Choosing InetSoft Style Intelligence Over Tableau

DIFFERENTIATING FEATURES

ENTERPRISE DATA MASHUP – InetSoft is built upon a patented enterprise data mash-up platform (since inception in 1996). Enterprise data mashup refers to the ability to pull practically any type of data from any location and mash it up on the fly to create a virtual source of data that consists of reusable data blocks that can be queried in real-time from dashboards, reports and 3rd-party applications. In contrast, Tableau uses a data blending service feature (introduced in 2011, Tableau’s data blending service is a crude and over-simplistic attempt at data mashup with simple joins no customization, control or reusability.)

SELF-SERVICE – InetSoft's self service capabilities are completely zero client and web based, no installation or download of any software from InetSoft on the client side is required. Tableau only provides a thick desktop developer tool with transfer of data from the web server onto the desktop.

DATA CACHING – InetSoft's data caching architecture delivers massive query performance boosts by caching data viewed by end users. Tableau also provides such a caching feature. InetSoft utilizes columnar database, Hadoop and Map Reduce technologies to store and query the cache in parallel across one or more servers.  InetSoft also provides advanced cache management and configurations options like rolling time window, incremental updates. Tableau utilizes only columnar database technology to store and query the cache on a single Tableau server, and provides a simple increment all update functionality.

OPEN STANDARDS – InetSoft utilizes open industry standards across its entire architecture and it is 64 Bit and 100% J2EE compliant. In contrast, Tableau is only 32 Bit compliant and it is dependent on many native Microsoft Windows and Visual C++ libraries.

FULL SPECTRUM ANALYTICS & REPORTING – Like Tableau, InetSoft features visualization technologies as the foundation for interactive exploration and discovery. But unlike Tableau, InetSoft doesn’t stop at interactive visualization but includes very sophisticated reporting capabilities. Information publishing and dissemination often require reports with codified, sophisticated business logic and/or pixel perfect formatting. Advanced features include scheduling, archiving, versioning and auditing. InetSoft integrates visualization into all modes of information delivery which unifies analysis, reporting and dashboards into one seamless environment.

SECURITY AUTHORIZATION & AUTHENTICATION – InetSoft seamlessly integrates with all security authorization and authentication products including IBM TAM. Tableau only integrates with Microsoft Active Directory.

DATABASE WRITEBACK – InetSoft supports data input and database write-back capabilities - also known as full-lifecycle BI – enabling end-users to interact with dashboards/reports - by entering quotes, approving requests, adjusting forecasts, adding comments, uploading photos, scanning products, and more. Tableau has no data input and database write-back capabilities.

USAGE – InetSoft has very sophisticated dashboard/report customization features including tabular data support, brushing of data, intelligent filtering with automated wiring between widgets and selective embedding, making the end-user experience either very simple (e.g. for business users) and very customizable (e.g. for analysts). In contrast, Tableau does not support tabular data, its filtering capabilities are basic, and it does not support selective embedding, making it more of a tool for very simple users only.

VISUALIZATION – InetSoft provides many visualization features:

User Driven View Customization - business users can play with different dimensions and measures and change the visual bindings of charts and cross tabs on the spot and on the fly. 

Intelligent Filtering – with elements which are informative and interdependent to help a user zero in on what they are looking for, in addition to a hierarchical tree node filter element. 

Business Defined Hierarchies - and drilling operations on the same.  

Brushing – macro based data filtering, distribution of one dimension with the global view of another.

Chart Script API – for custom chart visualizations

Visual Elements – gauges, thermometers, text etc.

Tableau does not offer any of the above.

FUTURES – InetSoft product futures include:

• An integrated complex event processing engine (i.e. for combining real-time messages and events into the BI platform)
• A data cleansing engine (for periodically cleaning data stored at source e.g. insert zip code based on physical address using web lookup)
• And an unstructured data analysis engine (for reading unstructured data such as from PDFs and sentiment data from social websites). We cannot confirm Tableau’s product futures at the time of writing