AWS + Tableau: Together, a Match Made in Data Heaven
By embracing the synergy between Tableau and AWS, you're not just investing in tools; you're investing in a future fueled by data-driven insights. This powerful combination paves the way for a more agile, data-centric organization ready to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape. The digital landscape is evolving rapidly, and businesses are increasingly turning to the cloud for their analytics needs. This shift is driven by the cloud's ability to:
- Faster Time to Insights: The seamless integration between Tableau and AWS allows you to quickly get up and running with your analytics, enabling you to make data-driven decisions sooner.
- Effortless Data Management: Leverage the power of AWS data warehousing and management services to ensure your data is clean, organized, and readily accessible for analysis in Tableau.
- Advanced Analytics Capabilities: Tap into the power of AWS machine learning and artificial intelligence services to uncover hidden patterns and gain deeper insights from your data within the Tableau environment.
- Handle complex data integration: Seamlessly connect and analyze data from various sources, regardless of size or location.
- Empower self-service analytics: Enable users to explore and gain insights from data independently, fostering data-driven decision-making across the organization.
- Support digital transformation: Meet the growing demands of digital transformation with scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
Image source: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/partners/tableau-server/
Tableau: The Master of Data Visualization
Imagine transforming raw data into captivating, interactive visualizations that tell a clear story. Tableau is a game-changer in the world of data visualization. It empowers users of all technical backgrounds to:
- Connect to Diverse Data Sources: Tableau seamlessly connects to a wide range of data sources, both on-premise and in the cloud. This includes databases, spreadsheets, cloud applications, and even big data platforms.
- Effortlessly Drag-and-Drop Analysis: The user-friendly interface allows users to drag and drop data fields, explore trends, and create stunning visualizations without writing a single line of code.
- Craft Interactive Dashboards & Reports: Go beyond static reports. Tableau empowers you to create dynamic dashboards that users can interact with, filter data, and gain deeper insights on the fly.
- Foster Data-Driven Culture: Tableau democratizes data by making it accessible and understandable to everyone in the organization, fostering a data-driven culture where decisions are based on evidence, not intuition.
AWS: The Cloud Powerhouse for Scalability and Security
While Tableau excels at data visualization, the underlying infrastructure needs to be robust and scalable. This is where AWS, the world's leading cloud computing platform, comes into play. Here's how AWS empowers your Tableau deployment:
- Unmatched Scalability: AWS offers virtually limitless scalability to accommodate your growing data volumes and user base. As your data needs evolve, your cloud infrastructure can easily scale up or down to meet those demands.
- Enhanced Security: Security is paramount when dealing with sensitive data. AWS offers robust security features and compliance certifications, ensuring your data remains protected throughout its lifecycle.
- Cost-Effectiveness: The pay-as-you-go model of AWS allows you to optimize your costs. You only pay for the resources you use, eliminating the need for upfront investments in expensive hardware infrastructure.
- Wide Range of Services: AWS offers a comprehensive suite of services beyond just compute power. These services include data warehousing, machine learning, and data management tools, giving you a complete cloud ecosystem to manage your entire data pipeline.
Modern Cloud Analytics: A Collaborative Powerhouse
Modern Cloud Analytics is a collaborative initiative leveraging the expertise and resources of Tableau, AWS, and their extensive partner networks. Its objective is to maximize the value you extract from your data and analytics investments throughout your entire digital transformation journey, encompassing:
- Data Strategy and Migration: Develop a comprehensive plan to securely and efficiently migrate your data and analytics operations to the cloud.
- Optimization: Fine-tune your cloud analytics environment for peak performance and cost-effectiveness.
- Deployment and Scaling: Securely deploy and seamlessly scale your Tableau environment on AWS to adapt to your evolving needs.
Benefits of Modern Cloud Analytics:
- Faster Time to Value: Get up and running with cloud analytics quickly, enabling data-driven decisions sooner.
- Reduced Costs: Leverage the cloud's inherent cost-efficiency and scalability to optimize your analytics spending.
- Minimized Risks: Mitigate potential risks associated with cloud adoption by utilizing validated migration processes and expert guidance.
Unified Integration for Unparalleled Insights
Tableau and AWS offer a comprehensive solution for cloud-powered organizations. Both Tableau Server and Tableau Cloud operate flawlessly on AWS infrastructure, providing you with:
- Effortless Data Access: Streamlined workflows and effortless access to data stored within various AWS sources directly within the AWS ecosystem.
- Market-Leading Connectivity: Tableau serves as the ideal platform for analyzing data residing in diverse AWS data sources like:
- Amazon Redshift: A blazing-fast data warehouse designed to handle large datasets with efficiency.
- Amazon RDS: A managed relational database service offering high availability and scalability.
