SC

Strategy Canon

Tableau

Tableau let analysts question their own data by dragging fields, sold them single copies, spread their dashboards and trained them in public, until Tableau was the skill employers hired for and it passed Qlik in revenue.

How Tableau won

  1. 1 · 2003–12VizQL: drag-and-drop queries over data customers already haveStanford research turned drag-and-drop gestures into live queries against the customer's own databases, with no SQL; Desktop shipped December 2003.Democratize the Expert Task
  2. 2 · 2004–15The analyst lands with one copy; sales expands the accountFree trial and a $1,000 single copy; sales staff 74 (2010) to 360 (2013); orders over $100,000 from 111 (2011) to 1,192 (2015).Product-Led Sales
  3. 3 · 2007–12Shared dashboards and free viewing pull in colleaguesFree Reader and browser access through Server; Norfolk Southern grew from one team (2008) to six more departments and 500+ viewers (2012).Growth Loop
  4. 4 · 2008–18A free public canvas and conferences train a practitioner communityConference from 180 attendees (2008) to 17,000+ (2018); free Tableau Public from 2010 held over 1 million visualizations by 2018.Practitioner Community
  5. 5 · 2011–19Expertise network effectJob listings asking for Tableau up 1,581% (2011–15); 86,000+ customer accounts (2018); revenue passed Qlik's in 2015.Expertise network effects

Versus Qlik (QlikView): Qlik was nearly eight times Tableau's size in 2009 and also landed and expanded, but developers and partners built its applications TA4 TBQ-2 TBQ-3. Tableau put the query in the analyst's hands, let those analysts spread their work and train in public, and passed Qlik in revenue in 2015 TBQ-5 TBQ-4.

Arena: Market Conditions Before Tableau

Business analysts and teams needing answers from company data · 2003 · United States

High setup and upkeep costsBarriers to participation

A business analyst with a question about company data had two options: work it through in a spreadsheet, or ask the business-intelligence team for a report TA1 TA4. The business-intelligence suites from vendors such as Business Objects and Cognos were complicated, expensive and slow to configure, built on architectures from the 1980s and sold with about two dollars of services for every dollar of licenses TA3. The data sat in many different databases and files, and every follow-up question meant another round of data preparation, report design and technical help TA1.

How each step happened

Step 1 of 5 · 2003–12

VizQL: drag-and-drop queries over data customers already have

Tableau's innovation came out of Stanford research the founders licensed: VizQL, a visual query language that turns drag-and-drop actions into database queries and draws the answer as a picture TA1 TBQ-8. Before it, querying data and charting it were separate jobs, and the query usually needed SQL. VizQL made them one gesture, so the analyst who had the question could ask it without scripts or programming TA1 TBQ-8. Tableau Desktop shipped in December 2003 TA1.

The queries ran live against the databases a customer already had, each in that database's own language, or on an in-memory extract when speed mattered TA1. Norfolk Southern chose Desktop in 2008 for that flexibility, and Irish Life's IT department picked Tableau for its ease of use and its fit with existing data; a customer-service report that had taken several days each week became a dashboard that updated in minutes TA1.

Chabot refused to become a visualization layer inside the big business-intelligence suites: "We decided to invade the entire market below us" TA4. By 2012 he cited a Gartner survey in which buyers ranked ease of use first TBQ-9. Tableau sold to the analyst's whole task, which made the analyst its buyer.

Rivals Qlik's innovation was a fast in-memory associative engine, but developers and IT wrote the scripts that loaded data into it and built the applications other people clicked through TBQ-2 TBQ-3. In 2014 Qlik's chief executive, Lars Björk, put the share of QlikView users who built applications at under 10% TBQ-10.

Democratize the Expert TaskEase of UseDrop-In Adoption

Step 2 of 5 · 2004–15

The analyst lands with one copy; sales expands the account

Because one analyst could get value alone, Tableau could sell to one analyst. Anyone could download a fully functional free trial, there was no minimum purchase, and Chabot set the entry price at $1,000, "a single copy for personal use" TA1 TA3. At the IPO the average customer had paid $12,773 for six or seven seats TA2.

