Whether data is big, small, or in the middle, the most important trend right now is making it accessible, said Chris Selland, VP of Marketing and Business Development at HP Vertica. Tableau, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard’s big data platform HP Vertica have a number of joint customers and, according to Selland, go together like “chocolate and peanut butter.” The close relationship between the two companies give Selland a unique perspective on Tableau’s value proposition and company ethos.

At the Tableau Conference, Selland sat down with CUBE hosts Jeff Kelly and John Furrier to discuss Tableau’s technology, the challenges they face, and the relationship between Tableau and HP Vertica.

Making data meaningful

Data is going through a “crossing the chasm” period, Selland asserted. Though there wasn’t a massive bloom of Big Data apps for the enterprise, businesses are trying to figure out how to make data meaningful to their entire organization. Data democratization, Selland said, is where Tableau truly excels, where as technologies like Hadoop are “still techie,” requiring software and data science experts to analyze and distribute business intelligence to organizational departments.

Though Tableau was once considered ill-prepared for an enterprise atmosphere, that notion is changing. It’s getting more use in large organizations, but didn’t enter those environments in the usual way. Disruptive technology, Selland explained, often gets its start at the fringe of an enterprise. It begins when “shadow IT” groups adopt technology because “they can’t wait to get stuff done.” Once technologies like Tableau have proven themselves in these smaller use cases, they begin to become a part of centralized IT.

“Freemium” tempts Shadow IT

This type of adoption is facilitated by Tableau’s “freemium model.” Like Tableau, HP Vertica offers a low-cost option, their “community edition,” that enables customers to get started. It gives customers something of a sneak preview into exactly how technologies offered by Tableau and HP Vertica can make business processes easier and faster.

Now that more centralized IT departments are embracing new technologies, the stakes are higher for developers when it comes to selecting the right platforms and products. One of the best ways for customers to decide whether a product is a good fit, Selland said, is to replicate that the “shadow IT” phenomenon: start with a small test implementation and make sure that the technology is a solid investment. Vendors can make this process smoother for IT departments by focusing on customer success. “Customers don’t care about the features,” Selland commented. They want to know how products will directly contribute to business’ prosperity.

Read more after the video.

How Tableau and HP Vertica work together

As a member of the Tableau ecosystem, Selland shared how customers use the two companies’ products in concert: “Real time visualizations,” he said, are big. Customers, Selland explained, want to look at both large trends and more minute details, like analytics, sales trends and heat maps, in real time. And that requires great performance, which is where HP Vertica comes in. Though Tableau is investing in their own data engine, Selland says that HP Vertica helps with data tiering — the enterprise, Selland said, has some data that they need immediately, some they need at a moment’s notice, and some they won’t need for seven years. HP Vertica helps which data is “hot, warm, or cold.”

Selland mentioned that although HP Vertica and Tableau work together well, they also work with each other’s competitors. “So many organizations think they need a single platform,” Sellend commented, but “it’s really a multiplicity of platforms. It all comes together.” Businesses, he said, need to take a holistic approach: “There’s no one answer.”

How Tableau will keep customers happy as they grow

So far, Tableau has made its name as a quality part of that holistic approach because of their customer focus. theCUBE hosts wondered whether they’d be able to maintain that focus as their company experiences massive growth. Selland said there are two major ways the company can continue to provide its customers with the same level of value.

One: “Focus on continued product excellence.” And two: “Build an ecosystem around the company.”  It’s impossible to keep the same intimate relationships, Selland acknowledged, saying, “In hyper growth, you can’t talk to every customer every day.” But, by keeping up their high-quality products and and leveraging a supportive ecosystem, Tableau will continue to engender customer loyalty.