- Amazon EMR: A managed Hadoop framework for processing and analyzing massive datasets.
Enhanced Security and Broader Connectivity
Tableau's commitment to continuous improvement extends to its AWS integrations. Here's a glimpse into the exciting advancements:
- Enhanced Security: The updated Amazon Athena connector now supports secure authentication using third-party identity providers like Azure AD and Okta, adding an extra layer of security with multi-factor authentication options.
- Expanded Connectivity: The Tableau Exchange offers a plethora of new connectors, further extending your connection options within the AWS ecosystem.
- Amazon OpenSearch Connector: Effortlessly visualize and analyze data residing in Amazon OpenSearch.
- Amazon DocumentDB Connector: Gain valuable insights from your DocumentDB data through seamless interaction.
- Amazon Neptune Connector: Explore connections within your data by directly connecting to your Neptune graph database.
By embracing the synergy between Tableau and AWS, you're not just investing in tools, you're investing in a future fueled by data-driven insights. This powerful combination paves the way for a more agile, data-centric organization ready to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
How Beinex Can Assist You
Beinex is a premier Tableau partner and AWS consulting partner providing sustainable analytics solutions to organizations. Our Tableau and AWS-certified consultants help organizations build superior data visual analytics capabilities through bespoke training programs. We empower customers to host their BI solutions on the cloud with AWS infrastructure as a service. Get in touch with us for free trials and experience our expertise in providing analytics and cloud solutions.
Data has become a valuable asset in the modern world, and organizations gather vast amounts of it from different sources. However, the real challenge lies in extracting valuable insights from this data to make informed decisions. This is where the combination of Tableau and AWS comes in handy, providing a powerful solution for unlocking the full potential of your data and accelerating your digital transformation journey. By leveraging the combined strengths of Tableau's intuitive data visualization platform and AWS's scalable cloud infrastructure, organizations can gain a sharper competitive edge through:

Quick LODs
LOD calculations are frequently used in Tableau to perform calculations on a fixed dimension. Where previously I had to mention the dimension to be fixed and the measures to be aggregated in a calculated field, now all I must do is select the dimension and measure in the data pane and right click to create an LOD calculation. Or even better, hold “Ctrl” to drag and drop the required measure field onto the dimension to be fixed. As simple as that.
I can modify the calculation with more dimensions or change the type of aggregation later, if required.
This feature is most beneficial as it reduces the chance of errors while creating complex LOD calculations, like misplacing a bracket, or adding any unnecessary characters by mistake.
More Data Connections
With the increase in popularity of Microsoft Azure services among users, Tableau has added multiple Azure connectors including Azure SQL Database and Azure Data Lake Gen 2 along with the existing Azure Synapse Analytics and Databricks. I can now connect to data that is stored in Azure’s SQL Database and Data Lake using the native Tableau connectors. Tableau has also introduced authentication to Azure services using the Azure Active Directory, making the connection more secure.
In addition to this, four new data connectors have been added to Tableau Online and Tableau Server. They are Amazon Athena, Apache Drill, OData and SharePoint Lists.
View Metrics
A difficulty that I had faced with the metric feature was that I was not able to know the other metrics that were created in the same dashboard. With this update I can see all the metrics associated with a particular dashboard and modify these metrics if required or create new ones within the metrics pane.
And previously, only if my site role were “Creator” or “Explorer”, I could see the metrics. But in this update, I can see all metrics connected to a dashboard irrespective of my site role.
Dashboard Extensions in Tableau
Earlier, to use an extension in a Tableau Dashboard, I had to drag and drop the extension object on the dashboard which would take me to its extension gallery web page and then I had to download it and then locate the downloaded extension on Tableau. Sounds tiring right?
Not anymore! With this update, all I have to do is drag and drop the extension object onto the dashboard to select the required extension. I can now see all extensions and filter the list based on categories within the “Add an Extension” window in the Tableau screen.
Write to Excel in Tableau Prep
This is one feature that will prove useful to any regular Tableau Prep user. The days of exporting an output to csv and then converting it manually to an xlsx file are finally over.
Using the latest version of Tableau Prep, I can directly export the output of a workflow into an xlsx file.
Device Designer for Web Authoring
Where before I could only generate device specific layouts in Tableau Desktop, now I can create custom phone or tablet views within the web itself. I no longer have to modify the device layout in Tableau Desktop and re-publish whenever a change in device layout is required.
Licensing Improvements
With this update, Tableau has introduced zero downtime licensing for the Tableau Server. Now for most of the tasks, whether it is the activation of a license or updating a feature that got added or applying some changes to user capacity, I no longer need to perform a server restart.
So, these are some features that have been helpful to me and these are just a few of the lot. To view all the new features in 2021.1, you can view it at 

