S2 E7: Bonus: Hot take on Salesforce acquisition of Tableau

0:00Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of the Datum podcast.

0:05This is, I think we're going to call this a hot take episode, right Tim?

0:09Absolutely, absolutely.

0:12Some f some news on the block since you've been away.

0:14In fact, you've been away for a couple of weeks and then you've come back to uh a bit of a change in the landscape, right?

0:20Right, exactly.

0:21It's funny 'cause um I've been away for about two and a half weeks um for some family stuff, my family member getting married.

0:26Um and yeah, I've come back to it's like that have you seen that scene in community where

0:31Donald Glover comes back in holding pizzas and the entire room's on fire.

0:35Yeah.

0:35That was that was sort of my initial reaction to this news, but I think um over the few days it's sort of I've let myself tick along slowly

0:42And let the news sink in.

0:43So what's what's the news?

0:45What's the big what's the big thing that's changed?

0:48So a certain company that has CRM as their stock symbol, Salesforce.

0:53has decided to enter into acquisition talks with Tableau.

0:58I say enter because I don't think it's a done deal yet.

1:01It's they've just agreed to buy the company, but that doesn't mean they've bought the company just yet

1:05Yeah.

1:06Yeah, exactly.

1:07It's it's one of these things where it's like an agreement has been reached at a high level to buy the company at this price and now and then it's gonna be the lo lawyers now get involved to do

1:18the actual transition.

1:19So I think it'd be a few months out still before um we get Tableau a Salesforce company or something similar.

1:26Exactly.

1:26Exactly.

1:27Exactly.

1:27Um I think uh this took a lot of people by surprise, actually, didn't it?

1:31Didn't it?

1:32No one I I guess, well, did it or didn't it?

1:35I I think there's th there's a couple of levels to this.

1:37I I I personally it was surprising it's now.

1:41I think that's the big thing, right?

1:42It's a surprise that it's the the the news came now at this time rather than

1:47Everyone sort of um somewhat expected Tableau to be bought out by one of the bigger boys.

1:52Um eventually, you know, the AWSs, the Googles

1:56that sort of company that will just like bring it into its own cloud offering.

1:59I don't think anyone expected Salesforce per se to be making this move.

2:04However, if he if you sort of kept an eye on on sort of

2:08the MA sphere of around data and analytics in this area.

2:11Like uh Salesforce everyone talks about MuleSoft.

2:15Um, you know, S Salesforce bought MuleSoft last year.

2:18Um but there there was a few leaked documents uh I think a year or so ago where they mentioned that sales for us are look interested in looking at Tableau.

2:26So it's not that much of a surprise.

2:27I think the surprise is that

2:29Uh first of all came now, you know, in the middle of 2019, um after some pretty big releases from Tableau.

2:36And then secondly, that it came so fast off the heels of another big acquisition, which was Looker, being bought by Google Cloud Platform last week.

2:44Right, right, right.

2:45I mean uh i in my mind I I I I think of this in really simple terms.

2:48I think of it as a game of Pac-Man, right?

2:50Because um it I find it sort of um ironic because I think what happens sometimes, Tableau themselves, uh

2:58uh achieved a lot of growth by acquiring other companies.

3:01So Hyper was an acquisition.

3:04The Ask data capabilities came through, yeah, Colligraph came through an acquisition.

3:08And so it it's fascinating that people don't expect uh the opposite to happen where you know a bigger Pac-Man turns up on the game and there's always a bigger fish, right?

3:18Yeah, there's always a bigger fish.

3:19um coming coming behind you.

3:21So yeah, uh in in some ways I think you're right.

3:24Um happening now is is is is a surprise.

3:27Um maybe we can go into this in a bit more detail.

3:31But also I think uh there's also the other side of this, which is there's been lots of talk of it.

3:36Um it was inevitable at some stage because

3:39uh I guess Tableau's aspirations maybe exceed the um the level of cash it's able to generate.

3:46Right, exactly.

3:47For R D and development.

3:49Exactly.

3:50Um and you know those numbers are never really widely shared, but um for them to have been seeking this acquisition, you never go into a deal like this unless one party is willing to be acquired, if that makes sense.

4:02So um

4:03Um it also paints a bit of colours to maybe what the CEO's sort of uh task in hand was um when he joined the company.

