning to use it takes time. The training resources available are great.
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Alternatives Considered
At the time of the two large projects, SharePoint was the enterprise solution so we were required to use that. We have since lobbied the enterprise teams to review and consider Atlassian Confluence and were successful. Confluence is cheaper than Sharepoint which is why we wanted to bring that in. The enterprise has now made Confluence an enterprise solution as an alternative to SharePoint. After using both I think SharePoint has many more add-ins than Confluence. It has much more customization ability than Confluence. SharePoint is not good for mobile readiness. Confluence is so there is a difference that might lead you to Confluence over SharePoint. I would also say that SharePoint is very document-centric and that Confluence has better KM than SharePoint does. even with the use of SQL Server. We were told that we could not use Google Drive even though it had features we liked.
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Tableau Desktop is clearly one of the best in the business. It has incredible capabilities, and many features are extremely useful. The intuitiveness of the dashboards and the graphical nature of the visualizations are widely used features and super helpful. One of the other benefits is that both programmers and non-programmers can equally explore and create their own opportunities, and seamless integration is possible.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
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
  • ROI for ms SharePoint/SQL considering that is the best database engine with excellent features that help you to have all information in your hand.
  • Something negative could be license format.
  • These are the best relational databases in the market with powerful features that complement your system.
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  • Easy to share and manage viewer access on a different level to help identify fraud.
  • Faster report generation, increased revenue, better decision-making, and data storytelling.
  • One-click access to business health and the ability to build/maintain more effective and efficient reports.
  • It's easy to share and even manage access to viewers on a different level, and reports are done in a more visual and storytelling manner.
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ScreenShots