24 ms·

Tableau stock down almost 50%

426 points by sideband 11y ago

sitkack 11y ago
Devops everywhere celebrate.
- mrfusion 11y ago
  Why?
  - andrewvc 11y ago
    If you've ever run tableau server, you know why.
    - bsg75 11y ago
      I run a small one, with little effort other than what comes along with Windows - its our only Windows based system. I would be interesting to know what the problems you have faced are.
      - EC1 11y ago
        I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced.
        tremguy 11y ago
        +1
        untog 11y ago
        This is an extremely frustrating thread to follow. We have some people who have run a Tableau server with no issues, and now two people who are effectively saying "oh, it's awful but I have no interest in telling you why".
        EC1 11y ago
        I wouldn't even know where to start to be completely honest.
        recursive 11y ago
        Thanks for your honesty, but I hope you understand that's completely useless. I might have preferred if you lied.
        EC1 11y ago
        To be completely honest I've never even heard of Tableau.
        karmawitch 11y ago
        five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? (except those seasoned exchange-experts of course) did you ever consider there might be valid reasons some folks prefer *nix based servers?
        untog 11y ago
        five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? Check the timestamps of those messages vs mine. At the time there were only the two responses I mentioned.
        karmawitch 11y ago
        you have a point there
        bsg75 11y ago
        > I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced. Deploying visualizations without having to develop any HTML or JavaScript code. Publishing to the desktop (Windows or Mac), to the web, to the cloud, or mobile devices (iOS and Android). Publish to the server once, consume on all supported platforms. Deploying a copy of a current site for redundancy, testing or development. Install the app, backup the primary Tableau database with its admin utility (command line), restore it on the new box. All data, visualizations, users and permissions are contained in that single restore step. Tableau means I spend time working with my data, instead of the presentation of it. Its not a perfect product by any measure, and could obviously use some improvements, but is a timesaver in many areas.
      - click170 11y ago
        My experiences are very different. Many Linux services have a concept of reloading. If the config file changes you can send the running program a signal and it will re read the config. This is very useful for production systems. Tableau (9 at least) has no such concept. Change the email address it reports to? Restart tableau. Change the location of the SSL certificates? Restart tableau. Want to apply an update for tableau? Uninstall your current version and install the new one. Oh and until recently when you downloaded the installer for tableau server the file name didn't actually contain the version number. This product was not designed with ops in mind at all. Edit: I forgot, I've actually had a tableau server fill itself up with logs. Tableau has logs in many different locations outside of windows event viewer and doesn't include log rotation facilities for all if them.
        radicalbyte 11y ago
        That sounds like most Enterprise software. It's like that because R&D and Operations never talk; and of course your average Windows Ops person has a poor understanding of operating systems.
        Florin_Andrei 11y ago
        "tabadmin cleanup" helps a little. But yeah, this thing is a mess.
        bsg75 11y ago
        Those things are indeed a pain with Tableau, and also common with a lot of Windows based applications. Never understood why Tableau is either Windows only or has the restart to reconfig issue. Last I looked, it was largely a Tomcat and PostgreSQL based product.
        click170 11y ago
        [Replied to wrong comment]
        Eridrus 11y ago
        What's the actual issue with restarts? Is the downtime due to a restart unacceptable? Is it that users lose application state when a restart happens? Just trying to understand since I've written software with the same restart to config workflow and would like to understand what causes it to be problematic.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - yelnatz 11y ago
      Well, as some who doesn't can you enlighten me?
      - andrewvc 11y ago
        It takes an ungodly amount of resources to do not very much. It's very buggy, frequently the HTML charts time out or just break with no indication why. Upgrades require a lot of manual work. The javascript API is reasonably documented, but, again, buggy. It's an unholy combination of rails and postgres somehow hacked to run on windows. Really, they should just ship a linux VM that runs these things decently.
    - walker7734 11y ago
      I would very much like to know what particular issues you are having as well? I work at Tableau and I would like to make sure that issues people are seeing are on our radar, if they aren't already.
      - wsh 11y ago
        Thanks for asking. I just installed 9.0.4, and here are a few examples: - Tableau Server runs only on Windows, so why can't it use a TLS certificate and key from the CryptoAPI certificate store, rather than requiring these to be converted to PEM format (with Unix line endings!) and saved in the file system? In an enterprise with an internal CA using Active Directory Certificate Services, these extra steps have to be done not only at installation but also every time the certificate expires. Compare the experience with Microsoft IIS: the server automatically requests a renewal from AD CS, retrieves the new certificate, and begins using it. - Tableau Server should be able to run as a Group Managed Service Account, so we can give it access to remote data sources without having to assign (and regularly change) yet another service account password. - It would be helpful to have an scriptable installation process; as far as I can tell, there's no way to install Tableau Server without clicking through wizards.
        walker7734 11y ago
        Thanks for the input. I am going to forward these on to the server dev team and follow up with them in person. They may be aware of some of these already but it is important to us to keep track of what is causing our users the most headaches. I appreciate you taking the time and letting me know your suggestions and the issues you are having!
        shrikant 11y ago
        Ive done a Tableau Server rollout at a previous client, and iirc, we were easily able to run it as a managed service account. (Microsoft AD) Any specific difficulties you faced with this..?
      - joombaga 11y ago
        [1] I had to set the client-side map rendering threshold to a very high number (100000 I believe) to get maps to render at all. Server-side rendering doesn't work, even though it can contact the map servers and display all of the examples in the documentation (Miami/Havana I think?). [2] It's been a few months, but I remember getting the license activated offline was a weird process. Something like, point tabadmin toward a license file, which generates a number or json or some other file, which you then paste into or point the UI toward, which gives you another file to use in tabadmin... and at the end tabadmin gave me error. Now when I go to "Manage Product Keys" it acts as though it is unregistered, but the server still starts without error (it did not before the failed activation ritual). I do have a ticket in with support for [1]. Given how much of a bitch it was to activate (or half-activate) I'm reluctant to investigate [2] further. Also, I'd like to see a linux server. Tableau is our only Windows server, which weighed heavily against the product when we were considering alternatives.
edwinnathaniel 11y ago
New Relic also down by 25%, crazy day for Silicon Valley.
- nemo44x 11y ago
  Which is pointless since they had a great earnings report, were cash flow positive for the quarter and raised their guidance. Additionally they mentioned in the call that no sector is more than 20% of their customers so they are diversified if a certain sector really tanks - like tech. They have 180 million in the bank so won't need credit markets any time soon and gradually approaching profitability. Disclaimer: I have a position in NEWR and added today at the 21 level. This will certainly bounce back in the comings months or years. Will add if the irrationality continues.
  - simo7 11y ago
    Just looked at it. No profit and trading at 10x revenues. You might be right who knows, but can't realy say the fear on this stock is irrational at the moment, imho
    - nemo44x 11y ago
      It's trading at about 6x revenue right now and even lower when looking at forward revenues. Their growth is tremendous and are on a path to profitability. I get it - when the market are getting banged around like it is, there are few safe places. I just think the baby is being thrown out with the bath water in a lot cases. I'm using this to average down a bit and hold.
