Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 9, 2025

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

SAP BusinessObjects Design ...
Ranking in Data Visualization
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau Enterprise
Ranking in Data Visualization
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
309
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Reporting (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Data Visualization category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 10.1%, down from 27.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Visualization Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tableau Enterprise10.1%
SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio1.0%
Other88.9%
Data Visualization
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2329704 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Comprehensive product with valuable dashboard and reporting features
SAP BusinessObjects offers a comprehensive solution with all BI functionalities. It includes valuable features like a dashboard, reporting, visualization, etc The platform's pricing needs improvement. It is very expensive. They should work on this particular area. We have been using SAP…
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Analytics at Mjunction Services
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It includes valuable features like a dashboard, reporting, visualization, etc."
"The most important feature in Tableau is visual analytics."
"Tableau Enterprise has had a strong positive impact on our organization by improving data visibility, speeding up decision-making, and managing reports efficiently."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is user-friendly and intuitive."
"It is very easy to implement and to use."
"The data visualization piece is most valuable. We do ad-hoc analysis or one-time shot things, but there are things that we have to track every single day. When our management and our customers want to see how things are changing, the dashboarding provides that information. Tableau is key in providing that data on a refresh basis. We use a data blending tool that pumps the data into Tableau, and we just schedule it to run every single day. So, the automation of the data and being able to present it to people who are interested are the most valuable features."
"I like the calculation feature. I would not say it's such a good feature in Tableau, but if you have the knowledge, you can make that feature visible to everyone. It's not a feature that we can drag and drop and get the information. But whatever the data, whatever the calculation, I'm able to do. It's basically the knowledge base. Whatever knowledge I have, I can make that information public and publish it for management."
"It's the ease of use. It is also a self-service tool so it decreases the burden on having centralized IT-type teams or developers."
 

Cons

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"It would be nice to include more features on each dashboard."
"Small multiples (a.k.a. Trellis charts) are possible only through very hacky means. Update: Still remains a challenge."
"Tableau is a company that does not respect partners."
"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements."
"If you mainly need a tool for BI reporting, it's not the best option. Tableau needs better abilities to generate simple reports, integrate, create databases, and work with data lakes."
"There are more than a powerful tool in the market, such as Microsoft BI."
"It should have more integration with different tools and technologies. Its licensing cost should also be improved."
"Could have more integrations with different platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The platform's pricing needs to be revised."
"One of the biggest drawbacks of Tableau is the price, it is expensive. The price should be reduced."
"Tableau is free."
"Its cost is quite high. A corporate license costs about 150-200K per year for all the users, but there was probably some discounted amount. This cost includes everything."
"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."
"Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages."
"For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model."
"This solution is a bit expensive. The pricing options have become more difficult over the years. I think they are bordering on pricing themselves out of the market. They need different pricing options for various-sized businesses. Where my organization is a large organization, we are happy to pay a higher price because we can leverage the products very extensively. For smaller enterprises, different pricing options would be good."
"Its price is reasonable. Everything is included in the license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Visualization solutions are best for your needs.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise67
Large Enterprise184
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
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 ...
 

Also Known As

SAP Design Studio, BusinessObjects Design Studio
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wipro, Tetra Pak, MIGROS
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce, Apache, Splunk and others in Data Visualization. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.