4:11So the the I think that that's a really interesting that's a really key point you mentioned that.

4:14So Adam Silipsy came in

4:16Um a couple of years two years ago now, right?

4:19He's done two taboo conferences from what I understand.

4:21Two or three um I've seen him speak twice, so I think this might be in his third one.

4:25Um

4:26And he came in after Christian Chabot and T this is this it Tablok has started off this company which is small and fun

4:34And then it sort of grew.

4:35And then there was that nose dive.

4:37Do you remember the nose dive in the stock prices because of some uh lower um forecasts for the year?

4:43Yeah.

4:43Now now when Solipsky joined, he came from obviously Amazon Web Services and then

4:48uh change the way that Tableau operated moving towards subscription is a big change then the more recent licensing changes um

4:56And it's uh I think I read somewhere that it started off as a four billion cap company and now they've sold it as a fifteen billion when it was it's this is Silipsky's time frame when he he he came in, their market cap

5:06was 4 billion and now they've sold at 15 billion.

5:08So for him it's he's he's done his he's done his job in a very interesting way.

5:12Now what's I I think to your point of the technical advancements, you've seen this moving forward more recently.

5:18Like the the reason Tableau

5:20I don't want to say stopped innovating, but sort of stopped doing things in-house and sort of look to purchase companies that are already doing it to give them that jump, that head start into spaces like hyper, into spaces like Ars Data.

5:33This is a similar sort of move, right?

5:35Like you either buy another company or you get bought and then use complementary technologies, right?

5:40Like it this this is the sort of thing that I see as that that stage of maturity as it were within within Tableau's journey as a company.

5:49I I agree.

5:50And I think there's a there's a little bit of that sort of

5:54uh played through in the announcement because um Salesforce actually agreed to acquire Tableau for fifteen point seven billion but at the time of the acquisition

6:03its evaluation was ten billion.

6:05So even Salesforce they're adding, you know, five point seven billion worth of value to the current price of of the of the of the Tableau share.

6:14So that in itself sort of says something about where Salesforce

6:17see sort of the value and maybe the value that's been added in in the current years, but maybe this value has been uh sort of a much longer um

6:26a longer kind of term thing.

6:28You know, this has always been, I guess people like you and me will say, ah, Tableau's always been great, you know.

6:34Right.

6:35But but it but it wa it like you said it this the tableau again let's let's not forget like so um the information lab who we work for started in what twenty eleven twenty twelve and like with

6:46That was it Tableau was not a company in Europe.

6:48Like we we always talk about the fact that the information lab was in Europe selling Tableau before Tableau had a proper presence, right?

6:55Yeah.

6:56Um

6:57And this is really important.

6:58Like Tableau is quite a young company in some ways, but the innovation and the scale that it's had gone through in the last few years to make it a bit more

7:06um inverted commas enterprise ready.

7:08I saw a screenshot of the first ever Tableau server offering um when I was looking at some documentation recently or a couple of weeks ago.

7:15And it's come so far, right, in terms of a UX, in terms of UI, in terms of

7:19the the way it looks and feels.

7:21I remember we well my first version was Tableau 9 and that jump for from the look and field and the features in Tableau 10 and certainly definitely now 2019.

7:302 that's just released.

7:32It's moving at such a fast pace and I think in order to keep up that level of innovation, that level of scalability and meeting the d ri demands of users as the company grows, as the brand grows

7:46This is the stuff that excites me.

7:48This is the fact that, you know, they're put now part of Salesforce.

7:50What does that mean?

7:51So they've got this Einstein Analytics offering, which is like they're just all analytics, end-to-end, right?

7:56Let's include AI, all of their systems, yada yada yada.

8:00Now Tableaus can now share those technological advances from um and sort of take in like for it's quite funny.

8:08I think um Rachel Cross, who who works for the information lab and now works for the UN

8:13Um she built some dashboard starters, right?

8:16I think for Salesforce, is that correct?

8:17Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, correct, yeah.

8:19So like e go on.

8:21Yeah, no.

8:22Um and it's funny because those Salesforce connectors were

8:26We're just hooking straight into um Salesforce data sources.

8:29So these are sort of almost consider them as templated dashboards that you can just uh plug into your own data set, your own organization.

8:36and immediately get some value from them.

