Tableau, Inc. users can expect major advances in data visualization on mobile devices and tools to prepare data for analysis as a result of company CEO Christian Chabot’s pledge at the company’s annual conference that Tableau will spend more on research and development (R&D) over the next two years than it has in the last decade. Investors, however, should expect at least two more years of negative financial results as the company pours its money into R&D and growth, writes Wikibon Principal Research Contributor Jeff Kelly in his latest Professional Alert on the vendor.

In particular, Chabot and his team announced Project Elastic, a complete rewrite of the core data visualization suite for use on tablets and smartphones starting with an iOS version that he promised will be released within a year. The rewrite will focus on increasing performance to meet mobile users’ need for speed. This initiative is partly in response from competition from newer data visualization companies such as MeLLmo Inc., maker of Roambi Analytics, which was born on the iPad and now also runs on Android. It also is a response to the increasing number of mobile workers mostly in field sales and support who need access to strong, live analytics in the field.

The larger R&D effort also includes further development of its Story Points technology that helps users organize visualizations to maximize their impact in communicating insights, hardening the product for enterprise use and further investment in Tableau Online, its Software-as-a-Service offering.

Growth Prospects

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The good news for investors is Tableau’s prospects for continued fast growth are excellent, Kelly writes. It has tapped into two congruent drivers, the discontent with conventional business intelligence platforms that require business users to send requests to IT for complex programming of reports and dashboards that take weeks, and the excitement around all things Big Data. By putting data analysis and visualization in the hands of decision-makers at all levels of the organization, it empowers data-driven decision-making that benefits both the users and the company. As a result, the product sells itself, and Tableau capitalizes on that by providing a free downloadable trial version and a free trial of Tableau Online.

Tableau has developed powerful partnerships with all the major Hadoop vendors, database vendors Teradata Operations Inc. and IBM Corp. (PureData), and several professional service companies that specialize in helping Tableau customers get the most value the product.

Tableau’s success is in part also based on its responsiveness to customer needs, which has helped create a large, enthusiastic population of users. Maintaining that as it grows will be a challenge, Kelly writes. It will have to rely increasingly on partners and resellers to provide that customer support, and it must be careful both to choose partners that share its customer focus and to architect a responsive support system with those partners.

The other question is how long the company can maintain its heavy investment in growth and development. So far its investors seem to share the vision and have been willing to wait for returns in a future when Tableau has grown to a dominant position in Big Data analysis and visualization. As long as they remain patient, Kelly writes, Tableau should have a bright future.

The full Professional Alert, “Tableau Software Commits to Massive Research and Development Investment”, can be read without charge on the Wikibon website. IT professionals are invited to register for membership in the Wikibon community. This allows them to help determine the direction of Wikibon research, participate in that research, post questions and comments for the Wikibon analysts and post their own written research for the community.

Image courtesy Tableau