      - simo7 11y ago
        Yeah I see your point, but what I mean is that when so much of the current value of a company is based on future events, fear unfortunately is never irrational. And for New Relic the expectations are really high, could still turn out to be a great business story (and I also think it will) but not necessarily a good investment because so much of this future success is already embedded in the price.
pinaceae 11y ago
huge corrections under way, guarantee this is not the end, just the beginning. unicorn slaughter. upside: expect house prices in the SF bay area to become more affordable.
- ap22213 11y ago
  Doubtful - if global investors aren't putting their money into stocks, they'll just continue to buy up real estate.
  - pinaceae 11y ago
    Once you take the crazy money out of the equation, the SF Bay Area is not that appealing as a pure real estate play.
    - 9tx 11y ago
      Whys that? Year round awesome weather not good enough?
      - pc86 11y ago
        You've never been to San Francisco, have you?
    - azinman2 11y ago
      Russians and Chinese are a major contributor, and they're not so affected by SV cycles.
      - jonknee 11y ago
        If you think SV is bad, check out the recent returns out of Russia and China!
      - sshanky 11y ago
        What's SV?
tjpd 11y ago
"Tableau Software tumbled 36% after management warned it was unlikely to realize benefits of certain tax assets. The news sent shares spiralling despite the software company's better-than-expected quarter. The company earned 33 cents a share, more than double estimates." Also their growth is down.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  What is a tax asset?
  - ohyes 11y ago
    It's basically when you can claim that you operated at a loss in a given year and for tax purposes carry over that loss to a different year. This lets you pay less taxes in a year when you actually make profits. I am not an accountant, here's a likely better explanation: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deferredtaxasset.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deferredtaxasset.asp
  - femto113 11y ago
    Usually it was a loss in an earlier period that you've rolled forward to offset profits in a later period. They can expire though, so if you don't make a profit in time they become worthless. Companies carry them as an asset on their books until one or the other happens.
  - patio11 11y ago
    Suppose hypothetically that you have an agreement from a firm to pay you money in the future. That agreement is carried on your business' books as an asset. Your friendly neighborhood tax agency is a special case of firm, which can commit to paying you money in the future. One way they can do this is, when you lose money in year N, they can let you carry that loss forward for up to X years, so that when you're taxed on your income in year N+3 you might be able to offset some of that income with the loss you made years earlier, reducing the amount of tax you incur. The guesstimated value of that offset in taxes is your tax asset. If your marginal rate is 30%, and you can offset $1 million in revenue, the implied value is +/- $300k. Importantly, if you guesstimate poorly or your friendly local tax agency decides to change rules on you in the interim, you have to adjust the value on your balance sheet. This can be problematic if the tax asset is a material portion of your notional value.
jetcata 11y ago
Atlassian is currently down 23%.
- sideband 11y ago
  Splunk is down about the same today as well: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASPLK http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASPLK
- chinathrow 11y ago
  FireEye is down 10% too. https://www.google.com/finance?q=fireeye&ei=weS0VunZONbcsAHQzK7wAw https://www.google.com/finance?q=fireeye&ei=weS0VunZONbcsAHQ...
- bbcbasic 11y ago
  Oh well. Tonight I'm gonna party like it's nineteen ninety-nine
headgasket 11y ago
Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions. Free money from leverage does not look as good when equities go down... I think we are heading for a most violent year on the markets. Pharma and biothechs will most likely be the only bright spots, especially anti-anxiety drugs... :-) Keep plugging at building great software that actually helps make this a better place. Charge for it so you can survive this downturn. It's a cycle, this will weed out the nonsense.
- bkeroack 11y ago
  > Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions. You're not a VC if your money is in publicly-traded firms.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    VCs do not liquidate immediately at the IPO or even upon lock-up expiration. But I would agree that this downward pressure is not VC-driven.
  - Kluny 11y ago
    Or maybe, this is a crazy idea, some VCs have diversified portfolios that include public stocks.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      Personally I'm sure, but that's not how VC funds work. You raise a fund with the understanding it will be invested in new ventures.
  - headgasket 11y ago
    Did you think that as soon as a company goes public, VCs get to sell all their stocks?
    - jonknee 11y ago
ap22213 11y ago
Could it also be affected by the Amazon QuickSight preview that is going live?
- cissou 11y ago
  likely, considering Qlikview is down 14%
tomasien 11y ago
I don't know what Tableau Software is and I found it pretty amazing that when I Google it I could still not figure it out because all the results were about the stock price. I think people might be focusing too much on stock price is Googling a company's name doesn't result in seeing the company's website on the first page of results.....
- gabriel34 11y ago
  Tableau makes software for the presentation layer of business intelligence systems (basically graphs and dashboards) I have limited experience with it (only POCs), but I liked it very much. They usually figure well in Gartner rankings
- sologoub 11y ago
  Tableau is a visualization software that you can bolt on top of many different data sources, from spreadsheets to BI tools and even AWS RedShift to get awesome looking dashboards and interactive visuals. They are/were extremely popular with many sales organizations for internal dashboarding and even some media outlets used their stuff for public websites. Sad to see this state of things for them, as the product was true good at one point. That said, I have not touched it in 3-4 years, so not sure how competitive it is now.
  - floppydisk 11y ago
    They still are popular, especially in the government contracting world. It's almost a mandatory requirement their business analysts use Tableau when creating dashboards for clients.
  - cscharenberg 11y ago
    The product is awesome. I made some really neat visualizations and analyses with it during an MBA project using the 15-day trial. But it's ridiculously expensive - $1000 per year with some real limitations on how many data sources you can connect. If I could dabble with it for $50/year I would. $1000 though? That limits their market tremendously to big companies only. It's hard enough to get an $80 tool approved. -- Looks like they give it free for students now, which is cool: https://www.tableau.com/academic/student https://www.tableau.com/academic/student. But after learning it, there's no path to bring the software with them when they move to actual companies, because of the cost.
chollida1 11y ago
Though the outcome is a bit worse than I think most predicted, this has been telegraphed since about November of last year. Tableau has had a very high short interest ratio for sometime, everyone was expecting poor results. What really exacerbated their issue was that they didn't get out in front of this and let people know how bad they were going to miss. So when they released earnings everything went to shit on them. I can't really find any excuse for this that passes Occam's razor except to assume this is a very rookie CFO /CEO combo in charge. I made a comment about 3 months ago saying that 2010-2014 were very kind to new tech IPO's and 2016 would be the year that companies would have to either make money or face the consequences. I'm following this over the next 2 weeks to see what the stock does. Its now a pretty good Pre-Merger Arbitrage(take over candidate) candidate. - Market cap under 5 Billion, check - Institutional owner ship > 50%, check - Insiders hold less than 5% of the company, check,in fact its at 1.09%, wow, management doesn't even want to own the company! - below its IPO price, not yet, that was $31 but its still falling.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Do you have any insights into how badly core infrastructure institutional investors are going to get hit when these large, institutional-owned tech companies deflate? Any metrics on how much of the equities market is owned by pension/retirement vs. free, non-dependent, non-core institutional investments?
  - chollida1 11y ago