8:39And that's so different from how Tableau used to be under, you know, the st the headship of Christian Chabot, like the early days, right?

8:46When it's like

8:47No, no, data is your canvas.

8:49You choose what to do.

8:50And now we're getting to a point where, well, actually, let's help you steer in the direction.

8:54Here's some templates because the more people that are getting on board, you're not, you know, you haven't got pockets of

9:00energized user that are just using this thing for fun as much anymore.

9:03Like it's now becoming to a point where Tableau is almost a requirement at some stage, right?

9:09Some level.

9:09And also, you know, Tableau's also been acquiring a lot of intellectual property.

9:13Um it's just a fun fact actually.

9:16Can you uh do do you recall the last acquisition Tableau made?

9:20Um was it the semantics engine?

9:23Um no, so the last four acquisitions, I guess, the most widely known ones, because you don't actually have to report an acquisition.

9:30Unless it's above a certain size.

9:33But the last reported one was a company called Empirical Systems in 2018 of last year.

9:39The one before that was Cleagraph, which we've all seen in the product through That's the semantics engineer.

9:44Yeah, absolutely.

9:46And then the one before that was Hyper, right

9:51And then previous to that was another one called InfoActive.

9:55So um there's actually four acquisitions then each of those have actually brought in specific IP that I think we've seen in the product fairly quickly after.

10:03So it also shows that Tableau's capable

10:05of not just bringing in IP, but you know, capitalizing it, adding value, and then turning it into sort of um I guess subscriptions now.

10:12Whereas before it used to be um

10:15Perpetual licenses.

10:17Yeah, exactly.

10:18And that that turnaround time is really important, really key, especially now.

10:21Um I think I think the if the the uh I've heard summaries of this investigal that happened straight after the

10:28the announcement of the the intention to purchase.

10:32And there's obviously a lot of jokes about the fact that the the the guy on the call was saying Vizzies instead of Vizzes, but that's all by the by.

10:39Like it's all education.

10:40You can't joke about that stuff.

10:41Like we we didn't call it visual visualization before.

10:44We all call it charts and graphs.

10:46It's

10:47standard.

10:49People think who you stood next to you.

10:53Exactly.

10:53Exactly.

10:54So it's it's it's quite quite interesting, Z.

10:56But I think the the key thing there, they always mentioned the community and and um I think

11:01What's interesting to me is the Salesforce community is much bigger and much more diverse than the Tableau one, from what I can understand.

11:10Right.

11:11Oh no it is, yeah, yeah.

11:13Like the conferences are over a hundred thousand people, like you've got um the amount of uh the they they uh they're uh equivalent to Zen's is the Trailblazers.

11:22So I'm really interested to see how that that diversification, that integration happens because I'd love to learn more about them.

11:28Like I think there's a guy called Pris Lam who mentioned really interestingly that the learning and development platform that Salesforce have

11:37is really really good.

11:38Like I think we've been looking at AWS recently and we we also have very good things to say about that learning platform, right?

11:45Yeah, absolutely.

11:45Absolutely

11:46Absolutely.

11:46And uh that's the thing I that's the thing I kind of um I'm really excited actually.

11:51It's it's the it's the new people and the new kind of dialogues and the new conversations.

11:55I mean in the immediate in the immediate sense, I guess

11:58Nothing changes, right?

11:59Nothing.

11:59Everything everything is all pen and paper.

12:02It takes a couple of years for the cultural sort of fit and transitions to take place.

12:07Uh there's likely to be sort of uh reorganizations.

12:11I I know Salesforce have I think said they'll just let Tableau sort of run independently, but

12:17Then m my view on that is, well, why did you buy them then?

12:20You don't you know you don't buy a car to put it in the garage.

12:24You buy a car to drive it.

12:25Um so eventually something will change.

12:28Uh uh but for now, yes, uh as things sort of play out, uh you know, f for end users and and and and

12:35uh maybe even employees uh things remain broadly the same.

12:38I'm really excited to see what happens at conference this year because this is early enough.

12:43There's one next week.

12:44Yeah, yeah.

12:45This is early enough

12:46for there to be, yeah, reflected in two conferences.

12:49So there's the Tableau conference uh next week that you're going to, right?

12:52I am, yeah.

12:53So I'm I'm I'm I'm there from

12:55Monday till Thursday.

