Rob’s got a good post called What is Power Pivot’s #1 Competitor? which has some great comments, as well as a hilarious YouTube clip.
One of his musings is that companies like Tableau – who are indeed competitors to Power Pivot – don’t really view Power Pivot as an obstacle to Tableau getting new customers. They know their biggest competitor is still just Excel itself.
That’s also PowerPivot’s biggest competitor. To the point that the opportunity cost to MS of users foregoing PowerPivot for Tableau is an order of magnitude smaller that the opportunity costs to MS of Excel users that simply never realize PowerPivot might be something they could use to sack lots of overpriced, underwhelming reporting analysts.
As per my comment I left on that post, I haven’t embraced PowerPivot yet because I’m still too busy panicking about not knowing everything I think I need to know about Excel and VBA. There’s still plenty of posts on this site that I don’t even partially comprehend, and only when I’ve got these under my belt will I STOP panicking about “this” and then START panicking about “that” (PowerPivot). Guess I’ve got a one-track mind.
Last time I looked, PowerPivot and those other new-fangled inventions weren’t programmable by VBA to a great extent. So in my mind – and based partly on what I do know and largely on what I don’t – I get the feeling that I can’t very easily integrate these new-fangled inventions into my existing factory. While I’m sure that I can probably replace quite a bit of that VBA-driven factory with these new-fangled inventions, I’m loathe to step away from the production line while I do this, because of a fear that orders are going to be piling up somewhere.
What’s more, because I switch companies every 18 months to 3 years, while I could possibly put these new-fangled inventions to work where I work now, there’s no guarantee that my new skills will be required in a new role, given PowerPoint ain’t exactly as ubiquitous as Excel is. In fact I think an increase in my old skills will probably be a better bet.
That all said and not done, why to I still get the feeling that I’m missing the opportunity of a lifetime by not investing now. Why do I have a vague sinking feeling that I’m sinking almost imperceptibly into a career tar-pit, rather than evolving into a higher life form?
Ah well, if I’m going to be a living dinosaur, then I’m in good company and in the right place:
