IBM Watson Explorer vs Tableau comparison

The compared IBM and Salesforce solutions aren't in the same category. IBM is ranked #11 in DM , and holds a 1.1% mindshare in the category. Salesforce is ranked #2 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 16.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

IBM Watson Explorer

Read 10 IBM Watson Explorer reviews

61 Views
46 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 306 Tableau reviews

14,788 Views
12,638 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

IBM Watson Explorer

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Watson Explorer and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Data Mining solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Watson Explorer vs. Tableau Report (Updated: March 2020).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer vs. Tableau

March 2020

Download the complete report

Helped 856,873 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

IBM Watson Explorer

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Mining (11th)

Tableau

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

306

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Watson Explorer is designed for Data Mining and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
Tableau, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 16.4% mindshare, down 19.1% since last year.

Data Mining

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

it_user1319820

Lead Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

A data analysis tool that is scalable and includes keyword search functionality

The solution is used for a government company for data collection and analysis I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer. I have been using the solution for five…

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Nattawat Choosuwan

Senior Data Consultant at a government with 11-50 employees

Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process

An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"We take natural language that was happening in our repositories and our application and then feed it to the Watson APIs. We receive JSON payloads as an API response to get cognitive feedback from the repository data."

"The ability to easily pull together lots of different pieces of information and drill down in a smarter way than has been possible with other analytics tools is key. Watson is all based on a set of AI and deep learning, machine-learning capabilities, and it is looking behind the scenes at some relationships that you likely would not have spotted on your own. It's pulling things together, categorizing some things, that are not something that you might have seen on your own."

"I have found the auto-generated document very useful as well as the main keywords that are highlighted, which are used for the search functionality within IBM Watson Explorer."

"For me, as a user, the most valuable feature is the ability to ingest and then retrieve information from a range of separate sources; the ability to dissect questions in context and actually answer them."

"Ease of use is pretty good as is the standardization of not actually having to have my own natural learning algorithms, just to use the Watson APIs."

"The valuable feature of Watson Explorer for us is data entities, and to see the hidden insights from within unstructured data."

"The solution is easy to use, flexible, our clients enjoy seeing the data on maps, and you do not need to be an expert in SQL to use it."

"Analysis is now more visual than in the past."

"It's a very good, flexible product, and it's easy to learn."

"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"

"Self-service is most valuable. Users can pick up quickly and do the resolution. There are a lot of out-of-the-box features, and it satisfies most of the needs. If users are properly trained, they can deal with any situation."

"You can create attractive dashboards that inform users using Tableau."

"This solution has improved insights into quantitative data."

"I have found the solution easy to use and the interface is very good."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"It needs better language support, to include some other languages. Also, they should improve the user interface."

"It is a little bit tricky to get used to the workflow of knowing how to train Watson, what can be provided, what can't be, how to provide it, how to import, export, and what it means every time you have to add a new dictionary"

"I would say, give some kind of a community edition, a free edition. A lot of companies do, even Amazon gives you some kind of trial and error opportunities. If they could provide something like that, it would be good."

"Small businesses will probably have a little harder time getting into it, just because of the amount of resources that they have available, both financial and time, but it really is a solution that should work for them."

"Much of IBM operates this way, where they have sets of tools that are in the middleware space, and it becomes the customer's responsibility or the business partner's responsibility to develop full solutions that take advantage of that middleware. I think IBM's finding itself in that spot with Watson-related technologies as well, where the capabilities to do really interesting and useful things for customers is there, but somebody still has to build it. Is that going to be the customer? Are they going to be willing to take on that responsibility themselves"

"More cognitive feedback would be good. The natural language analysis is great, the sentiment analyzers are great. But I would just like to see more... innovation done with the Watson platform."

"The solution is expensive."

"Stability is actually one of the areas that could use improvement. Setting it up is always tough. Setting Explorer requires experts, but also the underlying platform is not that stable. So it really needs a good expert to keep it running."

"The solution needs to improve its integration capabilities."

"Provide additional enhancements in any business process: Operations, Marketing and Sales, Finance, Human Resources, Logistics, etc."

"If I have to develop any, for example, pie charts, I can develop them just fine. However, if I have to develop a donut chart, that I cannot do it in a simple way. There are tricks that I need to use if I have to design a donut chart. It should be more flexible and provide more visualization options."

"There have been issues where suddenly the site will not respond, requiring a restart."

"If you wanted to create something without making it an extra column in the data set, you can't just rename it to a more user-friendly short name."

"A strict security measure is needed. I believe it is weak in terms of security."

"An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability."

"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"The company chose to purchase a creator license for me, which was $70. With that license, you can also be an administrator. We also have 20-25 extra licenses and they cost around $20-$35 each. Those are for normal users who will be viewing the dashboards. Those are monthly charges."

"It is a bit difficult for some people when they hear $70.00 per month, as some solutions are available for less than $10.00 or for free."

"The price could be higher for the quality of software, so they revised the pricing in this version, and I agree with the price for top version. The top version costs about $70 per month, and the price is cheap for the quality."

"One of the biggest drawbacks of Tableau is the price, it is expensive. The price should be reduced."

"The pricing of Tableau should be better to remain competitive in the market, especially when compared to alternatives."

"The solution is very expensive. If you have many users then it is going to cost your company a lot of money."

"I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure."

"In Indian Rupees, Tableau costs about 30,000 to 40,000 per year."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

May 2, 2013

MicroStrategy vs. Tableau

After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

University

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

38%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...

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Comparisons

Microsoft Power BI vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 34% of the time

Salesforce Einstein Analytics vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 25% of the time

Izenda vs IBM Watson Explorer

Compared 12% of the time

More IBM Watson Explorer Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 18% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer

June 2025

Download IBM Watson Explorer product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

May 2025

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

IBM WEX

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Overview

IBM Watson Explorer is a cognitive exploration and content analysis platform that lets you listen to your data for advice. Explore and analyze structured, unstructured, internal, external and public content to uncover trends and patterns that improve decision-making, customer service and ROI. Leverage built-in cognitive capabilities powered by machine learning models, natural language processing and next-generation APIs to unlock hidden value in all your data. Gain a secure 360-degree view of customers, in context, to deliver better experiences for your clients.

IBM

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Salesforce

Sample Customers

RIMAC, Westpac New Zealand, Toyota Financial Services, Swiss Re, Akershus University Hospital, Korean Air Lines, Mizuho Bank, Honda

Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Watson Explorer vs. Tableau

March 2020

Free Report: IBM Watson Explorer vs. Tableau

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson Explorer vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.

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