The powers that be with Salesforce are making good on long-running rumors of its interest in data analytics firm Tableau with the announcement today that Salesforce will pick up Tableau for $15.7 billion. The deal will be the customer relationship management firm’s largest acquisition to date.
The focus of both companies on enabling digital transformation through data-centric innovation made the marriage a good fit, according to executives on both ends of the deal.
“By joining forces we will accelerate our ability to accomplish our mission. Together, Salesforce and Tableau share a deep commitment to empowering their respective communities and enabling people of every skill level to transform their businesses, their careers, and their lives through technology,” said Adam Selipsky, CEO of Tableau in a statement on the aquisition. As part of the agreement, Selipsky will continue to head up Tableau in Seattle, which will now be the second headquarters for Salesforce, says co-CEO Marc Benioff.
Last week Benioff went on CNBC’s Mad Money to emphasize the firm’s commitment to helping customers through digital transformation, which he said was as big for the business world as “Y2K was for the tech world.”
According to Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block, with data as the “foundation of every digital transformation,” the Tableau addition will accelerate Salesforce’s efforts to innovate around data democratization and analysis. At the same time, Benioff explains that the difference in the two firms’ interaction with data creates a completeness of business intelligence for customers.
“Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers,” Benioff explained. “It’s truly the best of both worlds for our customers–bringing together two critical platforms that every customer needs to understand their world.”
The opportunity for self-service business intelligence is a huge one as organizations seek to help drive the data-centric mentality across all their departments rather than keeping it siloed within business analyst functions. Most organizations are at the beginning of that journey. According to Gartner, 87% of organizations still have a low business intelligence and analytics maturity level. However, that’s ripe for change, with big investments on the way. One report from Zion Market Research shows that the embedded analytics market will reach $77.3 billion within four years.
