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Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

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Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#41

Post by privateSFacct »

prepend wrote: post #20
gerhardi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has PowerBI which is already almost magic for many business users with it's ease of connectability with different databases and SaaS services. Transformations, parsing, mixing data from different sources and reporting capabilities are also easy to start with and quite powerful in the right hands. It's not integrated into Excel directly but sits quite well imho in the MS ecosystem.

PowerBI wants to be Tableau based on the number of times Microsoft sales has demoed and whatnot. But I haven’t met databiz people who switched from tableau to PBI. I’m not sure why as they look pretty similar on paper. I think Tableau’s mental model is about exporting and storytelling while PBI is about reporting. Personally, I find it harder to work with PBI because it’s the only license model more confusing that Ta…

This - we had power pivot in excel - then for some licensing reasons we didn’t. I know how to buy excel and firms buy it blindly - tie power bi into that sales channel

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#42

Post by sethhochberg »

pojzon wrote: post #27
ackbar03 wrote: post #7

I never really understood tableu, it just makes fancy graphs from your data doesn't it? What's new about it?

So more or less the same as redash ?

I love Redash, but Tableau has a much larger set of features. Redash is pretty good at queries and basic charting. Tableau is pretty good at queries and basic charting, but also offers a bunch of extra visualization types, predictive analysis, native cohort tools, etc, etc.

(That being said, I think a lot of teams are quick to reach for heavyweight tools like Tableau when Redash would be perfectly good for what they need at far less cost)

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#43

Post by jdreaver »

dmor wrote: post #30

Wow, Looker last week and now Tableau. I’m only 90 days in to running the open source equivalent inside GitLab, and these big revenue multiples are telling a fascinating story. I would’ve loved to be a fly on the wall for this negotiation, what a great outcome for Tableau shareholders! With all that’s happening we’re definitely looking to pick up the pace, and would love to work with more contributors on the free ope…

I just wanted to pop in and say Meltano looks awesome! Good luck with it.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#44

Post by amrrs »

cl42 wrote: post #17

I love this. Mulesoft, Tableau -- there's a very clear strategy here for Salesforce. You're running all of your customer-facing operations on Salesforce, so why not also integrate the BI stack into everything? I've worked with a lot of companies who spend months (if not years) integrating their data into a few disparate systems... The finance team has one system (and underlying data lake), the commerce team another,…

They've already got a product called `Dataroma`, I'm not sure if this acquistion might cannibalize Dataroma customers.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#45

Post by cirgue »

collyw wrote: post #25
tyingq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the business users can combine data sources and do joins. Instead of waiting for IT to produce the right views.

Business users don't usually have a clue what a join is.

No, but most of them know what a v-lookup is, and almost all of them know when they need the result that a join accomplishes.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#46

Post by kthejoker2 »

collyw wrote: post #25
tyingq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the business users can combine data sources and do joins. Instead of waiting for IT to produce the right views.

Business users don't usually have a clue what a join is.

99% of business users know what a VLOOKUP is.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#48

Post by sailfast »

prepend wrote: post #22

This seems really high for a company without earnings and a weird growth curve. Their ticker is cool and maybe sales force wants to be DATA on nasdaq. Otherwise, it will be hard to justify this high markup for a tool company. It will be awesome if Salesforce can adjust their model and make Tableau spit out D3. Their desktop tool is nice for designing, but their server components seem frequently unnecessary for runnin…

A lot of companies use Tableau to visualize their data. In the future if they want to use Tableau they (speculation) might have to host their data in SalesForce and/or be directed to use a number of other SalesForce features if they want the latest coolest dashboards. To me this acquisition seems be a play toward growing customer usage of SalesForce licensed functions and data migration to their cloud, rather than based on the current revenue stream. The lock-in is strong.

SalesForce has been pushing Einstein Analytics recently. I haven't used it, but I do see that moving an organization from Tableau to Einstein has a lot of costs involved so this would be a hard sell in many places. Having them both under one roof means they're able to bring a bunch of people across to their cloud and now that license revenue year over year is theirs with the additional data lock-in.

As someone that really dislikes vendor-forced lock-in and generally dislikes the way SalesForce controls your data, rate limits, maxes, licensing, etc, this move is about even more control up your stack that will seem like a "no brainer" to decisionmakers, which is dangerous. That said, I'm sure it will work well for some organizations.

EDIT: I would also love to see them spit out D3 or other open visual but then they'd be losing control of the secret sauce and the requirement for a license. Not sure there is an incentive to go that route.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#49

Post by tetrep »

jbob2000 wrote: post #26
cl42 wrote: post #17

I love this. Mulesoft, Tableau -- there's a very clear strategy here for Salesforce. You're running all of your customer-facing operations on Salesforce, so why not also integrate the BI stack into everything? I've worked with a lot of companies who spend months (if not years) integrating their data into a few disparate systems... The finance team has one system (and underlying data lake), the commerce team another,…

It’s a risky play. At my enterprise company, we’re not allowed to use a single vendor for everything, we explicitly must use different companies if a favoured vendor hits a certain spend threshold. This is to prevent cost overruns and solution capture, where every solution to your company’s problems becomes “give it to X vendor” and then X vendor kills a product line and you’re toast. Salesforce needs to be careful o…

Is this somewhat common? It makes intuitive sense, but the big 3 or 4 or whatever number it is (IBM, P&Y, etc) consultancies have "use us for everything" as their explicit strategy / part of their sales pitch.

So while they might lose customers like you, there is clearly ridiculously large piles of money up for grabs if they diversify their products, rather than remain specialized. And, of course, any sufficiently good specialist is at risk of being acquired by one of these behemoth generalists.

Re: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7B

#50

Post by selimthegrim »

prepend wrote: post #22

This seems really high for a company without earnings and a weird growth curve. Their ticker is cool and maybe sales force wants to be DATA on nasdaq. Otherwise, it will be hard to justify this high markup for a tool company. It will be awesome if Salesforce can adjust their model and make Tableau spit out D3. Their desktop tool is nice for designing, but their server components seem frequently unnecessary for runnin…

Tableau has a research division they themselves acquired recently in Boston.
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