Tableau Software Debuts New Way of Interacting with Business Data
Pioneer in the visual analysis of databases launches its first products
SEATTLE, March 31, 2005—Tableau Software, a developer of visual analysis and reporting systems for the business intelligence industry, announced the availability of products that enable people of any technical ability to see and understand the information in databases by using a unique drag-and-drop interface. Tableau promotes what it terms “visual thinking” by producing interactive pictures of data rather than static rows and columns.
Tableau Software is the culmination of five years of research and development that originated in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. The project was initiated through a DARPA grant sponsored by the US Department of Defense. Under the leadership of co-founders Dr. Pat Hanrahan and Dr. Chris Stolte, the Tableau development team has produced a fundamentally new way of interacting with the desktop files, relational databases, and OLAP servers that are the backbone of the $20 billion database and business intelligence industries.
At the heart of Tableau’s software is a new proprietary query language called VizQLTM. This new language marries a query to a visual response. By analyzing data visually, users can spot trends, outliers, and relationships more quickly, leading to better insights. And because the software connects directly to data sources, users don’t have to stop with one query: They can continue to explore their data, in effect conducting “visual Q&A” sessions to get the answers they need. Early Tableau customers are openly enthusiastic about the results. “Five minutes into using Tableau we knew we had found a mission critical product,” said David Leeds, VP Sales of FiberTower.
“Tableau is simply a better way to analyze your data,” said Chris Stolte, VP, Engineering and Co-founder of Tableau Software. “By applying our VizQLTM query language to a set of data, the data essentially comes alive. You can discover important insights about your customers or operations with a simple drag and drop interface. You’ll see the impact on decision-making more clearly than you ever have before. In a couple of years people will wonder how they made business decisions without Tableau.”
Tableau software is available as Tableau Standard Edition and Tableau Professional Edition. While both versions have the same feature set. The Standard Edition is compatible with data in Excel, Access, and text files. The Professional Edition supports these data sources as well as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Server Analytical Services, Hyperion Essbase, and IBM DB2 OLAP server. Pricing is $999 and $1,799 for the Standard Edition and Professional Editions respectively. Prices include a year of software maintenance. Products can be purchased and downloaded from the Tableau website.
About Tableau Software
Tableau Software, a privately held company based in Seattle, Washington, is the leading provider of visual analysis and reporting solutions. For more information on Tableau, visit http://www.tableausoftware.com.
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“Tableau Software” and “VizQL” are trademarks of Tableau Software, Inc. For more information, visit http://www.tableausoftware.com.