12:56So if anyone wants to catch me there, I'm I'm gonna be around.

12:59I've got a session on Tuesday that I'll plug obviously um just before day tonight's out.

13:03But yeah, that that'll be really interesting to see.

13:06the dynamic and also people's thoughts on on the acquisition.

13:09Which I guess is similar similar s um thoughts hopefully to what we're sharing, but

13:14Yeah, and I I you know, we've we've we've titled this show sort of a hot take, but I I expect most of what comes out of the conference next week will be uh general sort of hot takes and sort of um aggregations of thoughts that have of have happened in a week.

13:28However, what will happen in Vegas is I'm hoping a a more sort of concise dialogue about where Salesforce and Tableau are going to go together because there's enough time there for at least the deal to kind of

13:41play out and I'm hoping for the visionaries, i.

13:44e.

13:45the CEOs, uh, maybe even to present managers, yeah.

13:48Yeah, yeah.

13:48I I fully expect to see the Salesforce CEO on stage if this deal closes in good time

13:53And so that that should that should be where we start to see, okay, what's actually changing here?

13:58What are the developers thinking?

14:00What are the employees thinking at both companies?

14:02Do we have an influx of Salesforce users at Tableau Conference who've maybe considered Tableau but have used it have used other tools and so on and so forth?

14:12The other aspect is I I think this is interesting because um Salesforce uh you know prescribing this value to Tableau sends a signal about Tableau and I think i it's worth just considering sort of the knock-on effects that can happen from things

14:25things like this because if you were let's say considering Tableau, Power BI, and maybe a bunch of other tools, um not that it's going to change your mind based on sort of the features and the capabilities of the product.

14:37But I think it does sort of send a signal.

14:40Um you kind of have this idea that now Tableau is going to be a war hand for some time now.

14:48It's

14:48It's under it's under a a a nice big umbrella that's, you know, weathered a lot of sort of different climates um and and it's good for it, right?

14:57Yeah, I think I think the the I think you're you've hit the nail on the head.

15:00I think there's in the in the me short to medium short term, I don't think much is going to change.

15:04As you say, in the median terms where things are gonna get interesting, for now I think

15:09Um the intention to have Tableau as an independent company makes sense because what you do is you just say, well, you know, we've we've we've got Tableau under iHood, let's bring them in really quickly for a conversation.

15:20And also they're part of the family, so they're integrated really nicely.

15:23Like they understand our culture.

15:25They understand the the pipelines and the data flows and all these different technologies that Salesforce have to offer under their umbrella.

15:31So that that's all positive.

15:33That's all really, really good stuff.

15:34Now, if I'm putting my pessimistic hat on, um I my concerns are around the technology that Tableau owns, right?

15:44I think that that's

15:45That that's where my personal concerns are there.

15:48And the IP, exactly, because now inherently that that LP will be owned by Salesforce, right?

15:54Like things like Hyper, things like um ClearGruff and R Stata, things like

15:59you know, the fundamentals, the Phil VizQL, you know, the thing that's built built uh similar to Renderman and that was on Pixar.

16:05Like we all love telling that story.

16:07But now that's that's Salesforce Tech.

16:09Now there is obviously that two-way thing, you know, we we um Tableau will be able to benefit and we and then in kind will be able to benefit from Salesforce Tech and their innovations, but

16:19Similarly, they'll be able to look at and um take advantage of Tableau's tech.

16:24Does that mean in 10 years time Tableau gets rolled into the packaging?

16:27Who knows?

16:28We can't we can't make that decision.

16:29But that's something to be aware of at least

16:32Um just just to bookend my my that that sort of thought process for me.

16:37I like analytics, right?

16:39I think that my personal view is

16:41Analytics is analytics, I just prefer using Tableau because it's easy to use, it's fun, it's something that I understand.

16:47Um but the what's the word?

16:49The the ideas and the culture behind it, that's what that's all gonna be the same.

16:53Like we still can approach

16:55Tableau and all uncertainty for us Alteryx projects in a similar way.

17:00We we would still think about data in a similar way and we s still have this questions first

17:06approach, right?

17:07Than sort of a proscriptive prescriptive environment.

17:10So I'm still optimistic.

17:11I'm still very much on the train.

