Tableau Launches Cloud BI Product
Tableau Software launched a new cloud-based business intelligence (BI) platform named, appropriately enough, Tabeau Online.
Available as a software as a service (SaaS) offering or as a hosted version of the company's Tableau Server product, the cloud BI software helps bring business analytics to organizations of all sizes and all levels of IT competency, according to the company. “Tableau Online will allow people to get their analytics up and running in minutes and add users in a few clicks,” said Tableau's co-founder and Chief Development Officer Chris Stolte, in company remarks.
“It's completely scalable and secure and requires no infrastructure. It’s the fastest way to get everyone in your company using powerful analytics to make better decisions today,” Stolte said.
Tableau Online delivers the functionality of the company's Tableau software platform, but in a manner that requires less investment in IT, promotes collaboration and better supports mobile workforces, asserts Ellie Fields, senior director of product marketing for the company, in a blog post.
“Getting started is just a matter of clicks. You can start with one user or one hundred. Scale up as fast as you want and never worry about infrastructure. When you add users, they get an email, create a username and password, and then simply go to a Web page to sign in,” she wrote. Another benefit: Users can securely share dashboards beyond the firewall with colleagues and partners.
Tableau Online can source data from both cloud-based and on-premise repositories, including “databases, data warehouses, Hadoop clusters, Excel files and cloud applications,” Fields said. Users can expect the full analytics and reporting capabilities of the company's BI platform, she added. “Tableau Online isn't just dashboards in the cloud—it's a robust business intelligence solution.”
To date, the company's newly announced cloud BI offering has attracted 200 early customers. They include Elite Brands and hedge fund Herring Creek Capital, the latter of which claims to have its entire staff of seven performing analytics in just three weeks. “We got our hedge fund up and running with Tableau Online extremely quickly. It's helped enormously with the flow of ideas within the team,” said Herring Creek quantitative analyst Sandeep Varma in a statement.
Tableau Online costs $500 per user, per year. Each account includes 100 GB of online storage.
The company joins the growing ranks of software makers that are banking on growing enterprise demand for cloud-based BI solutions. Other cloud BI companies include Birst, QlikTech and Jaspersoft. The field has also attracted the attention of industry titans like IBM, which has poured billions of dollars into business analytics during the past few years and floated several specialized SmartCloud BI services.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
