Data visualization software maker Tableau Software is calling dibs on the BI market now that research firm Gartner ranked it as the number one vendor in that space in a recent, and most awkwardly pronounced, report.  The whitepaper, entitled ‘Market Share Analysis: Business Intelligence, Analytics and Performance Management, Worldwide, 2011,’ looks at twenty different vendors, and places Tableau in the lead with over 86 percent revenue growth from 2010 to 2011.

Gartner estimates that business intelligence revenue rose 16.4 percent last year, which made it the second fastest growing segment in the software industry at the time. That percentage also represents the exact sales increase the second fastest growing BI vendor has seen in that period–more than five times less than what
reported.

“Tableau’s remarkable growth is a symbol of one of the most important trends in the industry: the consumerization of enterprise technology,” said Christian Chabot, CEO and co-founder of Tableau Software.”We are ushering in a golden era of fast, easy, visual analytics for everyone. It’s a sea change in business analytics.”

Not long ago the company managed to snag a spot on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms as well. It was listed as a ‘challenger’ based on “its ability to execute and completeness of vision,” in the Gartner’s own words.

There are many software vendors making headway in the analytics space now, and competition is heating up as a result.  SAP has its eyes on the bigger picture with its HANA in-memory data crunching appliance, which as of yesterday is officially the single most powerful database of its kind. The platform is defending the title with a performance benchmark of 10 billion transactions, 100 terabytes of data and 200 million query responses.