What are the weakness/disadvantages of Tableau Desktop Software?

Ans:

1. Not comprehensive solution, specialize in BI
2. No predictive analytical capabilities
3. Customization and Integration with other apps
4. Expandability for analytics
5. Hard to integrate with Social media

Not comprehensive solution, specialize in BI:

Tableau Software is an easy to use BI application, but still not a platform for developing analytic applications that can be broadly shared. It is not designed for enterprise wide deployments that have broad business and technical user populations.

No predictive analytical capabilities:

Tableau Software allows users to only analyze what has happened. And, Tableau Software does not have any statistical or predictive capabilities (they do not support SAS, S+, R, ect. like Spotfire does). Therefore users cannot model or project the best cross-selling or upselling opportunities. In fact Tableau Software is statistically “challenged” and is extremely limited; providing users with less statistic functions than Microsoft Excel.

Customization and Integration with other apps:

Due to its not open-source based nature and market commodity, Tableau Software cannot be customized or integrated with other applications (such as Salesforce.com). Basically what comes in the box is what you get. No way to extend it. However, their official website has Forum section, users could vote for their ideas, whenever reaching the threshold, the company would response and probably add such features in the following version and update for purchased packages.

Expandability for analytics:

Tableau Software does not support expanded analytic such as Box plots, network graphs, tree-maps, heat-maps, 3D-scatter plots, Profile Charts or data relationships tool which allow users to mine data for relationships like another data visualization software does.

Social media integration:

Tableau Software does not integrate collaborative capabilities into social platforms (like Twitter, Microsoft SharePoint, etc.). A very hot trend. It is for Business users to share their findings and progress. Think of it like – email meets Twitter meets Facebook. Due the current trend and users’ need, Tableau has integrated Google Analytics into its platform.

Robust enterprise-class security:

Tableau Software is not organizationally equipped to serve enterprise customers. Tableau Software lacks robust enterprise-class security (only supports Microsoft Active Directory). Therefore post-sale customer support and training are quite limited.