    Hmm, I do, but I probably shouldn't be talking publicly about it as I got most of them from sell side analysts. Privately disclosing them is different, Message me if you want numbers.
- jonknee 11y ago
  It would make a nice acquisition for Microsoft...
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
nrjames 11y ago
Interesting that Microstrategy also is down quite a bit.
kevinwong 11y ago
Before this drop they were trading at 14x forward revenue; now they're at 7x. Splunk was at 12x, now at 9.7x. We'll have to revisit what the typical multiple range is for BI/enterprise saas companies. Seems like quite the correction for an earnings beat and the removal of a ~50M deferred tax asset though, especially since people already had negative expectations before the earnings release.
physcab 11y ago
Tableau is a good product. I use it daily. There simply is no better alternative for quick ad-hoc, enterprise-level, intuitive graph and dashboard making. I've been at large orgs where we evaluated all the cloud services like Mixpanel and the ilk, but they are very different use cases. Tableau + Redshift (or Vertica but Redshift is way less expensive) is the typical BI tech stack. When I go a client or a new job and ask them what they use for analysis and if they say "Good Data" or "MicroStrategy", I know my job will be a pain in the ass to get done. Its as if you're interviewing for an engineering job and they say "oh we all use NotePad here". Its night and day in terms of productivity. I don't know what this means in terms of the stock, but all I can say is that I vouch for the product and think it has a lot of room to grow (from a BI perspective).
- chebum 11y ago
  Have you used any tools built on top of DevExpress BI? How did they feel?
  - physcab 11y ago
    Never heard of DevExpress but just by going to the website it feels far less intuitive than Tableau. Tableau is so freaking easy that you don't need to be experienced in BI to be user.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      If that's Tableau's target market then their 15 day trial is killing their business.
- spike021 11y ago
  For that use-case is Tableau a more useful tool than something like Splunk or ELK stack?
  - dev1n 11y ago
    Tableau is for business analysts. ELK is for Sys Admins. I think.
brooklyndude 11y ago
I can hack d3js. Can crunch billions of records in a flash of the eye, can wrangle most any DB (NoSQL, et al) out there, why would I need Tableau? Answer: We want someone stable! Not some crazy hacker. Plus if we don't spend the cash, we don't have it in our budget next year. Oh, I get it now. :-)
- justinlilly 11y ago
  Tableau is for business users to generate graphs. Also d3js is a bear to work with until you've steeped your brain in it. By your logic, there's no need to use MS Word, people should just use TeX.
  - notyourwork 11y ago
    Well said, the word/tex analogy is spot on.
- npalli 11y ago
  No you don't get it. Tableau is for people who can't hack (or don't want to hack) d3js or crunch billions of records or whatever techie thing you seem to be so proud of. The mission is supposed to be self-service business intelligence, i.e, allowing a typical business analyst to drag drop and create good visualizations and analytics. Not dick around and waste time with databases and javascript.
  - 243464646 11y ago
    Except that it only lets you do a set number of things. Most requests for information are not simple, and once you leave the comfort of simplicity, you have to become an expert in tableau, or in many cases, just accept that it can't do what you want it to do. Unless your queries are very simple, you are better off finding a programmer and asking them to do your job.
- cheeze 11y ago
  Seriously? It's almost as if companies don't want to hire a badass hacker to generate a business report used by non-tech workers. Tableau has a huge place in the BI community, and the last thing that a manager wants is somebody hacking d3js to to create some visualizations.
irunred 11y ago
Looker is a much better product.
- dberg 11y ago
  Agree, Looker customer here. Awesome product for ad-hoc BI reporting. Sits on top of Amazon Redshift perfectly and is quite fast for ad-hoc reporting.
narrator 11y ago
Tableau is a great product, but it's very expensive, like Oracle expensive. I used Saiku to hack together some BI dashboards for free http://www.meteorite.bi/ http://www.meteorite.bi/. It did the job with a little bit of work.
clebio 11y ago
Just curious whether anyone (else) here has experience with Bime? https://www.bimeanalytics.com/ https://www.bimeanalytics.com/
vhold 11y ago
I wonder how that will affect this: "Tableau confirms big Kirkland expansion, plans to hire 1,000" http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/tableau-confirms-big-kirkland-expansion-plans-to-hire-1000/ http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/tableau-conf...
- therealdrag0 11y ago
  Wondering the same thing.
- tdicola 11y ago
  Ouch, good question. Although the building they want to lease in is part of a major development happening in Kirkland over the next few years. It will be full of other businesses and retail, so not just Tableau. It's also right across the street from their current Kirkland office I believe.
- nfd 11y ago
  I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that they're going to keep going on that guy, possibly with a bit of delay. Running joke over here is that Fremont is basically TableauVille. Or they're to Fremont as Microsoft is to Redmond. Hell, rumor has it that new buildings are being built in Fremont just for their damn expansion right now (take a wild guess if you're in the neighborhood which ones--it's not hard, just look for glass). I doubt even a big dip in share price is gonna quash their thirst for real estate for very long.
kumarski 11y ago
The analytics space is over-crowded. Software eats the world and the education system. It's becoming increasingly easy to find developers. https://gh-prod-ruby-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/file/39/github_repositories-800x447.png https://gh-prod-ruby-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/f... To some extent, companies might be trying to use too much data? Who knows. Life Time Value capture in the analytics space is sufficiently difficult. Let's say you're an analytics customer: Early stage customer: Use any one of the 100 integrations analytics companies listed on segment.com's website. You DO NOT need to track hundreds of parameters. Conversations with customers have 100x the value of tracking the small things at this stage....usually. Mid-Stage Customer: Maybe you choose one of the 100 companies that makes the most sense. You start paying for it. Having these early and midstage companies as customers is tough. The vast majority of them fail. Big Customer: SnowPlow Analytics? Splunk? Tableau? That being said, I think there's businesses to be built, but only semblances of unicorns and minotaurs. 15,000 web and mobile apps are coming out tomorrow. What % of them are analytics related applications? (Hint: A larger one than you might think). Just have a gander at the applications that are listed on promotehour.com and startuplister.com's list of app launch sites. There's now 100+ launch sites. To win big in VC money, you have to take risks, the analytics space seems well established with a slew of best practices that are extremely well known. Ie. not risky enough to warrant pouring VC-istan money into.
twright 11y ago
To be fair the markets are really getting beat down today. e.g. LinkedIn is down 45% from $194.
wyck 11y ago
Honestly I don't care about stock rhetoric, it's an awesome product I use every week. I evaluated lot's of BI's options because it's a pricey product and I'm super happy with it, Tableau is actually fun (because its so easy yet powerful) and meaningful. The only other decent alternative was Qlik but it was more pricey for the options I needed.
bayonetz 11y ago
Tableau is definitely a useful tool. Tried getting folks with Tableau skills in previous whoishiring post. The other positions I posted got a lot of response but not the Tableau-oriented ones. Looks like plenty of enthusiasts in this thread through. Where were you all? Hey, in the off chance you are Iinterested in working in Tableau at a think tank (RAND) send me (Chris) a note at dev.hiring@rand.org.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  There's a reason for this. Unless you work in an organization that has already implemented Tableau, or is willing to take a punt on using it, then there is just no easy way to get skilled up on it.
  - infinite8s 11y ago
    Tableau Public isn't sufficient?
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Is it able to do everything the client software can do?
      - cdcarter 11y ago
        It's limited to flat files, so you have to plan ahead on what data you'll explore. In terms of the viz - feature parity, but not quite the same at all if you want to do exploration. Which is too bad, because Tableau's ease of exploration is what makes it so much more valuable than PowerBI or custom d3.