17:13I think this is a really exciting time to be in BI, again given the lucre acquisition alongside the tablet acquisition

17:19Um and yeah, really interesting seeing where it goes from here.

17:23Do you have any um negative feelings here?

17:24Do you have any um things to be concerned about?

17:27I guess uh I guess

17:30There's always the the the the issue I have with acquisitions is uh especially when it comes from a company who has an appetite for acquisitions.

17:37I'm just looking at a diagram of

17:38Salesforce acquisitions uh and literally there's more Salesforce acquisitions than there are uh Tableau products and probably Tableau developers that I know.

17:47Um you know, just just by first name basis.

17:50Right.

17:51So th th they've got quite an appetite for that.

17:53And I always wonder about focus, right?

17:55Because when you become when you become an acquisition of a a company's biggest sales force

18:01Um you you can sometimes just um you the focus is now shared, the the mind share within Salesforce

18:08is not just, you know, a Tableau-centric one.

18:11It's now amongst a bunch of other tools.

18:13And so I always wonder what do Salesforce shareholders want from Salesforce, right?

18:18Because now that becomes the drive for what Tableau does in the direction

18:22Okay, so whereas before Tableau shareholders were pretty happy with Tableau just growing and so on and so forth, you then start to think, okay, well, what do Salesforce

18:31uh shareholders want to see from Salesforce acquisitions, right?

18:36Do they want to see them integrated?

18:37Do they want to see them sparred?

18:39And I don't have enough context and knowledge to understand sort of

18:43How the you know, what are the most successful acquisitions, how have they played out, how have they gone, have they ever done an acquisition at the scale of tableau, size?

18:51These are all questions that, you know, I I'm not I'm not well informed enough on.

18:54But these are the these are the kind of things I'm excited to sort of

18:57of find out over the next few months because I think that will really sort of uh uh tell it and if this is the first time they want to do something different then I think I'll be I'll be I think I'll be more concerned because

19:09When you try and do something different and you're one kind of company and you're the size of Salesforce, it's really, really hard to turn the ship.

19:16It it's almost

19:18It's you've you've genuinely got to But this is why you buy this is why you buy stuff right there that you absolutely absolutely Because you you've got you're you're so ingrained in old tech that you in order to change you acquire someone that's further ahead in that line than you

19:31But the analogy I always give is um and I I relate to things I do understand.

19:36So when uh Disney bought Pixar, for example, okay um now ever a lot of people saw that as an acquisition, but in in the creative world that was seen as a merger

19:45Because Pixar had this creative sort of powerhouse and this sort of culture that just Disney just didn't know how to sort of, you know, um create.

19:55And if you look at Disney before they acquired Pixar, it it w it wasn't performing as well in the cinemas with with its creative sort of endeavors.

20:04Then once it's bought Pixar and the teams kind of merge and some of those uh, you know

20:09Benefits went across companies, you know, Pixar capitalizing from Disney scale, Disney capitalizing for Pixar's creativity.

20:16You start to see a very different kind of Disney that's now completely, completely unstoppable.

20:22And so I wonder if this is if this is that.

20:25Is it actually more of a merger?

20:27Okay, yeah.

20:27Is it just film or picks up?

20:29Yeah, exactly.

20:32Well put, well put.

20:33Yeah.

20:34Because i i I I like I'm just thinking about this analogy.

20:36I love it because um Pixar is hundred percent that creative tribe like

20:40You don't get a f Pixar film every year.

20:42You're not just journey out blockbusters.

20:43You're doing it methodically because each scene takes like a year.

20:46All the all this like stuff you hear about Pixar is incredible.

20:49Like Toy Story 4 is literally the most lifelike cat I've ever seen.

20:53But um

20:54It's it's this thing of Disney hasn't bought Pixar to change what Pixar do.

20:59They've bought Pixar to benefit from all the ideas that it has in the forward thinking

21:05culture that it it sort of brings.

21:06Whereas buying Lucasfilm and the rights to Star Wars was hundred percent a block spots blockbuster drive, right?

21:12Exactly.

21:12It's hundred percent something that's based on the fact that Star Wars is this brand that people just you you will just go and see

21:18Right.

21:19Same as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

21:20You will just go and see it.

21:22Yeah.

