A large variety of business intelligence software provides the user with a wide range of functionalities. This essay compares two of the best-known tools, Tableau and Power Bi, in the context of the system requirements to run on a computer device (Scott, 2019). It should be clarified that system requirements refer to the minimum operating system and computer performance settings required for an application to run effectively (Inflectra, 2020). In this sense, the comparative analysis presents a review of Tableau and Power Bi’s technical details.
The first significant difference concerns the operating system on which the applications are able to run. Tableau is supported by both Windows and Mac, whereas Power Bi is not available to Apple computer users (Sparkman, 2020; Technical specifications, 2020). Moreover, Power Bi is only supported by Windows of recent versions, from 2016 onwards, whereas Tableau can also run effectively on Windows 7, released back in 2009 (Weber, 2019).
The second important comparison criterion is the amount of available memory, which determines the application’s capacity. For instance, Tableau requires 1.5 GB, whereas Power Bi can even run with 1 GB: consequently, Power Bi takes up less valuable hard disk space. RAM is also an essential criterion for application requirements and performance load. Tableau requires 2 GB of RAM, while the Power Bi can use 1 GB, making it less bulky. In terms of processor, both applications run on the x64 architecture, which means a more powerful 64-bit processor (x64, 2020). From this, it follows that these are high-performance applications, but they will not be able to run on older, 32-bit computers.
So, the analysis of the minimum system requirements to install the two applications showed that both software has broadly similar parameters. However, Tableau can be run on both Windows and Mac, whereas Power Bi is specific to Windows only. At the same time, Power Bi requires slightly less free memory on the hard drive. That said, both applications only support 64-bit architectures, which means they cannot be opened on older computers.
Reference List
Inflectra (2020) What is a system requirements specification (SRS)? Web.
Scott, T. (2019) Power BI vs Tableau: a data analytics duel. Web.
Sparkman, M. (2020) Hardware and software requirements for installing Power BI Report Server. Web.
Technical specifications (2020). Web.
Weber, J. (2019) Brief history of Windows 7. Web.
x64 (2020). Web.