        infinite8s 11y ago
        What is it lacking in terms of exploration? I thought most of the exploratory benefits were in the visualizations, unless you mean the ability to ad-hoc connect to random databases and begin exploration (because you have to plan ahead to extract flat files from those sources)
gvenier 11y ago
I'm sure Tableau has its own right place in the plateau of BI & Analytics for big companies. As for small businesses and custom-built analytics as well as for operational data UIs you'll probably have no alternative than hacking it yourself with d3js. Or using it Tadaboard-like alternatives.
PostThisTooFast 11y ago
Whatever "Tableau" is...
jayonsoftware 11y ago
I was one of the first people to start using Tableau, I even bought a license for my own use so I can learn (Yep sick of the 14 day trial), but these days Excel / Power BI does most the work, Salesforce with Wave is competing with them plus so many open source software.
rossjudson 11y ago
About 5 minutes of searching shows me that Tableau has had a massive growth of revenue, but a slightly more massive growth in sales/administrative expenses. What that tells me is this: The market loves Tableau, and keeps buying more of it. But the company has serious cost control problems in its sales and marketing departments, and has expanded there far too fast. Anybody comparing typical open source or low cost BI solutions favorably to Tableau hasn't used it, or doesn't value their own time. Tableau is easy and deep. Tableau's board needs to attack their out-of-control cost of sales (the pay-me-everything egos), and hopefully ignore the internet idiot mob effect on their stock price. I don't own Tableau stock. I just like the product.
- joeevans1000 11y ago
  The problem is that you make something cool in Tableau and then want to collaborate with someone... and even if you talk them into it, soon their trial runs out. Yes, it's powerful and featured, but today's scene is about collaboration and sharing... and the sticker shock is just too much for that.
samstave 11y ago
Apologies if the following is ignorant: My exp with tableau was always that they obfuscate the final query... Fuck that. Looker doesn't && they even allow a meta Lang on top of them. So for you to say "just do X" leaves many less sophisticated orgs left in the dark. So my comment is both: Fuck their position and yours. I don't want to pay bullshit fees to tableau (with perf hits) && not be able to see the final query && not need an actually fairly highly competent DBA to know that x+x+x needs to be enabled in order for me to get to root. If I pay service X give me the full fucking understanding as to how service results are generated. (Yes yes I do understand how saas blah blah works and I'm just saying I personally find this process bullshit and immoral)
- foxylad 11y ago
  Downvoted. Your point may not be ignorant, but it certainly seems that way given the unnecessarily violent language.
  - solipsism 11y ago
    His/her words are too naughty to be tolerated? They offend you to such a degree that you can't just ignore them? Come on now.
    - foxylad 11y ago
      It's more that they imply the poster is really angry. If you saw two speakers in the street, one arguing reasonably and the other swearing his head off, I think most people would place less value on the ranter.
      - samstave 11y ago
        Uh... Maybe you dont talk to your friends too often... You should see me with many many of my friends - dont imply anger where there is none, as we often get in "mock heated arguements" with smiles on our face. I love you.
MikeOfAu 11y ago
I was an early adopter of Tableau and fairly enthusiastic. But then I had a truly terrible licencing experience with them and have, since, refused to have ANYTHING to do with them. Nice enough software, but a sleazy organisation. Use one of the other good alternatives.
- NotSammyHagar 11y ago
  What happened with the licensing? I see a few other people complaining about this.
WWKong 11y ago
I was previously a Tableau expert at my then job. I was amazed at the missed opportunities by Tableau to make it indispensable to organizations. The core product was fine but it seemed like they could use a good PM to implement features around sharing, permissions, pricing etc. $1000 license for clients to view some basic report in a browser, the other option being a desktop installed reader.
matdrewin 11y ago
There are several factors at play. I believe one of them is MS Power BI catching up. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-positions-microsoft-as-a-leader-in-bi-and-analytics-platforms/ https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-positions-m...
simo7 11y ago
Reporting --> Chartio, Sisense, Looker etc. (anything web focused without a desktop version pretty much) Analysis --> Ipython No room for Tableau and similar.
- infinite8s 11y ago
  Tableau makes most straightforward analyses much simpler than attempting to do it in Ipython/pandas, especially when connecting to standard corporate data warehouses (probably on the order of 10x faster). Of course you quickly hit a ceiling in terms of complexity, but most analysts never really get to that point.
  - simo7 11y ago
    Simple analysis usually answer recurrent questions, for this there is reporting and Tableau is not a good tool for reporting (too slow). For ad hoc analysis instead, there is really nothing more powerful than R or python and it's plenty of tools & libraries that give you the speed you need.
swingbridge 11y ago
Tableau is a decent product, but a decent product doesn't make a great company. Main issues are: A) Its sales team sells it as an end-to-end analytics suite, but in nearly all actual implementations I've seen companies just use it for management to view a dashboard... essentially just a slightly fancier version of the Excel doc some analyst used to mail out B) It's crazy expensive for what it is C) If the company has actual data scientists onboard then those individuals can do far better analysis just using free open source tools For the above reasons and more I've seen a lot of large companies that are far less excited by Tableau than they were a year or two ago. They've either halted larger roll outs that were planned or just moved away from the platform entirely. That leads to softer sales and slams the brakes on growth rates... hence why the stock has tanked. There's also the issue of valuation multiples against their financials which are also still frothy, even after the latest downward movement in the stock.
- infinite8s 11y ago
  Those are excellent points. As an exploratory tool Tableau is well worth the money, but if you are just using it to replace some basic C-level reporting than its really expensive for that.
noisy_boy 11y ago
I use Tableau almost daily. Initially I found it harder to work with and avoided it for a while. On 2nd attempt, for some reason, everything clicked into place and I now find it fairly intuitive. Some of my opinions/experiences about it: - Beyond simple queries, it becomes more easier to setup a view or two behind Tableau than to do it purely in Tableau. E.g. multiple level of latest times, more complex aggregations etc are more easily done in SQL than via Tableau. - For some things Tableau doesn't do what we typically expect. Couple of examples: - If you run a custom query joining two tables with some of the column names being same in both, Tableau cannot deal with it. Setting alias for columns using "as" works fine in SQL so I think it is not unreasonable to expect that to work. - I recently tried to chart lag in request/response in microseconds. The data is stored as TIMESTAMP in our Vertica database. However, I found that Tableau doesn't show time more granular than seconds. That is kind of odd in today's common low-latency high-performance technology environment Having said that, I really like the features it offers viz. Calculated fields which don't go away just because I change the data source, drag-and-drop dashboard constructions, very nice visualizations etc.
- simo7 11y ago
  What do you use it for? If it's for analysis why not use python or R, way more powerful and full of tools & libraries that give you speed you need? If it's for reporting, why not to use chartio, looker or anything that connects directly to your db? My opinion: If you know some python or R, you might still need chartio, looker and similar but Tableau doesn't make sense anymore.
  - noisy_boy 11y ago
    I wasn't part of the decision making effort but I believe Qikview was also considered but the analysts preferred Tableau. It is used by the analysts as well our for our internal monitoring/charting/analysis purposes.
    - simo7 11y ago
      I see. I've also found myself in a situation where the company was using it and I had them drop it. For reporting the idea of transforming & moving the data around really doesn't make much sense when compared to solutions which directly leverage your db or at least create an unique consistent datasource instead of many so-called extracts scattered around.

