Tableau (https://www.tableau.com/) is one of the most popular analytics and data visualization software tools out there. The company was founded in 2003 out of Stanford, became public in 2013, and in 2019 was acquired by Salesforce for $15bn (Salesforce’s largest acquisition to that date).
Data analytics tools are used to create dashboards for decision-making. These visualizations bring together disparate data that get combined in multiple ways to generate relevant information for users. Platforms like Tableau have connectors that allow business intelligence (BI) analysts and data analysts to link multiple sources of data and bring the info they need to construct dashboards and visualizations. Databases, data warehouses, and data lakehouses are common sources these connectors link to.
Tableau, like other data analytics tools, has created a partner ecosystem that drives adoption of its tools. Partners include ISVs that allow Tableau to connect to their products, and consulting and implementation companies that help customers and end-users integrate Tableau into their environments. Services partners facilitate the adoption of the platform and the customization into customer’s systems and processes.
Tableau has approximately 600 consulting and implementation partners worldwide, that overall employ three million professionals.
This services partner ecosystem, when compared to other companies’ programs, shows a fairly evenly distributed geographical distribution, implying Tableau has been able to develop partners close to where their customers are using their products.
The same goes for the headcount distribution of these consulting partners. In other developed ecosystems from other ISVs, we see a predominant presence in Asia, but in the case of Tableau, Asia (primarily India) has only 63% of the share, and North America and Europe have a high share with both regions adding up to approximately 40% of total headcount. Business analysts and data analysts have a stronger impact by being closer to the business and to decision-makers.
Half of the Tableau consulting and implementation partners have fewer than 100 employees. It is a fragmented ecosystem with a high number of boutique data consulting firms.
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