Tableau Software, LLC is an American interactive

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating Graphics, graphic or visual Representation (arts), representations of a large amount of complex quantitative and qualitative data and i ...

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company focused on

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

. It was founded in 2003 in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the population was 82,376 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Mountain V ...

, and is currently headquartered in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

. In 2019, the company was acquired by

Salesforce Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and ap ...

for $15.7 billion. At the time, this was the largest acquisition by Salesforce (a leader in the CRM field) since its foundation. It was later surpassed by Salesforce's acquisition of Slack. The company's founders, Christian Chabot, Pat Hanrahan and Chris Stolte, were researchers at the Department of

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. They specialized in visualization techniques for exploring and analyzing relational databases and

data cube In computer programming contexts, a data cube (or datacube) is a multi-dimensional ("n-D") array of values. Typically, the term data cube is applied in contexts where these arrays are massively larger than the hosting computer's main memory; exa ...

s, and started the company as a commercial outlet for research at Stanford from 1999 to 2002. Tableau products query

relational database A relational database (RDB) is a database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured for ...

s, online analytical processing cubes,

cloud database A cloud database is a database that typically runs on a cloud computing platform and access to the database is provided as-a-service. There are two common deployment models: users can run databases on the cloud independently, using a virtual machin ...

s, and

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

s to generate graph-type data visualizations. The software can also extract, store, and retrieve data from an in-memory data engine.

Software products

Tableau products include: * Tableau Desktop * Tableau Server * Tableau Prep Builder (released in 2018) * Tableau Vizable (consumer data visualization mobile app released in 2015) * Tableau Public (free to use) * Tableau Reader (free to use) * Tableau Mobile * Tableau Cloud * Tableau Prep * Tableau CRM * Tableau Bridge

Functionalities

Tableau offers drag and drop and other features such as multiple chart formats and mapping capabilities.

Map functionalities

The software is able to plot

latitude In geography, latitude is a geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinate that specifies the north-south position of a point on the surface of the Earth or another celestial body. Latitude is given as an angle that ranges from −90° at t ...

and

longitude Longitude (, ) is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east- west position of a point on the surface of the Earth, or another celestial body. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees and denoted by the Greek lett ...

coordinates and connect to spatial files like Esri

Shapefile The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software. It is developed and regulated by Esri as a mostly open specification for data interoperability among Esri and other GIS software product ...

s, KML, and

GeoJSON GeoJSON is an open standard format designed for representing simple geographical features, along with their non-spatial attributes. It is based on the JSON format. The features include points (therefore addresses and locations), line strings ...

to display custom geography. The built-in geo-coding allows for administrative places (country, state/province, county/district), postal codes, US Congressional Districts, US CBSA/ MSA, Area Codes, Airports, and European Union statistical areas ( NUTS codes) to be mapped automatically. Geographies can be grouped to create custom

territories A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...

or custom

geocoding Address geocoding, or simply geocoding, is the process of taking a text-based description of a location, such as an address or the name of a place, and returning geographic coordinates, frequently latitude/longitude pair, to identify a locati ...

used to extend existing geographic roles in the product.

Data sources

Tableau Software can connect to data sources such as regular text files (.txt, .csv), Microsoft Excel (.xlsx), Microsoft Access (.accdb), import from Tableau workbook (.tbm), Tableau Table data Extract (.tds) and many other types. It also allows to connect to data using multiple pre-built connectors. Data Type Tableau express automatically data types and fields. Tableau will make use of the data type that the data source has defined if it exists, or it will choose a data type if the data source does not specify one. In Tableau, the following data types are supported * Text (string) Value * Date Value * Date and Time Value *

Numerical Value A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

* Geographic Values (Latitude and longitude used for maps) *

Boolean Values In computer science, the Boolean (sometimes shortened to Bool) is a data type that has one of two possible values (usually denoted ''true'' and ''false'') which is intended to represent the two truth values of logic and Boolean algebra. It is nam ...

(True / False Conditions) * Image role (used with image link URLs) * Cluster Group (used with Find Clusters in Data)

History

While at Stanford, founders Hanrahan and Stolte, as well as Diane Tang, created the predecessor to Tableau, named Polaris; Polaris was a data visualization software tool, built with the support of a

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

defense program, the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). ASCI was formed to facilitate the simulation and modeling of nuclear weapons. Tableau was formally founded in January 2003 by Pat Hanrahan, Christian Chabot, and Chris Stolte, and moved its headquarters to the Fremont neighborhood of

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, Washington, the following year. The company has since expanded its Fremont headquarters and announced plans in 2016 for an auxiliary campus in suburban

Kirkland, Washington Kirkland is a city in King County, Washington, United States. A suburb east of Seattle, its population was 92,175 in the 2020 U.S. census which made it the sixth largest city in King County and the twelfth largest city in the state of Washington. ...

. A new headquarters building opened near Gas Works Park in Wallingford in March 2017 and was followed by a new building in Fremont that opened in 2018. In August 2016, Tableau announced the appointment of Adam Selipsky as president and CEO, effective September 16, 2016, replacing co-founder Christian Chabot as CEO. In June 2018, Tableau acquired Empirical Systems, a

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

based

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

startup, with plans to integrate the company's technology into the Tableau platform. Tableau also announced plans to establish an office in Cambridge as a result of the deal. On June 10, 2019, Tableau was acquired by

in an all-stock deal worth $15.7 billion, being the largest acquisition in Salesforce's history at the time. In March 2021, Tableau announced the appointment of Mark Nelson as president and CEO, replacing Adam Selipsky. Current CEO of Tableau is a longtime Salesforce exec Ryan Aytay. Notable Tableau employees include Jock Mackinlay and computer scientist and author

Leland Wilkinson Leland Wilkinson (November 5, 1944 – December 10, 2021) was an American statistician and computer scientist at and adjunct professor of computer science at University of Illinois at Chicago. Wilkinson developed the SYSTAT statistical package ...

Finances

On May 17, 2013, Tableau launched an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

, raising more than $250 million. Prior to its IPO, Tableau raised over $45 million in venture capital investment from investors such as the NEA and Meritech. Tableau's revenue grew significantly from 2010 through 2013, reporting $34.2 million in 2010, $62.4 million in 2011, $127.7 million in 2012, and $232.44 million in 2013. Profit from 2010 to 2012 was $2.7 million, $3.4 million, and $1.6 million, respectively.

WikiLeaks and policy changes

On December 2, 2010, Tableau deleted

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by ...

' visualizations about the

United States diplomatic cables leak An incident, commonly referred to as Cablegate, began on 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates, embassies, and diplomatic missions around ...

, stating it was due to direct political pressure from US Senator

Joe Lieberman Joseph Isadore Lieberman (; February 24, 1942 – March 27, 2024) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. Originally a member of the Democratic Party (United States), Dem ...

. On February 21, 2011, Tableau posted an updated data policy. The accompanying blog post cited the two main changes as (1) creating a formal complaint process and (2) using freedom of speech as a guiding principle. In addition, the post announced the creation of an advisory board to help the company navigate future situations that "push the boundaries" of the policy. Tableau likened the new policy to the model set forth in the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...

, and opined that under the new policy, Wikileaks' visuals would not have been removed, as "the underlying data were statistics ''about'' the cables, not the cables themselves".

References

External links

Official website

Support Case
{{Authority control Salesforce Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange Data and information visualization software Business software companies Data analysis software Business intelligence companies Software companies based in Seattle Data companies 2013 initial public offerings American companies established in 2003 Software companies established in 2003 2003 establishments in California 2019 mergers and acquisitions Software companies of the United States Wallingford, Seattle