426 points by sideband 11y ago

sitkack 11y ago

Devops everywhere celebrate.

mrfusion 11y ago
Why?
- andrewvc 11y ago
  If you've ever run tableau server, you know why.
  - bsg75 11y ago
    I run a small one, with little effort other than what comes along with Windows - its our only Windows based system. I would be interesting to know what the problems you have faced are.
    - EC1 11y ago
      I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced.
      - tremguy 11y ago
        +1
      - untog 11y ago
        This is an extremely frustrating thread to follow. We have some people who have run a Tableau server with no issues, and now two people who are effectively saying "oh, it's awful but I have no interest in telling you why".
        EC1 11y ago
        I wouldn't even know where to start to be completely honest.
        recursive 11y ago
        Thanks for your honesty, but I hope you understand that's completely useless. I might have preferred if you lied.
        EC1 11y ago
        To be completely honest I've never even heard of Tableau.
        karmawitch 11y ago
        five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? (except those seasoned exchange-experts of course) did you ever consider there might be valid reasons some folks prefer *nix based servers?
        untog 11y ago
        five people telling in detail horror stories that make every other devop feel the pain? Check the timestamps of those messages vs mine. At the time there were only the two responses I mentioned.
        karmawitch 11y ago
        you have a point there
      - bsg75 11y ago
        > I think a better question is what problems they haven't faced. Deploying visualizations without having to develop any HTML or JavaScript code. Publishing to the desktop (Windows or Mac), to the web, to the cloud, or mobile devices (iOS and Android). Publish to the server once, consume on all supported platforms. Deploying a copy of a current site for redundancy, testing or development. Install the app, backup the primary Tableau database with its admin utility (command line), restore it on the new box. All data, visualizations, users and permissions are contained in that single restore step. Tableau means I spend time working with my data, instead of the presentation of it. Its not a perfect product by any measure, and could obviously use some improvements, but is a timesaver in many areas.
    - click170 11y ago
      My experiences are very different. Many Linux services have a concept of reloading. If the config file changes you can send the running program a signal and it will re read the config. This is very useful for production systems. Tableau (9 at least) has no such concept. Change the email address it reports to? Restart tableau. Change the location of the SSL certificates? Restart tableau. Want to apply an update for tableau? Uninstall your current version and install the new one. Oh and until recently when you downloaded the installer for tableau server the file name didn't actually contain the version number. This product was not designed with ops in mind at all. Edit: I forgot, I've actually had a tableau server fill itself up with logs. Tableau has logs in many different locations outside of windows event viewer and doesn't include log rotation facilities for all if them.
      - radicalbyte 11y ago
        That sounds like most Enterprise software. It's like that because R&D and Operations never talk; and of course your average Windows Ops person has a poor understanding of operating systems.
      - Florin_Andrei 11y ago
        "tabadmin cleanup" helps a little. But yeah, this thing is a mess.
      - bsg75 11y ago
        Those things are indeed a pain with Tableau, and also common with a lot of Windows based applications. Never understood why Tableau is either Windows only or has the restart to reconfig issue. Last I looked, it was largely a Tomcat and PostgreSQL based product.
        click170 11y ago
        [Replied to wrong comment]
      - Eridrus 11y ago
        What's the actual issue with restarts? Is the downtime due to a restart unacceptable? Is it that users lose application state when a restart happens? Just trying to understand since I've written software with the same restart to config workflow and would like to understand what causes it to be problematic.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - yelnatz 11y ago
    Well, as some who doesn't can you enlighten me?
    - andrewvc 11y ago
      It takes an ungodly amount of resources to do not very much. It's very buggy, frequently the HTML charts time out or just break with no indication why. Upgrades require a lot of manual work. The javascript API is reasonably documented, but, again, buggy. It's an unholy combination of rails and postgres somehow hacked to run on windows. Really, they should just ship a linux VM that runs these things decently.
  - walker7734 11y ago
    I would very much like to know what particular issues you are having as well? I work at Tableau and I would like to make sure that issues people are seeing are on our radar, if they aren't already.
    - wsh 11y ago
      Thanks for asking. I just installed 9.0.4, and here are a few examples: - Tableau Server runs only on Windows, so why can't it use a TLS certificate and key from the CryptoAPI certificate store, rather than requiring these to be converted to PEM format (with Unix line endings!) and saved in the file system? In an enterprise with an internal CA using Active Directory Certificate Services, these extra steps have to be done not only at installation but also every time the certificate expires. Compare the experience with Microsoft IIS: the server automatically requests a renewal from AD CS, retrieves the new certificate, and begins using it. - Tableau Server should be able to run as a Group Managed Service Account, so we can give it access to remote data sources without having to assign (and regularly change) yet another service account password. - It would be helpful to have an scriptable installation process; as far as I can tell, there's no way to install Tableau Server without clicking through wizards.
      - walker7734 11y ago
        Thanks for the input. I am going to forward these on to the server dev team and follow up with them in person. They may be aware of some of these already but it is important to us to keep track of what is causing our users the most headaches. I appreciate you taking the time and letting me know your suggestions and the issues you are having!
      - shrikant 11y ago
        Ive done a Tableau Server rollout at a previous client, and iirc, we were easily able to run it as a managed service account. (Microsoft AD) Any specific difficulties you faced with this..?
    - joombaga 11y ago
      [1] I had to set the client-side map rendering threshold to a very high number (100000 I believe) to get maps to render at all. Server-side rendering doesn't work, even though it can contact the map servers and display all of the examples in the documentation (Miami/Havana I think?). [2] It's been a few months, but I remember getting the license activated offline was a weird process. Something like, point tabadmin toward a license file, which generates a number or json or some other file, which you then paste into or point the UI toward, which gives you another file to use in tabadmin... and at the end tabadmin gave me error. Now when I go to "Manage Product Keys" it acts as though it is unregistered, but the server still starts without error (it did not before the failed activation ritual). I do have a ticket in with support for [1]. Given how much of a bitch it was to activate (or half-activate) I'm reluctant to investigate [2] further. Also, I'd like to see a linux server. Tableau is our only Windows server, which weighed heavily against the product when we were considering alternatives.

edwinnathaniel 11y ago

New Relic also down by 25%, crazy day for Silicon Valley.

nemo44x 11y ago
Which is pointless since they had a great earnings report, were cash flow positive for the quarter and raised their guidance. Additionally they mentioned in the call that no sector is more than 20% of their customers so they are diversified if a certain sector really tanks - like tech. They have 180 million in the bank so won't need credit markets any time soon and gradually approaching profitability. Disclaimer: I have a position in NEWR and added today at the 21 level. This will certainly bounce back in the comings months or years. Will add if the irrationality continues.
- simo7 11y ago
  Just looked at it. No profit and trading at 10x revenues. You might be right who knows, but can't realy say the fear on this stock is irrational at the moment, imho
  - nemo44x 11y ago
    It's trading at about 6x revenue right now and even lower when looking at forward revenues. Their growth is tremendous and are on a path to profitability. I get it - when the market are getting banged around like it is, there are few safe places. I just think the baby is being thrown out with the bath water in a lot cases. I'm using this to average down a bit and hold.
    - simo7 11y ago
      Yeah I see your point, but what I mean is that when so much of the current value of a company is based on future events, fear unfortunately is never irrational. And for New Relic the expectations are really high, could still turn out to be a great business story (and I also think it will) but not necessarily a good investment because so much of this future success is already embedded in the price.