21:22Um and you can just churn out with Buckbusters, but Pixar is a bit more, you know, it's nuanced, it's got its own little crew.

21:30Yeah, I I think I I like the Pixar analogy, right?

21:32I think that exactly hopefully is what what what what's happening here.

21:35And and that's the thing that time will tell, right?

21:37We we we don't we don't really know

21:39Yeah.

21:39Um I I think one of the things I've taken away from this is um it it it it sort of drums this point home, I think, more generally, just stepping back away from Salesforce.

21:49how important it is to understand the industry and the uh and the wide industry.

21:54Because I think, especially in the Tableau world, we can be guilty of

21:58investing so much into just one thing, right?

22:00Um, you know, Tableau Prep comes out, we just all in all in on the Tableau world because we we know we sip the Kool-Aid, we love it so much, the community's great, you just can't imagine anything else, right?

22:11Um but then you forget that obviously there are other players and there are the context, there are other integration points that that exist out there.

22:17And this is a r you know, this is a really strong reminder that, you know, uh this this this ac acquisition highlights it you should have known about.

22:25Salesforce's sort of desire to buy an analytics company.

22:29We should have also maybe understood Google's desire to buy something.

22:32Obviously those things aren't public, but actually

22:34Um if you sit down and sort of listen listen to the words, right?

22:38If you listen to the words behind the words, I think I think I always do this at Tableau Conference as well, when you l you don't listen to

22:44Here's our big new feature.

22:45Listen to what's what is this driving to, right?

22:49I think I think the underlying messages from companies like Google, companies like AWS when Google started with

22:55um data studios three years ago now.

22:58Yeah.

22:59It was very much a it's dipping its toe in the water.

23:01Now they're like, right, you know what, there it might be something in this where there's enough people using GCP, Google Cloud Platform.

23:07for us to think about, you know, let's do an end-to-end solution for analytics to for data.

23:12We've got storage down with Google uh BigQuery, we've got a VM software because of our scale, so the offer uh compute.

23:22um let's let's build a bi solution so looker can do that for them and hey you know you know they they might transform looker into something

23:30More right?

23:31It might be again it's it's choosing the right tool for the use cases.

23:34Yeah, that's what it always comes down to.

23:37Yeah.

23:37It is funny because just a few days before uh the acquisition

23:43uh Google acquired Looker, um and that boosted Tableau's own share price uh by six percent.

23:50So

23:51Oh really?

23:52Yeah, yeah, yeah.

23:53So that that was in it that was in itself an interesting uh you know reaction from the market.

23:58Yeah, exactly.

23:59I think that y

24:00And it and what I always like about share prices is it's I never I never think of it as like an accurate sort of representation of the value of a company in terms of the values you and I see it.

24:10But

24:10What it does do is it t does tell you where the market is.

24:13And when there's sudden jumps and sudden reevaluations, it shows you that the market wasn't accounting for something.

24:19It wasn't considering something.

24:21Okay.

24:21And so this six percent jump when Google acquired Looker was basically a signal of the market saying, wait, hold on a minute.

24:28Um maybe this Tableau stock I have is actually way more valuable because

24:32We know that Looker you know, if you compare it to Tableau, it's not as an attractive target.

24:37You wouldn't have you wouldn't have put tab um you know looker over Tableau if you were sort of comparing them side to side unless there's some sort

24:43sort of edge case that really sort of leans you towards Lucker.

24:46But immediately signals, you know, companies like Tableau, Microsoft Power BI obviously is owned by Microsoft, so they already have

24:54Um they're unlikely to be bought out right.

24:56Exactly, exactly.

24:57Unless Microsoft spin that out, um that's that's in a safe place as it is.

25:02So

25:08Correct.

25:08Oh yes.

25:09We need to come back to that one.

25:11And oh but it's it's funny I I I think of Ben Thompson and his uh discussions about uh you know the aggregation of everything.

25:17Yes, yes.

25:18And I'm just thinking

25:18Thinking, oh gosh, Salesforce is the aggregator.

25:21Here we go.

25:23It is.

25:23Yeah, that's a really good point.

25:25I I I I had a fleeting thought about that, you know, you hearing the Ben Thompson voice in my head being like

25:30you know, the excitable pace, like it's an aggregator.

25:33Yeah.

25:33Um 100%.

