Tableau Expands Cloud, Mobile Capabilities with v9.1
Tableau Software expands general business-users' access to data with Tuesday's release of Tableau 9.1, featuring a redesigned mobile app and enhanced cloud capabilities.
The update, which comes about four months after Tableau unveiled version 9.0, includes easier security and authentication for the enterprise and new ways to work with data, the business intelligence software developer said. In addition, version 9.1 now includes native connectors to key cloud-based business data sources including Google Cloud SQL, Amazon Aurora, and several Microsoft Azure data services, according to Tableau. It also provides single sign-on for SAP HANA, plus support for SAP variables, mutual SSL authentication, product updates, scheduled active directory sync, and rest APIs.
By 2018, the global business analytics market will reach $59.2 billion compared with $37.7 billion in 2013, according to IDC projections. Tableau focuses on creating easy to use tools that allow business users to create actionable insight from the funnel of growing data available to their organizations.
That includes access to data from mobile devices, said Ashley Bass, manager of product management at Tableau, in an interview.
"It's really about having data on the go. There are lots of use cases where people are on the field and they need offline access," she said. "On the analytics side, we expanded a lot of the work we'd done in 9.0. It's a lot of nice, small add-ons."
Providing more access requires a closer look at security to ensure data remains protected, Rupali Jain, Tableau senior product manager, told EnterpriseTech.
"We've always had good security methods in Tableau. We want to make that more seamless for our users," she said. "What we've added is around client certificates for users. The right users have access to the right content all the time."
A new web data connector allows developers to extend Tableau to sources such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Sheets, said Chris Stolte, chief development officer and co-founder of Tableau in a statement. Offline Snapshots allow business users to see views offline.
Other new features include visual analytic updates such as Radial Selection Distance; Smart Histogram; Calculation Editor in Filter and Set Dialogs, and Drag and Drop Analytics, plus connectors for MapR Hadoop Hive Connectivity for the Mac and support for Microsoft HDInsights Spark.