pinaceae 11y ago

huge corrections under way, guarantee this is not the end, just the beginning. unicorn slaughter. upside: expect house prices in the SF bay area to become more affordable.

ap22213 11y ago
Doubtful - if global investors aren't putting their money into stocks, they'll just continue to buy up real estate.
- pinaceae 11y ago
  Once you take the crazy money out of the equation, the SF Bay Area is not that appealing as a pure real estate play.
  - 9tx 11y ago
    Whys that? Year round awesome weather not good enough?
    - pc86 11y ago
      You've never been to San Francisco, have you?
  - azinman2 11y ago
    Russians and Chinese are a major contributor, and they're not so affected by SV cycles.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      If you think SV is bad, check out the recent returns out of Russia and China!
    - sshanky 11y ago
      What's SV?

tjpd 11y ago

"Tableau Software tumbled 36% after management warned it was unlikely to realize benefits of certain tax assets. The news sent shares spiralling despite the software company's better-than-expected quarter. The company earned 33 cents a share, more than double estimates." Also their growth is down.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
What is a tax asset?
- ohyes 11y ago
  It's basically when you can claim that you operated at a loss in a given year and for tax purposes carry over that loss to a different year. This lets you pay less taxes in a year when you actually make profits. I am not an accountant, here's a likely better explanation: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deferredtaxasset.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deferredtaxasset.asp
- femto113 11y ago
  Usually it was a loss in an earlier period that you've rolled forward to offset profits in a later period. They can expire though, so if you don't make a profit in time they become worthless. Companies carry them as an asset on their books until one or the other happens.
- patio11 11y ago
  Suppose hypothetically that you have an agreement from a firm to pay you money in the future. That agreement is carried on your business' books as an asset. Your friendly neighborhood tax agency is a special case of firm, which can commit to paying you money in the future. One way they can do this is, when you lose money in year N, they can let you carry that loss forward for up to X years, so that when you're taxed on your income in year N+3 you might be able to offset some of that income with the loss you made years earlier, reducing the amount of tax you incur. The guesstimated value of that offset in taxes is your tax asset. If your marginal rate is 30%, and you can offset $1 million in revenue, the implied value is +/- $300k. Importantly, if you guesstimate poorly or your friendly local tax agency decides to change rules on you in the interim, you have to adjust the value on your balance sheet. This can be problematic if the tax asset is a material portion of your notional value.

jetcata 11y ago

Atlassian is currently down 23%.

sideband 11y ago
Splunk is down about the same today as well: http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASPLK http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASPLK
chinathrow 11y ago
FireEye is down 10% too. https://www.google.com/finance?q=fireeye&ei=weS0VunZONbcsAHQzK7wAw https://www.google.com/finance?q=fireeye&ei=weS0VunZONbcsAHQ...
bbcbasic 11y ago
Oh well. Tonight I'm gonna party like it's nineteen ninety-nine

headgasket 11y ago

Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions. Free money from leverage does not look as good when equities go down... I think we are heading for a most violent year on the markets. Pharma and biothechs will most likely be the only bright spots, especially anti-anxiety drugs... :-) Keep plugging at building great software that actually helps make this a better place. Charge for it so you can survive this downturn. It's a cycle, this will weed out the nonsense.

bkeroack 11y ago
> Linkedin is down 38%. Tesla is down quite a bit. My guess is that some VCs were leveraged and had to liquidate positions. You're not a VC if your money is in publicly-traded firms.
- pbreit 11y ago
  VCs do not liquidate immediately at the IPO or even upon lock-up expiration. But I would agree that this downward pressure is not VC-driven.
- Kluny 11y ago
  Or maybe, this is a crazy idea, some VCs have diversified portfolios that include public stocks.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    Personally I'm sure, but that's not how VC funds work. You raise a fund with the understanding it will be invested in new ventures.
- headgasket 11y ago
  Did you think that as soon as a company goes public, VCs get to sell all their stocks?
  - jonknee 11y ago

ap22213 11y ago

Could it also be affected by the Amazon QuickSight preview that is going live?

cissou 11y ago
likely, considering Qlikview is down 14%

tomasien 11y ago

I don't know what Tableau Software is and I found it pretty amazing that when I Google it I could still not figure it out because all the results were about the stock price. I think people might be focusing too much on stock price is Googling a company's name doesn't result in seeing the company's website on the first page of results.....

gabriel34 11y ago
Tableau makes software for the presentation layer of business intelligence systems (basically graphs and dashboards) I have limited experience with it (only POCs), but I liked it very much. They usually figure well in Gartner rankings
sologoub 11y ago
Tableau is a visualization software that you can bolt on top of many different data sources, from spreadsheets to BI tools and even AWS RedShift to get awesome looking dashboards and interactive visuals. They are/were extremely popular with many sales organizations for internal dashboarding and even some media outlets used their stuff for public websites. Sad to see this state of things for them, as the product was true good at one point. That said, I have not touched it in 3-4 years, so not sure how competitive it is now.
- floppydisk 11y ago
  They still are popular, especially in the government contracting world. It's almost a mandatory requirement their business analysts use Tableau when creating dashboards for clients.
- cscharenberg 11y ago
  The product is awesome. I made some really neat visualizations and analyses with it during an MBA project using the 15-day trial. But it's ridiculously expensive - $1000 per year with some real limitations on how many data sources you can connect. If I could dabble with it for $50/year I would. $1000 though? That limits their market tremendously to big companies only. It's hard enough to get an $80 tool approved. -- Looks like they give it free for students now, which is cool: https://www.tableau.com/academic/student https://www.tableau.com/academic/student. But after learning it, there's no path to bring the software with them when they move to actual companies, because of the cost.

chollida1 11y ago

Though the outcome is a bit worse than I think most predicted, this has been telegraphed since about November of last year. Tableau has had a very high short interest ratio for sometime, everyone was expecting poor results. What really exacerbated their issue was that they didn't get out in front of this and let people know how bad they were going to miss. So when they released earnings everything went to shit on them. I can't really find any excuse for this that passes Occam's razor except to assume this is a very rookie CFO /CEO combo in charge. I made a comment about 3 months ago saying that 2010-2014 were very kind to new tech IPO's and 2016 would be the year that companies would have to either make money or face the consequences. I'm following this over the next 2 weeks to see what the stock does. Its now a pretty good Pre-Merger Arbitrage(take over candidate) candidate. - Market cap under 5 Billion, check - Institutional owner ship > 50%, check - Insiders hold less than 5% of the company, check,in fact its at 1.09%, wow, management doesn't even want to own the company! - below its IPO price, not yet, that was $31 but its still falling.

roymurdock 11y ago
Do you have any insights into how badly core infrastructure institutional investors are going to get hit when these large, institutional-owned tech companies deflate? Any metrics on how much of the equities market is owned by pension/retirement vs. free, non-dependent, non-core institutional investments?
- chollida1 11y ago
  Hmm, I do, but I probably shouldn't be talking publicly about it as I got most of them from sell side analysts. Privately disclosing them is different, Message me if you want numbers.
jonknee 11y ago
It would make a nice acquisition for Microsoft...
- TheLogothete 11y ago

nrjames 11y ago

Interesting that Microstrategy also is down quite a bit.

