
Tableau Conference 2023 concludes today in Las Vegas after a three-day run, sending out countless individuals back to the information sources from where they came. While information camp may be over in the meantime, the lessons will ideally withstand.
Here are 9 things I found out about the business while going to the program.
Has a Huge and Faithful Client Base
Tableau has the sort of substantial, engaged client base that lots of brand names would like to have. When Salesforce purchased Tableau for practically $16 billion in 2019, the business had 86,000 consumers. That number had actually increased to 121,000 by 2021, and by one count it now has north of 126,000 consumers.
That extended “information fam” appeared in great deals today for Tableau Conference 2023, which was held at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Sin City. More than 5,000 individuals participated in the conference, which was two times the figure from in 2015, the business stated. Next year’s conference will remain in San Diego in May. Can it double presence once again and bring 10,000 to America’s Very best City?
Is Nearly Drinking-Age

Tableau Chief Item Officer Francois Ajenstat throughout the keynote Tuesday in the Michelob Ultra arena at Tableau Conference 2023
It’s tough to think that Tableau is currently twenty years old. When Christian Chabot, Pat Hanrahan, and Chris Stolte established Tableau as a spinout of a Stanford University computer technology task back in 2003, they could not have actually imagined where Tableau would be now– at the top of the BI load.
For several years, Tableau was the upstart assisting to interfere with recognized organization intelligence suppliers. The ease of developing appealing control panels in Tableau assisted it take share from Cognos, Organization Objects, and others. Now, Tableau is probably the leading pet dog when it concerns independent BI and analytics suppliers.
While Microsoft‘s PowerBI has ratings greater in Gartner Magic Quadrants, lots of business choose having a BI tool that isn’t connected to their Microsoft stack. Tableau states this belongs to its “Switzerland” method, where it links similarly well to whatever. At the end of the 4th quarter, Tableau took pleasure in a $2.5 billion in yearly run rate, revealing the Swiss method is rather successful.
Clients Love the Devs– and Pineapples, Obviously
The prolonged Tableau information fam is fanatical about the item and developing the ideal control panel to show their users. So it’s natural that they would take pleasure in finding out about the current updates with the “Devs on Phase” section of the Tableau Conference keynote.
Pedro Arellano, who signed up with Tableau as GM and head of item in 2015, was definitely knowledgeable about the phenomenon. Throughout the keynote on Tuesday, the previous Looker and MicroStrategy executive shared a story about his very first Tableau Conference.
” I was being in the audience much like all of you, and I was surrounded by thousands and countless extremely enthusiastic, extremely thrilled, extremely loud individuals,” Arellano stated. “And I remember you all losing your minds since someone on performance this little small brand-new alternative on a menu bar. It resembles, what is this? I have actually never ever seen this prior to! It made me think of how really ingenious and disruptive Tableau has actually been over the years. Tableau empowered countless individuals from all sort of backgrounds, various sort of knowledge, to deal with information in such a way that simply wasn’t possible prior to.”

Tableau Vice President of Item Management Matthew Miller throughout the “Devs on Phase” Section at Tableau Conference 2023
This year’s Devs on Phase section was similarly off the hook, as Tableau designers shared their work– more than 120 brand-new abilities (or “Pineapple drops” obviously) in the previous year– with an adoring audience of dedicated users.
Is Embracing Generative AI and GPT
Like other BI suppliers, Tableau is bullish on the capacity for generative AI innovation such as ChatGPT to assist it with its objective to link more individuals with information. At the conference, Tableau released Tableau GPT and Tableau Pulse.
Tableau Pulse is a brand-new interface for Tableau consumers. It uses a brand-new part called Tableau GPT, which is powered by Salesforce’s Einstein GPT and GPT-3.5 language designs, to provide a Q&A design experience for users. Pulse has the ability to keep track of metrics and presses plain-English descriptions of organization modifications to users through mobile phone, Web apps, or Slack messages when the metrics go beyond pre-set worths. You can find out more about that in ” Tableau Jumps Into Generative AI with Tableau GPT.”
