Making Data Sing, Play and Dance

Tableau Software hopes its free Reader product, which renders user-friendly graphics from data, such as the Mariners’ offensive lineup, will spur sales of its professional-grade products. (Click on the image to activate an interactive version of the graphic).

Deep in the heart of Fremont, just steps from the average folks in the beloved “Waiting for the Interurban” statue, is a company promoting power to the people through data. 

Not the gray pinstripe data of your father. Tableau Software is not content with winning awards and setting growth records in the area of software known as business intelligence or analytics.

This seven-year-old company with Stanford University roots wants to change how the average person sees data. Christian Chabot is the blue-eyed and metaphorically bushy-tailed chief at Tableau, and he wants to transform data the way YouTube transformed video. He wants Tableau’s Public product, which the company gives away free, to transform how people leverage data.

“We want to create a breakthrough—we want to make data analysis easy,” Chabot says. Of course, that revolution would catapult the business into profits, if its name became synonymous with easy visuals.

“As more people encounter our product online, we think it will flow back to us,” in the form of increased customers for the commercial products that cost money, Chabot explains. This is a common model in the software industry, used by Adobe Systems, among others.

“Easy” is a complex target, however, explains computer science professor Dan Weld, who specializes in research on user interfaces in his work at the University of Washington. Weld speaks favorably of Tableau Public.

The software allows a user to create tables, bar graphs, scatter plots and other visual displays, and publish and share them online. Viewers can click these graphics to rearrange the data according to a specific interest. For example, if the data is about real estate sales in King County, a viewer may focus on just the Northgate neighborhood. The data displayed will realign to show the narrower focus.

But Weld cautions that finding the magic threshold for public acceptance is a risky prediction. “How easy does it have to be?” he asks. Nobody knows.

Tableau brought in an estimated $20 million last year working for banks, pharmaceutical companies, health care giants, the federal government and other clients that create custom software. The company plans to hire 50 more people in 2010, adding to its roughly 100-strong workforce, and perhaps will bring on board that many in each of the next three years. It won an award from Inc.

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