Making Data Sing, Play and Dance

Tableau Software hopes its free Reader product, which renders user-friendly graphics from data, such as the Mariners’ offensive lineup, will spur sales of its professional-grade products. (Click on the image to activate an interactive version of the graphic).

Deep in the heart of Fremont, just steps from the average
folks in the beloved “Waiting for the Interurban” statue, is a company
promoting power to the people through data. 

Not the gray pinstripe data of your father. Tableau Software
is not content with winning awards and setting growth records in the area of
software known as business intelligence or analytics.

This seven-year-old company with Stanford University roots
wants to change how the average person sees data. Christian Chabot is the
blue-eyed and metaphorically bushy-tailed chief at Tableau, and he wants to
transform data the way YouTube transformed video. He wants Tableau’s Public
product, which the company gives away free, to transform how people leverage
data.

“We want to create a breakthrough—we want to make data
analysis easy,” Chabot says. Of course, that revolution would catapult the
business into profits, if its name became synonymous with easy visuals.

“As more people encounter our product online, we think it
will flow back to us,” in the form of increased customers for the commercial
products that cost money, Chabot explains. This is a common model in the
software industry, used by Adobe Systems, among others.

“Easy” is a complex target, however, explains computer
science professor Dan Weld, who specializes in research on user interfaces in
his work at the University of Washington. Weld speaks favorably of Tableau Public.

The software allows a user to create tables, bar graphs,
scatter plots and other visual displays, and publish and share them online.
Viewers can click these graphics to rearrange the data according to a specific
interest. For example, if the data is about real estate sales in King County, a
viewer may focus on just the Northgate neighborhood. The data displayed will
realign to show the narrower focus.

But Weld cautions that finding the magic threshold for
public acceptance is a risky prediction. “How easy does it have to be?” he
asks. Nobody knows.

Tableau brought in an estimated $20 million last year
working for banks, pharmaceutical companies, health care giants, the federal
government and other clients that create custom software. The company plans to
hire 50 more people in 2010, adding to its roughly 100-strong workforce, and
perhaps will bring on board that many in each of the next three years. It won
an award from Inc.

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