kevinwong 11y ago

Before this drop they were trading at 14x forward revenue; now they're at 7x. Splunk was at 12x, now at 9.7x. We'll have to revisit what the typical multiple range is for BI/enterprise saas companies. Seems like quite the correction for an earnings beat and the removal of a ~50M deferred tax asset though, especially since people already had negative expectations before the earnings release.

physcab 11y ago

Tableau is a good product. I use it daily. There simply is no better alternative for quick ad-hoc, enterprise-level, intuitive graph and dashboard making. I've been at large orgs where we evaluated all the cloud services like Mixpanel and the ilk, but they are very different use cases. Tableau + Redshift (or Vertica but Redshift is way less expensive) is the typical BI tech stack. When I go a client or a new job and ask them what they use for analysis and if they say "Good Data" or "MicroStrategy", I know my job will be a pain in the ass to get done. Its as if you're interviewing for an engineering job and they say "oh we all use NotePad here". Its night and day in terms of productivity. I don't know what this means in terms of the stock, but all I can say is that I vouch for the product and think it has a lot of room to grow (from a BI perspective).

chebum 11y ago
Have you used any tools built on top of DevExpress BI? How did they feel?
- physcab 11y ago
  Never heard of DevExpress but just by going to the website it feels far less intuitive than Tableau. Tableau is so freaking easy that you don't need to be experienced in BI to be user.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    If that's Tableau's target market then their 15 day trial is killing their business.
spike021 11y ago
For that use-case is Tableau a more useful tool than something like Splunk or ELK stack?
- dev1n 11y ago
  Tableau is for business analysts. ELK is for Sys Admins. I think.

brooklyndude 11y ago

I can hack d3js. Can crunch billions of records in a flash of the eye, can wrangle most any DB (NoSQL, et al) out there, why would I need Tableau? Answer: We want someone stable! Not some crazy hacker. Plus if we don't spend the cash, we don't have it in our budget next year. Oh, I get it now. :-)

justinlilly 11y ago
Tableau is for business users to generate graphs. Also d3js is a bear to work with until you've steeped your brain in it. By your logic, there's no need to use MS Word, people should just use TeX.
- notyourwork 11y ago
  Well said, the word/tex analogy is spot on.
npalli 11y ago
No you don't get it. Tableau is for people who can't hack (or don't want to hack) d3js or crunch billions of records or whatever techie thing you seem to be so proud of. The mission is supposed to be self-service business intelligence, i.e, allowing a typical business analyst to drag drop and create good visualizations and analytics. Not dick around and waste time with databases and javascript.
- 243464646 11y ago
  Except that it only lets you do a set number of things. Most requests for information are not simple, and once you leave the comfort of simplicity, you have to become an expert in tableau, or in many cases, just accept that it can't do what you want it to do. Unless your queries are very simple, you are better off finding a programmer and asking them to do your job.
cheeze 11y ago
Seriously? It's almost as if companies don't want to hire a badass hacker to generate a business report used by non-tech workers. Tableau has a huge place in the BI community, and the last thing that a manager wants is somebody hacking d3js to to create some visualizations.

irunred 11y ago

Looker is a much better product.

dberg 11y ago
Agree, Looker customer here. Awesome product for ad-hoc BI reporting. Sits on top of Amazon Redshift perfectly and is quite fast for ad-hoc reporting.

narrator 11y ago

Tableau is a great product, but it's very expensive, like Oracle expensive. I used Saiku to hack together some BI dashboards for free http://www.meteorite.bi/ http://www.meteorite.bi/. It did the job with a little bit of work.

clebio 11y ago

Just curious whether anyone (else) here has experience with Bime? https://www.bimeanalytics.com/ https://www.bimeanalytics.com/

vhold 11y ago

I wonder how that will affect this: "Tableau confirms big Kirkland expansion, plans to hire 1,000" http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/tableau-confirms-big-kirkland-expansion-plans-to-hire-1000/ http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/tableau-conf...

therealdrag0 11y ago
Wondering the same thing.
tdicola 11y ago
Ouch, good question. Although the building they want to lease in is part of a major development happening in Kirkland over the next few years. It will be full of other businesses and retail, so not just Tableau. It's also right across the street from their current Kirkland office I believe.
nfd 11y ago
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that they're going to keep going on that guy, possibly with a bit of delay. Running joke over here is that Fremont is basically TableauVille. Or they're to Fremont as Microsoft is to Redmond. Hell, rumor has it that new buildings are being built in Fremont just for their damn expansion right now (take a wild guess if you're in the neighborhood which ones--it's not hard, just look for glass). I doubt even a big dip in share price is gonna quash their thirst for real estate for very long.

kumarski 11y ago

The analytics space is over-crowded. Software eats the world and the education system. It's becoming increasingly easy to find developers. https://gh-prod-ruby-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/file/39/github_repositories-800x447.png https://gh-prod-ruby-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/image/f... To some extent, companies might be trying to use too much data? Who knows. Life Time Value capture in the analytics space is sufficiently difficult. Let's say you're an analytics customer: Early stage customer: Use any one of the 100 integrations analytics companies listed on segment.com's website. You DO NOT need to track hundreds of parameters. Conversations with customers have 100x the value of tracking the small things at this stage....usually. Mid-Stage Customer: Maybe you choose one of the 100 companies that makes the most sense. You start paying for it. Having these early and midstage companies as customers is tough. The vast majority of them fail. Big Customer: SnowPlow Analytics? Splunk? Tableau? That being said, I think there's businesses to be built, but only semblances of unicorns and minotaurs. 15,000 web and mobile apps are coming out tomorrow. What % of them are analytics related applications? (Hint: A larger one than you might think). Just have a gander at the applications that are listed on promotehour.com and startuplister.com's list of app launch sites. There's now 100+ launch sites. To win big in VC money, you have to take risks, the analytics space seems well established with a slew of best practices that are extremely well known. Ie. not risky enough to warrant pouring VC-istan money into.

twright 11y ago

To be fair the markets are really getting beat down today. e.g. LinkedIn is down 45% from $194.

wyck 11y ago

Honestly I don't care about stock rhetoric, it's an awesome product I use every week. I evaluated lot's of BI's options because it's a pricey product and I'm super happy with it, Tableau is actually fun (because its so easy yet powerful) and meaningful. The only other decent alternative was Qlik but it was more pricey for the options I needed.

bayonetz 11y ago

Tableau is definitely a useful tool. Tried getting folks with Tableau skills in previous whoishiring post. The other positions I posted got a lot of response but not the Tableau-oriented ones. Looks like plenty of enthusiasts in this thread through. Where were you all? Hey, in the off chance you are Iinterested in working in Tableau at a think tank (RAND) send me (Chris) a note at dev.hiring@rand.org.

chris_wot 11y ago
There's a reason for this. Unless you work in an organization that has already implemented Tableau, or is willing to take a punt on using it, then there is just no easy way to get skilled up on it.
- infinite8s 11y ago
  Tableau Public isn't sufficient?
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Is it able to do everything the client software can do?
    - cdcarter 11y ago
      It's limited to flat files, so you have to plan ahead on what data you'll explore. In terms of the viz - feature parity, but not quite the same at all if you want to do exploration. Which is too bad, because Tableau's ease of exploration is what makes it so much more valuable than PowerBI or custom d3.
      - infinite8s 11y ago
        What is it lacking in terms of exploration? I thought most of the exploratory benefits were in the visualizations, unless you mean the ability to ad-hoc connect to random databases and begin exploration (because you have to plan ahead to extract flat files from those sources)

gvenier 11y ago

I'm sure Tableau has its own right place in the plateau of BI & Analytics for big companies. As for small businesses and custom-built analytics as well as for operational data UIs you'll probably have no alternative than hacking it yourself with d3js. Or using it Tadaboard-like alternatives.

