Data Visualization – it’s one of the unsung heroes in the Big Data picture, but that appears to be changing. Seattle-based data visualization company Tableau Software filed its IPO statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday and is looking to raise up to $150 Million dollars. The stock ticker symbol will be “DATA”.
Tableau is an alumnus of theCUBE, dating back to the Strata-Hadoop World 2012 event. VP of Tableau Software Daniel Jewitt shared not only the origin, missions, and current state of the company, but how it relates to Big Data in the following video:

The product offers a wealth of important features to the BigData community and it is built with enterprise features in mind. The simple truth of large data sets that need to be visualized is that in a great deal of cases the volume of data is so huge that it must be a robust installation and user interface, limiting the possibilities for capable cloud-based options.

This attention to performance and features was accentuated by the company’s latest product release, Tableau 8.0. The product remains true to enterprise capabilities and adds a few new ones including real-time processing for multiple data points, the ability to query Google BigTable data sets, and a direct connection into Google Analytics. The release is not without critics however as blogger Stephen Few shared his take on the release.

Tableau has a special place in my heart. Not long after starting Perceptual Edge, I discovered Tableau in its original release and wrote the first independent review of Tableau 1. I was thrilled, for in Tableau I found a BI software company that shared my vision of visual data exploration and analysis done well. Since then I’ve used Tableau, along with Spotfire, Panopticon, and SAS JMP, to illustrate good data visualization functionality in my courses and lectures. Until recently, I assumed that Tableau, of all these vendors, would be the one mostly likely to continue its tenacious commitment to best practices. However, what I’ve seen in Tableau 8, due to be released soon, has broken my heart. Tableau is now introducing visualizations that are analytically impoverished. Tableau’s vision has become blurred.

One thing for sure, Tableau is evolving and as Kristen Nicole noted there’s a lot of adoption taking place and some are looking at this as the “new BI”.

Big data seems to be the realm of big business, but its impact is as significant as its ambitious name suggests. Tableau Software is one such vendor that helps companies to see and understand data, setting out to help anyone quickly analyze, visualize and share information.
Tableau’s desktop-based data visualization tool is being adopted by dozens of large companies and media organizations, and is used to create sophisticated visual representations, business dashboards, and fast analytics of big data. Tableau Desktop lets people create interactive reports, dashboards and visualizations using an easy drag n’ drop interface.

Tableau is reportedly developing a SaaS version and we can expect to see not only continued adoption and interest as big data grows, but we can also look to exciting new features along the way. According to the S-1 SEC filing, Tableau holds nine U.S. patents, and it has eight patent applications pending – so much more to come there.