[gerhardi]

Microsoft has PowerBI which is already almost magic for many business users with it's ease of connectability with different databases and SaaS services. Transformations, parsing, mixing data from different sources and reporting capabilities are also easy to start with and quite powerful in the right hands. It's not integrated into Excel directly but sits quite well imho in the MS ecosystem.

[prepend]

PowerBI wants to be Tableau based on the number of times Microsoft sales has demoed and whatnot.

But I haven’t met databiz people who switched from tableau to PBI. I’m not sure why as they look pretty similar on paper.

I think Tableau’s mental model is about exporting and storytelling while PBI is about reporting.

Personally, I find it harder to work with PBI because it’s the only license model more confusing that Tableau. And there’s no Tableau Public equivalent.

[privateSFacct]

This - we had power pivot in excel - then for some licensing reasons we didn’t. I know how to buy excel and firms buy it blindly - tie power bi into that sales channel

[rchaud]

Probably because there are high switching costs for users who are already familiar with Tableau, and vice versa.

[jefe_]

Power BI also has a free version that is quite capable. I find the charts easier to work with than Excel.

[mastry]

It's good but the free version doesn't let you share your results.

[mmckelvy]

Is it effective to query across different data sources / SaaS services without first aggregating all the data in some sort of data warehouse?