Tableau Software: Changing the Way You Think About Data

In 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of data as in 2011 and 75 times the number of information sources (IDC, 2011). Within these data are huge opportunities for human advancement. But to turn opportunities into reality, people need the power of data at their fingertips.

Tableau builds software to deliver exactly that. Its products are transforming the way people use data to solve problems. Tableau Software helps people see and understand data. Offering a revolutionary new approach to business intelligence, Tableau allows you to quickly connect, visualize, and share data with a seamless experience from the PC to the iPad. Now, you don’t programming skills to create and publish dashboards and share them with colleagues, partners, or customers.

“We are Tableau Software — for anyone and everyone. We make analyzing data fast and easy, beautiful and useful,” says Adam Selipsky, President and CEO of Tableau.

The Story Behind: It began with three guys from Stanford

It all started with a brilliant computer scientist, an Academy-Award winning professor and a savvy business leader with a passion for data. They came together to solve one of the most challenging problems in software – making data understandable to ordinary people. These were the fundamental ingredients for Tableau.

Chris Stolte, then a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, was researching visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and data cubes when a Department of Defense (DOD) project aimed at increasing people’s ability to analyze information was brought to the university’s computer science department. And the project took flight with Stolte who was hungering for a project to change the world.

Pat Hanrahan, the man behind Pixar and Stolte’s Ph.D. advisor realized that it was a project that could change the world. A founding member of Pixar and chief architect for RenderMan, Pat had already transformed the world of animated film. It creates pictures that answer questions, but it doesthat for businesses that want to know things about their data.

Chris, Pat and a team of Stanford Ph.Ds realized that computer graphics could deliver huge gains in people’s ability to understand data. The breakthrough arose when they brought together two computer science disciplines for the first time: computer graphics and databases. And their invention, VizQL™ is something that is close to fantastic —it let people analyze data just by building drag & drop pictures of what they wanted to see.

“I see the future” was Christian Chabot’s reaction when he saw what they invented. Chabot had spent years analyzing data before studying entrepreneurship at Stanford Business School. Together, Christian, Chris,and Pat formed a company and spun out of Stanford in 2003. With Christian on board as CEO, Tableau rapidly hit one success after another: first customers, multiple awards, international expansion, the first million in revenue, and multiple new inventions. Tableau is revolutionizing business analytics. And this is only the beginning.

CEO Adam Selipsky’s Take on Tableau’s Impact

Helping people answer their questions

We believe in the triumph of facts. A collection of data is a collection of facts, and facts are the foundation of human progress. Hear first-hand how our customers are using Tableau to harness the power of data.

Fostering collaborative colleagues and happier workers

Better workplaces mean happier employees empowered to express their fullest ingenuity and creativity.

Our goal is to liberate the natural curiosity and creative energy stored in people everywhere, energy which is too often suppressed because it hasn't had a proper channel for activity.

Using data to make a difference in the world

Every day there are millions of opportunities to improve people’s lives by making better use of data. Disease research, education patterns, industrial efficiency, patient care, government spending – the opportunities are endless.

Designed For the Individual Scaled For the Enterprise

When it comes to elevating people with the power of data, only Tableau combines a laser focus on how people see and understand data with the kind of robust, scalable platform you need to run even the world’s largest organizations.

Tableau platform helps you turn your data into insights that drive action—while making your IT team happy, too. From connection through collaboration, it is the most powerful, secure, and flexible end-to-end analytics platform for your data.

Powerful Analytics

Interactive, visual analysis lets you untangle thorny business questions and quickly get to the insights that propel your business forward. Powered by Tableau’s patented VizQL technology, Tableau gives you powerful analytics to ask deeper questions and deliver more meaningful answers.

Fast Adoption at Scale

When you make working with data easy, fun, and impactful, amazing things happen. Whether you’re building workbooks and dashboards, asking your own questions of others’ published analyses, or responsible for making data a more useful part of everyone’s workday, Tableau makes it easy to get value from data.

Fits Your Environment

Your specific data needs are unique. So Tableau buildssoftware with the flexibility to work within your enterprise architecture and data ecosystem. Connect to your data stored on-prem or in the cloud. Conduct live queries or use extracts. Deploy on-prem or in the cloud. Choose Windows, Linux or Mac OS. Work with your data your way.

Mission-Critical Platform

When data is critical to your business, your analytics platform needs to be secure, governed, scalable, and reliable. From compliance and security to management and monitoring, Tableau offers a robust suite of built-in capabilities to support the needs of your business. Tableau also gives the ability to integrate with systems you’ve already put into place.

The Top-Tier Products

Tableau Desktop: Answer Questions at the Speed of Thought 

Get actionable insights fast: Leave chart builders behind. Live visual analytics fuel unlimited data exploration. Interactive dashboards help you uncover hidden insights on the fly. Tableau harnesses people’s natural ability to spot visual patterns quickly, revealing everyday opportunities and eureka moments alike.

Connect to more data: Connect to data on-prem or in the cloud—whether it’s big data, a SQL database, a spreadsheet, or cloud apps like Google Analytics and Salesforce. Access and combine disparate data without writing code. Power users can pivot, split, and manage metadata to optimize data sources. Analysis begins with data.