25:35I I think that that and it comes back to our point about platforms before, right?

25:38Absolutely.

25:39And it's sort of like, well what what is Salesforce wanting to be the aggregator of?

25:43And

25:43It's going back to their the stock symbols.

25:46Salesforce at the moment is CRM and the stock market.

25:49Tableau is data.

25:50And so you can kind of see Salesforce making this play to be the SaaS backend of enterprises, basically.

25:57basically full stop whether it's data, uh customers or people, I I I I'm highly expecting to buy a HR platform very soon.

26:06Um that that that would sort of complete the stock.

26:10And by the way, by the way, that's not uh advice to go out and buy shares, yeah.

26:15Right.

26:16They did go for LinkedIn and Mike's unpit them to the post.

26:19Um

26:20Exactly.

26:20But yes, they have aspirations to just be the enterprise SaaS back end, uh as it were.

26:25So um it's a very interesting kind of

26:29thing.

26:29I'd I wouldn't be surprised if uh, you know, Ben Thompson didn't do some sort of article about it because he he pays a lot of attention to Salesforce.

26:38But he doesn't typically pay attention to his tableau because it's not in his his BI, right?

26:43Yeah, exactly.

26:44So in fact I'm gonna I'm just gonna quickly Google now and see if Ben Thompson has actually written an

26:49So what wh while you're Googling that this is what another podcast that me and Tim actually Tim introduced me to which is um called um what's it called Exponent.

26:58Yeah

26:59Um, which is a great tech podcast and I think it's it was one of the ones that almost inspired us to do one right because it's such an interesting one that you can just listen to and take in a bit more information, learn a lot more about different angles.

27:11And I think

27:12Especially around I think that uh this the acquisition for me um was another time we we realized like we are so small that in tableau

27:20what an ultrax as our sort of niches and there's so much more out there in the compute space and the data space in the um service cloud offering right because

27:30Ultimately Salesforce.

27:32com is a massive cloud platform.

27:35Tableau in their article did mention that

27:38Uh they are going to continue offering on-premise solutions, but I wouldn't be surprised if this just makes their cloud offering that much bit better.

27:44Like it just makes it a bit more easier and cleaner to

27:48be ready to go, right?

27:49It's it's all of all it's all of that onboarding softer stuff that um Tableau's working on and improving and really driving towards that Salesforce perhaps has in a better way.

27:59And this is where the exciting let's see how this play out plays out stance comes along from both of us.

28:05Exactly, exactly.

28:06Um it turns out Ben did write an article yesterday about uh Looker and Salesforce and Tableau and Google.

28:16It's behind his paywall.

28:17So um the newsletter.

28:19Yeah, it's it's an actual newsletter article, which means it's of uh it's of it's of high quality.

28:24I'll I'm gonna try and see if someone summarized it somewhere.

28:27Um maybe it's almost worth paying that £10 a month.

28:31I I hate this.

28:32You know, you know the amount of subscriptions I have access to is just like ridiculous.

28:37You pay £10 a month for frickin' everything.

28:40Yeah.

28:42But uh no, this this this acquisition is exciting.

28:44I think um there's lots there's lots to come.

28:46I think it'll be really interesting really interesting to see how it plays out.

28:51Um

28:52I'd be keen to see what you see at conference next year because that that will be next week, yeah.

28:57That I feel sorry for uh the Tableau organizers um because I genuinely get the sense they had no idea this was happening

29:03thing right uh and it I you know having to sort of pivot the discussion points uh at conference next week is a is a tough challenge right

29:13Right, right.

29:14And even even though you can play the oh it's not done yet, we don't know, yeah everything's everything's gonna stay the same, don't worry about it card

29:21It's always gonna get those like our like cogs turning about okay what's next?

29:25What what what does this actually mean?

29:27Exactly that sort of thing.

29:28Yeah, yeah, yeah.

29:31Okay.

29:31Cool.

29:36Thanks everyone for listening and tuning in.

29:38Um send us your feedback.

29:39What what do you think?

29:40What are your thoughts on

29:41on this move um and were you expecting it what was it something that somewhat not expected and where do you see yourself if you're a tablet user or even a a Salesforce user.

29:51Perfect.

29:52I'll catch you next week Rebby.

29:54Nice one.

29:54Take care.

29:55Cheers boys.