Should You Ditch Your BI Tool?

I think the traditional BI tools (Power BI, Tableau, Looker) are toast.

They existed for a world where an end user didn't have the skills to hand code visualizations. That's not the case anymore. I get non-technical people sending me vibe coded HTML and JavaScript visualizations all of the time now.

It's actually easier to just host these yourself and have your data pipelines feed them. Everyone can build exactly what they want their own personal dashboard to look like.

The hardest part is permissions. But if done right, this can be even easier than security on the BI tools.

Overall, self hosting BI is a win all around: faster iteration, more personal for the end user, tighter security, and lower cost.