# The future of Tableau... Everything's changing: Friday thoughts episode 3

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2021-08-20
- **Format:** Video · 28 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Industry trends, Tool strategy
- **Tools:** Power BI; Tableau (cloud, embedding, prep, server)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/the-future-of-tableau-everything-s-changing-friday-thoughts-episode-3
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y4x15WOgTo

This is my third Friday thoughts episode, an opinion piece on how Tableau is shifting from its on-premise roots towards a cloud and SaaS model, accelerated by the Salesforce acquisition. Using a few iPad sketches, I map where each product sits and talk through what this transition means for customers, partners and the wider community.

## Key takeaways

- Tableau was born in the on-premise world (Desktop and Server) but is steadily migrating its products towards the cloud and SaaS, with Tableau Online and the developer APIs already sitting firmly on the SaaS side.
- A SaaS model lets Tableau run everyone on shared infrastructure (AWS), see granular usage metrics, simplify adoption and cut out the friction of procurement and licence-key deployment.
- Recent feature releases increasingly assume a cloud setup, where resource cost questions disappear, rather than the on-premise server-admin mindset of asking how much compute each feature consumes.
- New pricing tiers and add-ons like Einstein analytics (around $25 per user) are creating friction for legacy customers, while competitors such as Power BI exploit the disruption by bundling and undercutting.
- As Tableau pivots towards analysts and report consumers rather than just authors, community members should stay open to change, relearn the product and accept the platform may move in directions they dislike.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Opinion piece disclaimer
- 1:01 The quote that hit me
- 1:46 History: on-premise versus cloud
- 3:26 Cloud infrastructure versus SaaS
- 6:36 Tableau's shift to the cloud
- 11:33 The push to the browser and adoption
- 14:03 Product-by-product transition
- 18:51 Impact on customers
- 21:51 Impact on partners and relationships
- 23:25 Impact on the community

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/the-future-of-tableau-everything-s-changing-friday-thoughts-episode-3

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena