Tableau Software Gives a Good Look to Complex Data
by Alison Weiss
Business success requires understanding customers and customer demands. To stay competitive, companies increasingly are using business intelligence (BI) to analyze and make use of the huge amount of customer data that is generated and stored every day. Data mining, which is the process of searching and extracting useful information from large databases, is moving out of data centers to meet the increasing demand for BI. Managers and information workers need to be able to quickly and easily look at corporate data to identity hidden patterns and trends and to profile customers. They want to have access to visually-based summaries of business information that show understanding of business conditions at-a-glance. Further, savvy users want to be able to create and be creative around information. Oracle's recent acquisition of Hyperion Solutions Corp, a maker of performance analysis software, extends Oracle's BI product strategy to meet this demand for new ways to work with data. In addition, Oracle Partner TABLEAU Software is at the forefront of this trend with its popular TABLEAU visual analysis software. Version 3.0 was announced in April 2007.
According to Kevin Brown, TABLEAU Software VP of Marketing, the Internet has lead to an explosion of information--and the amount of data generated is increasing every year. For example, in the area of customer relationship management (CRM), huge amounts of data are collected in CRM systems, but until recently, there was no easy way to analyze the data. TABLEAU provides an intuitive interface that generates crisp visual displays. The application is created based on the idea that data visualization (graphics) is the way humans naturally ask questions of data. Brown says, "Business intelligence is being broadened to extend to information workers. End users want and expect products and applications that let them basically work and be productive in a BI manner with tools and computers they same way they use business applications. TABLEAU wants to become the standard tool for data analysis, to be the go-to tool for information workers to ask questions and to get answers with data."
Brown reveals that one of the key enhancements in TABLEAU 3.0 is a new dashboarding feature. Users now have the ability to look at multiple views of data simultaneously in one frame. The dashboards are dynamic and easy to use. Users can also format the data analysis views in professional ways with colors and annotations.
Hyperion integrated TABLEAU's software in its Hyperion System 9 BI+ intelligence platform with the Hyperion Visual Explorer application. TABLEAU Software applauds Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion because it will give TABLEAU an even broader customer reach. Brown says, "We have a unique cross-platform visual analysis tool that you can use right out of the box. You don't have to know how to do an Oracle database query. The software does all the work. It's a more intuitive way of working. The data analysis achieved is not less sophisticated, but it engages a visual system that assists in the analysis process."
