How do you up your game in the competitive world of Data and Analytics? Well, one way is through acquisition.
Salesforce bought Tableau for a whopping $15.7 billion to up its enterprise analytics game. After clambering to acquire a major tech player following their unsuccessful attempt to bag LinkedIn in 2016 – Salesforce now have cured that particular itch, for now at least. The deal has certainly grabbed the attention of the tech market and the business world, with a few raised eye-brows along the way.
Salesforce Biggest Acqusition
Tableau recorded revenues of $1.16 billion in 2018. Salesforce paid over 13 times that to acquire the analytics giant. This deal represents an approximate 31% premium over Tableau’s $10.9 billion market capitalisation, making it Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date.
Tableau will represent a “bolt-on” that will more than add value to Salesforce existing software CRM and Cloud services. A move into data visualisation was likely to be on the cards, as a technology stack Salesforce was missing that layer of their overall cloud offering.
Who better to add to their stack than Tableau? With more than 86,000 companies using Tableau software, Salesforce is almost instantly able to provide a bundled solution that customers can leverage. Even prior to the acquisition, Salesforce and Tableau have long worked harmoniously together, using a built-in connector, Tableau customers have had plug and play access to Salesforce CRM data.
The Cloud Giants Rule
It’s quite evident after witnessing other huge mergers that these acquisitions are all about big cloud vendors are in the driving seat when it comes to grabbing off the shelf and ready made solutions. If they own the data, they own the future of the market. This is none more evident than Google’s recent purchase of Looker.
The CRM giants have also bagged themselves a new Seattle address, where cloud computing bedfellows like Microsoft and Amazon reside. Following the purchase of Tableau, Salesforce confirmed that Seattle will become their second headquarters. This will help Salesforce to compete with top players of the industry, attract talent and incubate new tech and investments more succinctly. Almost literally, Microsoft and Amazon, Azure and AWS, must be looking over their shoulders.
“Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers”
Marc Benioff, chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce
Having been a Tableau user for around 6 years, I can say with confidence that Salesforce have not only bagged themselves a solution to a problem and a big name to add to their tech portfolio, but a company who have a dynamic approach to building and developing their product, a passionate user base and a lead into tens of thousands of organisations globally.
Given Salesforce’s Einstein Artificial Intelligence offering, I’d say ‘watch this space’, Salesforce are more than capable of propelling an amazing product way into the stratosphere, but I sincerely hope they don’t knock it out of shape and retain the Tableau ethos we have come to know and love.
What are your thoughts on the purchase of Tableau by Salesforce? Let us know over on Twitter:
The Author, Matthew Nixon: @mattalytic
Molzana: @MOLZANAuk
