Andy on Enterprise Software Recognizes Tableau Innovation

The blog Andy on Enterprise Software had a recent post about something many people in the Business Intelligence (BI) industry (and its periphery) are talking about: what the restructuring of the BI market by acquisitions is doing to product innovation and next generation BI. He cited Tableau Software as an exception and an industry innovator. Innovation (and not just for its own sake) is a high-minded goal and one we take seriously.

To quote Andy, "the recent spate of acquisitions in the BI world (Cognos by IBM, Business Objects by SAP) might cause you to assume that the area was becoming mature (for which read: nothing much new to do). However there is still innovation going on. A company called Tableau... has neatly combined BI software with clever use of visualization technology."

I don't want to cite the whole thing here so be sure to check it out. And many thanks to Andy for recognizing our efforts to produce innovative and effective software.

Lastly, one special point... it was gratifying that he recognized Tableau's product tour as "very well thought out" and "very engaging (if a little frenetic), with some real thought put into the underlying data in order to show off the tool to good effect." If you've watched other product tours, you know they vary widely in quality. And if you've ever built one for your own products, then you know how hard it is to make them effective. We're lucky in that we had senior-level management driving the content of this demo and a very skilled designer well-trained in Flash.