However Pulse and Tableau GPT aren’t the locations where Tableau is utilizing generative AI. It’s being utilized “throughout the whole platform,” Arellano stated, including its information quality part.
Has a New CEO
Tableau got a leading manager, Ryan Aytay, on Might 2, simply a week prior to Tableau Conference 2023. The business was preparing to reveal Aytay’s promo from primary earnings officer and president to the CEO area at the program. However as the business started doing calls to share the news it was preparing to launch at the program, it recognized required to reveal the promo of the 16-year Salesforce veteran earlier. He keeps the president position.
Aytay fills an area that has actually been uninhabited given that December, when Mark Nelson stepped down. Nelson had actually been on the task for less than 2 years, and was the follower to Adam Selipsky, who left Tableau to end up being the CEO of Amazon Web Solutions in March 2021.
Has a Complete Data Management Suite
You may believe Tableau is simply an information analytics and BI supplier. You would be incorrect. The business likewise a complete suite of information management tools, consisting of an information brochure, information quality, information prep, information governance, information pipelines, and more. They’re commonly utilized, as Tableau stated it tapes approximately 5.8 million information management activities each month.
Nevertheless, Tableau’s information management tools do not always take on other suppliers establishing these tools. According to Tableau’s Chief Item Officer Francois Ajenstat, Tableau’s information management tools are developed mostly for the expert utilizing Tableau and are not “business” tools developed for more basic information management jobs.
” What we have actually attempted to do is fix the last-mile issue in information management,” Ajenstat stated in an interview with Datanami “I’m an expert. I require to wrangle information together. I do not have time to call IT or call an expert. I require to do it myself.” Tableau likewise partners with lots of information management tool service providers to guarantee that they work well in the Tableau environment, he includes.
Is Purchasing Data Literacy
While Tableau is relying on AI to assist lower the barrier to entry for dealing with information, it’s likewise striving to strengthen information abilities in the population at big. To that end, at the end of 2021, the business vowed to train 10 million individuals on information abilities over the next 5 years.
Up until now, so excellent.
” I’m happy to state we have actually currently surpassed our year-one objectives,” Ajenstat stated throughout the keynote address. “We have actually currently trained 1.9 million individuals pl in the very first year and a half alone. That’s remarkable.”
Not Practically Dashboards Any Longer
Tableau might be associated with establishing pixel-perfect information visualizations, however that’s not the only information technique the business wants. For beginners, Tableau Pulse represents an extreme departure from the complete control panel method. The brand-new VizQL Data Solutions is another.
VizQL Data Solutions basically unhooks the VizQL information engine from the Tableau visualization. It’s a “headless BI” method that’s developed to offer designers more flexibility to develop brand-new interface powered by the VizQL engine.
” You can develop a brand name brand-new method to communicate with Tableau that’s not about drag and drop or vizzes,” Arellano stated. “Perhaps you have some automatic workflows and you wish to instill Tableau VizQL engine into those workflows. Perhaps you have a chatbot that engages with Tableau. You can do all these things now with VizQL Data Solutions.”
Has an Information Cloud
The business is likewise making relocations with its information cloud. Revealed in 2015 and powered by Salesforce, the Tableau information cloud is developed to act as a main repository for client information. However it’s not restricted to client information, and in reality can practically draw in information from Snowflake and (now Google Cloud BigQuery) through its zero-copy performance.
” Data Cloud lets you do remarkable things,” Ajenstat stated. “It lets you integrate information together from numerous sources. It then lets you balance that information int a single source of reality so you can design all of it in one location. And you can then utilize that information and improve it with abundant algorithms with AI built-in.”
Whether it’s establishing brand-new options in cloud or AI or simply assisting users develop a brand-new kind of viz, Tableau appears excited to provide what its six-digit client base desires. That’s a dish for success, no matter what brand-new innovation emerges over the next twenty years.
Associated Products:
Tableau Jumps Into Generative AI with Tableau GPT
Which BI and Analytics Vendors Are Including ChatGPT, and How
Salesforce Goes All-in on Generative AI with Einstein GPT, Combination with OpenAI