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March 21, 2013

Tableau’s Data Vis Suite Gets Speed and Flexibility Boost

Isaac Lopez

Already an established player in visualization tools for Hadoop, Tableau Software announced today the general availability of their Tableau 8.0 analytics and visualization software, aimed at making their insight tool more flexible and accessible for organizational data.

Investment in the 8.0 release was primarily focused around three key areas, Francois Ajenstat, director of product management at Tableau, told Datanami: (1) web and mobile authoring, (2) forecasting and treemapping, and (3) increasing data connectivity. Boasting over 90 new features, Ajenstat says that Tableau’s aim with this release is to provide broader access within organizations to see the story that their data is telling them.

“Analytics should happen where decisions need to happen, and that’s not always at your desk,” commented Ajenstat on the new web and mobile authoring tools introduced with the 8.0 release. “Mobile authoring is about asking questions anywhere you are. It can be on the road, or in a kiosk somewhere – being able to access your data anywhere you are, and answer questions based on it is really important.”

The release includes new visualization analytics tools, including treemapping, a visualization technique that is used for displaying hierarchical data through nested rectangles that represent data ratios. Such tools, says Ajenstat, helps organizations broaden the use and understanding of the data they work with. “Anyone in your organization that can gain value from data should be able to have access to tools that help them answer questions from it.”

Improved data connectivity is a key feature of the Tableau 8.0 release, explained Ajenstat, citing improved connectivity to a number of “com-based” resources, namely Salesforce.com, Google Analytics, and Google BigQuery.

“The connectivity that we’ve added for these resources really extends the kinds of data and the location of data that our customers can use,” said Ajenstat. “We already connect to Hadoop data sources and big data warehouses, and regular data warehouses. Whether your data is small or big, on premise or in the cloud, now it’s accessible within a few clicks.”

 Ajenstat says that enterprises will be happy to learn that Tableau 8.0 adds a number of enterprise integration tools through an expanded set of APIs, including a new Javascript API and a Data Extract API that will allow them to create data “mash-ups” and utilize the tool more flexibly.

The company has also added performance enhancements to its visualizations, says Ajenstat. “We’ve taken advancement in the computer graphics industry, and applied it to the database industry so that you’re able to vidualize data much faster than ever,” he commented.

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