Seattle Children's Hospital shows the path. Two managers downloaded the trial, attended the August 2010 customer conference, and in October the hospital made Tableau its standard across the organization TA1. Tableau built a sales force to widen accounts like this: sales and marketing staff grew from 74 at the end of 2010 to 360 in March 2013, and orders over $100,000 rose from 111 in 2011 to 239 in 2012 and 1,192 in 2015 TA1 TBQ-5. Each seller started from analysis that already worked. Tomasz Tunguz calculated that Tableau earned back more than $1.54 for every sales and marketing dollar TA2.

Rivals Qlik also landed and expanded with free downloads, but its first sale solved a department's business need, and about half of its license revenue in early 2010 came through more than 1,100 channel partners TBQ-2. Sales and marketing took 59% of its 2009 revenue TBQ-1.

Product-Led SalesFree TrialLand and Expand

Step 3 of 5 · 2007–12

Shared dashboards and free viewing pull in colleagues

Analysis is made to be shown, and Tableau let colleagues see it without buying the authoring tool. The free Tableau Reader opened workbooks built in Desktop and let people interact with them, and Tableau Server, from March 2007, published them to anyone with a web browser TA1. Tunguz describes the loop: the visualizations spread through customers' companies, "engendering new interest which can be converted into account growth by the sales team" TA2.

At Norfolk Southern the supply-chain consulting team started with Desktop in December 2008. Its dashboards drew requests from marketing, operations and other teams; the company added Server in May 2011, and by the end of 2012 six other departments used Tableau and more than 500 people had browser or mobile access TA1. Deloitte chose Tableau in 2012 after many consultants had adopted it on their own, and deployed it to 3,000 consultants by December TA1. In each of 2010, 2011 and 2012, existing customers together bought at least as much in new licenses as the year before TA1. Viewing was free; payment attached to authoring and Server, the parts that grew as viewers multiplied.

Rivals Qlik's free Personal Edition opens only documents created on that same copy, so a free user cannot open a colleague's work TBQ-13.

Growth LoopFreemium Model

Step 4 of 5 · 2008–18

A free public canvas and conferences train a practitioner community

Tableau then organized its users into a community that trained itself. Its US customer conference grew from about 180 attendees in 2008 to more than 2,000 in 2012; there users learned best practices, took training and put questions straight to Tableau's developers TA1. Local user groups, online forums and free on-demand training carried the same work between conferences TA1.

In February 2010 Tableau launched Tableau Public, a free web service for publishing interactive visualizations of public data TA1. Chabot argued that after text, images and video, "the fourth type of content that human beings produce is data" TA4. Media organizations, government agencies and non-profits used it, and anyone could learn the product there without an employer's license TA1. By 2018 more than 1 million visualizations had been published on Tableau Public, and the conference drew more than 17,000 customers and partners TBQ-6. Because the product needed no programming, a person could get good at it alone and show the result in public.

Rivals Qlik held its first global user conference in November 2014 and released a free desktop version of Qlik Sense the same year, four years after Tableau Public TBQ-3 TBQ-10.

Practitioner Community

Step 5 of 5 · 2011–19

Expertise network effect

Employers hire for the skill

The community became a labor market. Burning Glass counted a 1,581% rise in job listings asking for Tableau between 2011 and 2015, the third-largest increase of any technical skill; Qlik was not on the list TBQ-7. Members use their Tableau Public profiles as portfolios when they apply for jobs TBQ-12. This is an expertise network effect: the more analysts know a tool, the easier it is for an employer to adopt it, and the more employers adopt it, the more it is worth learning. Inside each account, dashboards, data connections and trained users built up as use spread TA1. The loop rests on step 1: a tool that needed no programming was one people could learn on their own.

Tableau's customer accounts rose from 5,300 at the end of 2010 to more than 39,000 in 2015 and 86,000 in 2018 TA1 TBQ-5 TBQ-6. Its 2015 revenue of $653.6 million passed Qlik's $612 million TBQ-5 TBQ-4.

Cheaper rivals, then a sale

From 2016 Microsoft attacked on price instead: Power BI offered visual analysis at a fraction of Tableau's price, and Microsoft, Oracle and SAP could bundle analytics into software customers already bought TA7. Tableau answered in 2017 with Hyper, a faster data engine, and Maestro, visual data preparation for business users, several of them still in beta, and in 2018 it sold role-based subscriptions TA6 TBQ-6. Salesforce completed its purchase of Tableau in August 2019; Marc Benioff cited its "incredibly passionate community" TA8.

