Companies lack clarity on desired results from Big Data: Deepak Ghodke, Country Manager, Tableau Software, India

What is Tableau's India strategy?

We entered the Indian market in 2014 and over the last one year we have seen tremendous growth here. We have beefed up our channel engagements in the region and are also tying up with larger players such as Infosys. Currently, we are looking at expanding our presence and are already in talks with some companies. The engagement with these companies will be deep and drill down to delivery. The team that we have in India is looking at sales, support and marketing functions apart from providing round the clock support to some of our key customers from India, Singapore and Seattle. We’re looking at developing long term partnerships with re-sellers and the channel and tying up with technology companies and OEMs.

The strategy is to accelerate our growth through a mix of customer acquisitions, increasing licensing revenues and pay-as-you-go approach.

What are the challenges in the big data & analytics space?

More and more companies are realizing the importance of big data and analytics, however, having said that the space is still in a developmental stage for most enterprises. There has been an uptick in the adoption rate of big data and analytics but many of the companies who decide to use these technologies don’t really have clarity on the kind of results they intend to get out of it.

The biggest challenge therefore, is the lack of understanding when it comes to knowing the data that needs to be analysed, the questions that should be asked and the solution that would suit their needs.

Lately, the kind of advancements seen in the space have brought self-service analytics to the fore. Companies are still unclear on the role of their in-house IT teams when it comes to deriving insights from the data at the company’s disposal and whose role it is to leverage BI tools to derive insights that lead to better decision making. Recent reports indicate that BI solutions deployed in the line of business have better, more focused and quick results and that is where Tableau delivers an edge over traditional BI analytics.

So, the major challenge that needs to be addressed is by creating more awareness and educating enterprises about the power of big data and the competitive advantage that can be gained by harnessing analytics in the right way.

Who are your customers and can you name them?

Tableau as a software is industry agnostic and can be implemented by companies across the businesses irrespective of their size or industry.

In India, we have companies like Ashok Leyland, Marico, Eveready, Network18, and Bridgei2i as some of our customers. Globally we work with some of the biggest brands like Facebook, Linkedin, Unilever, Nokia and Citibank to name a few.

Since you are launching Tableau 9.1, what is it aimed at?

As I mentioned, Tableau inherently has been industry agnostic. Tableau’s mission is to bring the power of data to everyone. Tableau as a software can be used by enterprises, researchers, data evangelists, students. So, Tableau 9.1 really just builds on the company’s mission to help people see and understand data, no matter where the data resides and what device they’re using.

With the pace at which customer needs are changing today, we at Tableau also are constantly striving towards making our product better to cater to the customer’s demands.

With Tableau 9.1 we are looking at providing the customer with an improved mobile experience along with multiple data connecting options.

What are the new features in Tableau 9.1?

The new capabilities in Tableau 9.1 give people more ways to answer questions with data. The three major additions in Tableau 9.1 are:

New and improved mobile experience- The Tableau mobile app has been completely redesigned to make it easier for people to find, interact with and manage content on the go. It includes a new navigation experience, faster performance, and enhanced touch capabilities. It also includes a new feature called offline snapshots that enables users to save information to be viewed offline.

New web connector- It enables developers to connect to a limitless number of sources from Facebook to Twitter and Google Sheets. New native connectors to critical data sources such as SAP and Google Cloud SQL are also included. In addition to the Web Data Connector, the update includes new native connectors to Google Cloud SQL, Amazon Aurora and support for several data services from Microsoft Azure.

New enterprise security and authentication options and additional analytical functions for users.