PostThisTooFast 11y ago

Whatever "Tableau" is...

jayonsoftware 11y ago

I was one of the first people to start using Tableau, I even bought a license for my own use so I can learn (Yep sick of the 14 day trial), but these days Excel / Power BI does most the work, Salesforce with Wave is competing with them plus so many open source software.

rossjudson 11y ago

About 5 minutes of searching shows me that Tableau has had a massive growth of revenue, but a slightly more massive growth in sales/administrative expenses. What that tells me is this: The market loves Tableau, and keeps buying more of it. But the company has serious cost control problems in its sales and marketing departments, and has expanded there far too fast. Anybody comparing typical open source or low cost BI solutions favorably to Tableau hasn't used it, or doesn't value their own time. Tableau is easy and deep. Tableau's board needs to attack their out-of-control cost of sales (the pay-me-everything egos), and hopefully ignore the internet idiot mob effect on their stock price. I don't own Tableau stock. I just like the product.

joeevans1000 11y ago
The problem is that you make something cool in Tableau and then want to collaborate with someone... and even if you talk them into it, soon their trial runs out. Yes, it's powerful and featured, but today's scene is about collaboration and sharing... and the sticker shock is just too much for that.

samstave 11y ago

Apologies if the following is ignorant: My exp with tableau was always that they obfuscate the final query... Fuck that. Looker doesn't && they even allow a meta Lang on top of them. So for you to say "just do X" leaves many less sophisticated orgs left in the dark. So my comment is both: Fuck their position and yours. I don't want to pay bullshit fees to tableau (with perf hits) && not be able to see the final query && not need an actually fairly highly competent DBA to know that x+x+x needs to be enabled in order for me to get to root. If I pay service X give me the full fucking understanding as to how service results are generated. (Yes yes I do understand how saas blah blah works and I'm just saying I personally find this process bullshit and immoral)

foxylad 11y ago
Downvoted. Your point may not be ignorant, but it certainly seems that way given the unnecessarily violent language.
- solipsism 11y ago
  His/her words are too naughty to be tolerated? They offend you to such a degree that you can't just ignore them? Come on now.
  - foxylad 11y ago
    It's more that they imply the poster is really angry. If you saw two speakers in the street, one arguing reasonably and the other swearing his head off, I think most people would place less value on the ranter.
    - samstave 11y ago
      Uh... Maybe you dont talk to your friends too often... You should see me with many many of my friends - dont imply anger where there is none, as we often get in "mock heated arguements" with smiles on our face. I love you.

MikeOfAu 11y ago

I was an early adopter of Tableau and fairly enthusiastic. But then I had a truly terrible licencing experience with them and have, since, refused to have ANYTHING to do with them. Nice enough software, but a sleazy organisation. Use one of the other good alternatives.

NotSammyHagar 11y ago
What happened with the licensing? I see a few other people complaining about this.

WWKong 11y ago

I was previously a Tableau expert at my then job. I was amazed at the missed opportunities by Tableau to make it indispensable to organizations. The core product was fine but it seemed like they could use a good PM to implement features around sharing, permissions, pricing etc. $1000 license for clients to view some basic report in a browser, the other option being a desktop installed reader.

matdrewin 11y ago

There are several factors at play. I believe one of them is MS Power BI catching up. https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-positions-microsoft-as-a-leader-in-bi-and-analytics-platforms/ https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/gartner-positions-m...

simo7 11y ago

Reporting --> Chartio, Sisense, Looker etc. (anything web focused without a desktop version pretty much) Analysis --> Ipython No room for Tableau and similar.

infinite8s 11y ago
Tableau makes most straightforward analyses much simpler than attempting to do it in Ipython/pandas, especially when connecting to standard corporate data warehouses (probably on the order of 10x faster). Of course you quickly hit a ceiling in terms of complexity, but most analysts never really get to that point.
- simo7 11y ago
  Simple analysis usually answer recurrent questions, for this there is reporting and Tableau is not a good tool for reporting (too slow). For ad hoc analysis instead, there is really nothing more powerful than R or python and it's plenty of tools & libraries that give you the speed you need.

swingbridge 11y ago

Tableau is a decent product, but a decent product doesn't make a great company. Main issues are: A) Its sales team sells it as an end-to-end analytics suite, but in nearly all actual implementations I've seen companies just use it for management to view a dashboard... essentially just a slightly fancier version of the Excel doc some analyst used to mail out B) It's crazy expensive for what it is C) If the company has actual data scientists onboard then those individuals can do far better analysis just using free open source tools For the above reasons and more I've seen a lot of large companies that are far less excited by Tableau than they were a year or two ago. They've either halted larger roll outs that were planned or just moved away from the platform entirely. That leads to softer sales and slams the brakes on growth rates... hence why the stock has tanked. There's also the issue of valuation multiples against their financials which are also still frothy, even after the latest downward movement in the stock.

infinite8s 11y ago
Those are excellent points. As an exploratory tool Tableau is well worth the money, but if you are just using it to replace some basic C-level reporting than its really expensive for that.

noisy_boy 11y ago

I use Tableau almost daily. Initially I found it harder to work with and avoided it for a while. On 2nd attempt, for some reason, everything clicked into place and I now find it fairly intuitive. Some of my opinions/experiences about it: - Beyond simple queries, it becomes more easier to setup a view or two behind Tableau than to do it purely in Tableau. E.g. multiple level of latest times, more complex aggregations etc are more easily done in SQL than via Tableau. - For some things Tableau doesn't do what we typically expect. Couple of examples: - If you run a custom query joining two tables with some of the column names being same in both, Tableau cannot deal with it. Setting alias for columns using "as" works fine in SQL so I think it is not unreasonable to expect that to work. - I recently tried to chart lag in request/response in microseconds. The data is stored as TIMESTAMP in our Vertica database. However, I found that Tableau doesn't show time more granular than seconds. That is kind of odd in today's common low-latency high-performance technology environment Having said that, I really like the features it offers viz. Calculated fields which don't go away just because I change the data source, drag-and-drop dashboard constructions, very nice visualizations etc.

simo7 11y ago
What do you use it for? If it's for analysis why not use python or R, way more powerful and full of tools & libraries that give you speed you need? If it's for reporting, why not to use chartio, looker or anything that connects directly to your db? My opinion: If you know some python or R, you might still need chartio, looker and similar but Tableau doesn't make sense anymore.
- noisy_boy 11y ago
  I wasn't part of the decision making effort but I believe Qikview was also considered but the analysts preferred Tableau. It is used by the analysts as well our for our internal monitoring/charting/analysis purposes.
  - simo7 11y ago
    I see. I've also found myself in a situation where the company was using it and I had them drop it. For reporting the idea of transforming & moving the data around really doesn't make much sense when compared to solutions which directly leverage your db or at least create an unique consistent datasource instead of many so-called extracts scattered around.