Rivals Qlik's customers were slow to move from QlikView to Qlik Sense, and in 2016 Thoma Bravo agreed to take Qlik private for about $3 billion TBQ-11 TBQ-4. The later challenger was Microsoft Power BI, at a fraction of the price TA7.

Expertise network effects

Key dates

  1. 2003-12Tableau Desktop released TA1
  2. 2007-03First version of Tableau Server TA1
  3. 2008First US customer conference, about 180 attendees TA1
  4. 2008-12Norfolk Southern starts with one team
  5. 2009$20.1M revenue Full year; Qlik reported $157.4M TA4 TBQ-2
  6. 2010-02Free Tableau Public launches TA1
  7. 2010-07Qlik's IPO: about half of license revenue through partners TBQ-2
  8. 2010-10Seattle Children's moves from trial to hospital-wide standard
  9. 2011-05Norfolk Southern adds Server
  10. 2012$127.7M revenue Full year TA1
  11. 2012-12Deloitte deploys Desktop to 3,000 consultants
  12. 2013-05IPO prospectus: 12,000+ customer accounts, 360 sales and marketing staff TA1
  13. 2013-12$232M revenue Full year TA2
  14. 2014-11Qlik's first global user conference launches Qlik Sense TBQ-3
  15. 2015$653.6M revenue Full year, +58% year over year; Qlik $612M TBQ-5 TBQ-4
  16. 2016-05Power BI and bundled analytics undercut on price
  17. 2016-06Thoma Bravo to take Qlik private for about $3B TBQ-4
  18. 201817,000+ at the conference; 86,000+ customer accounts TBQ-6
  19. 2019-08Salesforce completes its purchase

Sources

Oldest first.

  1. TA3 Christian Chabot interview, part 5. Sramana Mitra · 2010-03-07 Founder interview
  2. TA4 Christian Chabot interview, part 7. Sramana Mitra · 2010-03-09 Founder interview
  3. TBQ-1 Thoughts on the Qlik Technologies (QlikTech) IPO. Kellblog (Dave Kellogg) · 2010-04-12 Outside analysis
  4. TBQ-2 QlikTech International prospectus (424B4). QlikTech / SEC · 2010-07 Filing
  5. TBQ-9 Tableau CEO: We're the Google of data visualization. InfoWorld (Eric Knorr) · 2012-12-17 Founder interview
  6. TA1 Tableau registration statement. Tableau / SEC · 2013-05-06 Filing
  7. TBQ-10 Data visualisation is a Qlik away: CEO Lars Björk sets his sights on Tableau. Information Age (Ben Rossi) · 2014-08-18 Executive interview
  8. TA2 Benchmarking Tableau S-1. Tomasz Tunguz · 2014-09-22 Investor analysis
  9. TBQ-3 Qlik Takes On Tableau In Data Visualization. InformationWeek (Cindi Howson) · 2014-12-08 Trade analysis
  10. TBQ-11 New Key Quotes From Qlik Technologies CEO Lars Bjork. Motley Fool (Daniel Sparks) · 2015-09-14 Earnings-call quotes
  11. TBQ-5 Tableau Reports Q4 and Fiscal Year 2015 Financial Results. Tableau / SEC (Exhibit 99.1) · 2016-02 Company results release
  12. TA7 Enterprise analytics in disarray. Den Howlett / diginomica · 2016-05-09 Outside analysis
  13. TBQ-4 The Rise and Fall of Qlik. Datanami / BigDATAwire (Alex Woodie) · 2016-06-02 Trade report
  14. TBQ-7 The 10 Technical Skills With Explosive Growth In Job Demand. Forbes (Jeff Kauflin) · 2017-01-08 Trade report on labor-market data
  15. TA6 Tableau CPO: bring on big data analytics. Jon Reed / diginomica · 2017-10-23 Analyst and executive interview
  16. TBQ-6 Tableau Software Form 10-K for 2018. Tableau / SEC · 2019-02 Filing
  17. TA8 Salesforce completes acquisition of Tableau. Salesforce · 2019-08-01 Transaction announcement
  18. TBQ-8 From Prototype to Product: Software Engineering in Tableau's Early Days. Tableau blog (Andrew Beers) · 2020-11-17 Early-employee account
  19. TBQ-12 Celebrating the DataFam and 3 Million Tableau Public Profiles. Tableau blog (Kate VanDerAa) · 2023-03-21 Company post
  20. TBQ-13 QlikView Personal Edition. Qlik Help · 2025-09 (doc version) Product documentation