Answer deeper questions: Exceptional analytics demand more than a pretty dashboard. Quickly build powerful calculations from existing data, drag and drop reference lines and forecasts, and review statistical summaries. Make your point with trend analyses, regressions, and correlations for tried and true statistical understanding. Ask new questions, spot trends, identify opportunities, and make data-driven decisions with confidence.

Put your data on the map: Answer the “where” as well as the “why.” Create interactive maps automatically. Built-in postal codes mean lightning-fast mapping for more than 50 countries worldwide. Use custom geocodes and territories for personalized regions, like sales areas. The company designed Tableau maps specifically to help your data stand out.

Let everyone in on it: Ditch the static slides for live stories that others can explore. Create a compelling narrative that empowers everyone you work with to ask their own questions, analyzing interactive visualizations with fresh data. Be part of a culture of data collaboration, extending the impact of your insights.

Tableau Prep: Combine, Shape, and Clean Your Data for Analysis

A complete picture of your data: Three coordinated views let you see row-level data, profiles of each column, and your entire data preparation process. Pick which view to interact with based on the task at hand.

Immediate results: If you want to edit a value, you select and directly edit. Change your join type, and see the result right away. With each action, you instantly see your data change, even on millions of rows of data. Tableau Prep gives you the freedom to re-order steps and experiment without consequence.

Smart, so you can work faster: Use smart features to fix common data prep challenges. Tableau Prep employs fuzzy clustering to turn repetitive tasks, like grouping by pronunciation, into one-click operations.

Connect to more data: Connect to data on-premises or in the cloud, whether it’s a database or a spreadsheet. Access, combine and clean disparate data without writing code. Tableau Prep intelligently pushes operations down to the database when possible, letting you take advantage of existing database investments for fast flow execution performance.

Stay in the flow: Stay in the flow of your analysis. It’s easy to open your output with Tableau Desktop or share it with others via Tableau Server or Tableau Online. Easy sharing reduces friction and helps you bridge the gap between data preparation and analytics, for better business results.

Share and collaborate, securely: Share your data sources securely using Tableau Server or Tableau Online. Create an environment where everyone in your organization can work with governed data.

Tableau Online: Self-service analytics in the cloud 

Share and collaborate in the cloud

Tableau Online is your analytics platform fully hosted in the cloud. Publish dashboards and share your discoveries with anyone. Invite colleagues or customers to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data. All easily accessible from a browser or on the go with the company’s mobile apps.

Skip the setup time and hardware cost

Get up and running in minutes and seamlessly add users as your needs grow. Tableau Online is a fully hosted solution, so you’ll never have to configure servers, manage software upgrades, or scale hardware capacity.

Interact, edit, and author on the web

Spark new insights—even on the go. Give people the power to explore interactive dashboards from anywhere. Drill down, highlight, and filter your data on the fly. Customize views with robust web editing and author new workbooks from published data.

Connect to any data anywhere

Connect to cloud databases like Amazon Redshift and Google BigQuery. Automatically refresh data from web apps like Google Analytics and Salesforce. Live query on-premises databases or schedule extract refreshes with Tableau Bridge — it's your choice.

Access anywhere, embed everywhere

Give external teams, partners, and clients simple and secure access to analytics, no virtual private networks required. Easily embed interactive dashboards on the web and within apps like Salesforce in just a few clicks.

Stay secure, by design and by default

Empower site admins to easily manage authentication and permissions for users, content, and data. Rest easy knowing Tableau Online’s infrastructure meets all SOC 2 requirements.

Dashboard Starters

Dashboard Starters are designed to help you hit the ground running with actionable data in minutes. In just a few clicks, you’ll be able to connect to popular web applications and create pre-built dashboards seamlessly.

Empowering organizations with data

Tableau Online enables everyone in an organization to see and understand data, with offerings for every user type. Starting with casual users looking to make data-driven decisions from a published dashboard, data enthusiasts who want to use web authoring to ask new questions from a published data source to data geeks who want to create and share their vizzes and data sources with the rest of the organization.

Happy Clients

“I didn't start using Tableau, I would still be using Excel. I would still have a fear of data. And then I wouldn't have a bigger view of how data can help in my day-to-day work.”

• Eunice Lim, Senior Manager, Business Analytics, Seagate

“Before, it was always numbered in rows and columns. Now I’m eager to do a new analysis, because it's so much easier to actually see the trends, the story, and the power that the data brings.” 

• Marta Magnuszewska, Special Investigation Unit Analyst, Allstate

Meet the Chief Man

Adam Selipsky, President and CEO: Adam sets the vision and direction for Tableau, and oversees all company strategy, business activities,and operations. He spent over a decade building Amazon Web Services, one of the most successful technology platforms in the world.

His leadership helped grow AWS from a start-up into a multi-billion dollar business and establish it as the undisputed market leader in cloud computing. Selipsky served as Vice President of Marketing, Sales and Support for AWS. Prior to joining Amazon, he was an executive at RealNetworks, leading the video subscription and media player division. Before that, he was a Principal at Mercer Management Consulting, a strategy consulting firm. He holds an A.B. in government and an MBA from Harvard University.