Tableau Software
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer software |
| Founded | Seattle, WA (2003) |
| Founder(s) | Christian Chabot Chris Stolte Pat Hanrahan |
| Headquarters | Seattle, WA, U.S. |
| Employees | 320 (October 2011)[1] |
| Website | tableausoftware.com |
Tableau Software (
/tæbˈloʊ/ tab-LOH) is an American computer software company headquartered in Seattle, WA, USA. It produces a family of interactive data visualization products focused on business intelligence.
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[edit] History
The company traces its roots to academic research in Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science between 1997 and 2002.[2] Professor Pat Hanrahan led research in the use of table-based displays to browse multidimensional relational databases[3] along with his Ph.D. student Chris Stolte who specialized in visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and data cubes.[4] Together, they combined a structured query language for databases with a descriptive language for rendering graphics and invented a database visualization language called VizQL (Visual Query Language).[5] VizQL formed the core of the Polaris system, an interface for exploring large multi-dimensional databases.[6] Tableau was spun out of Stanford in 2003[7] with an eponymous software application. The product queries relational databases, cubes and spreadsheets, and generates a number of graph types.
In 2010 Tableau anticipated revenue of $30 million to $40 million.[1]
[edit] Products
Tableau Software offers three main products: Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and Tableau Reader.
Tableau's products have been incorporated into product suites of multiple independent software vendors, including Oracle for its Oracle Essbase Visual Explorer product.[8]
On February 11, 2010, Tableau released a fourth product line named Tableau Public.[9] It is a free-to-use program that offers analytic capability, with the limitations that visualizations are limited to 100K rows of data and can only be saved to the Tableau Public servers.
[edit] Awards
Tableau Software has won awards including "Best Overall in Data Visualization" by DM Review, "Best of 2005 for Data Analysis" by PC Magazine,[10] and more recently "2008 Best Business Intelligence Solution (CODiE award)" by the Software & Information Industry Association.[11]
[edit] Withdrawal of services from Wikileaks
On December 2, 2010, Tableau was one of the first companies to withdraw support from WikiLeaks after they started publishing US embassy cables.[12] Although the company stated it was not a decision that they took lightly,[13] they also stated it was directly due to political pressure:
- "Our decision to remove the data from our servers came in response to a public request by Senator Joe Lieberman, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, when he called for organizations hosting WikiLeaks to terminate their relationship with the website."
[edit] External links
- Tableau Software - Fast Analytics and Rapid-fire Business Intelligence
- Tableau Public - Free Data Visualization Software
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Cook, John (July 2010). "Tableau Software grows like 'gangbusters,' plans to hire 150". TechFlash.com. http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/tableau_software_grows_like_gangbusters_plans_to_hire_100.html.
- ^ "Who We Are". Tableau Software. http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/who-we-are. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "Pat Hanrahan". Graphics.stanford.edu. http://graphics.stanford.edu/~hanrahan/. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "Christopher R. Stolte: Ph.D. Candidate @ Stanford". Graphics.stanford.edu. http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/~cstolte/. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "VizQL: a language for query, analysis and visualization". SIGMOD '06 Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data. ACM. doi:10.1145/1142473.1142560. ISBN 1-59593-434-0. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1142473.1142560.
- ^ "Polaris: Database and Data Cube Visualization". Graphics.stanford.edu. http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/polaris/. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "Tableau Software, Inc.: Private Company Information". Investing.businessweek.com. BusinessWeek. March 14, 2011. http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=11421199. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "Essbase | Business Intelligence". Oracle. 2010-09-07. http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/bi/essbase/visual-explorer.html. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "Tableau Launches Free Software To Make Data Social" (Press release). Tableau Software. February 11, 2010. http://www.tableausoftware.com/press_release/tableau-release.
- ^ "Software: Business - Tableau - Best of the Year". PCMag.com. November 11, 2005. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1895722,00.asp. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
- ^ "2008 Codie Award Winners". SIIA.net.
- ^ Arthur, Charles; Halliday, Josh (January 8, 2010). "Wikileaks under attack: the definitive timeline". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/07/wikileaks-under-attack-definitive-timeline.
- ^ Fink, Elissa (December 2, 2010). "Why we removed the WikiLeaks visualizations". Tableau Software. http://www.tableausoftware.com/blog/why-we-removed-wikileaks-visualizations.
