Marc Benioff (Salesforce)
Salesforce has unveiled plans to acquire Tableau in a US$15.7 billion deal designed to drive digital transformation adoption across enterprise customers.
Terms of the blockbuster deal - revealed overnight - will see the coming together of market leaders in customer relationship management (CRM) and analytics software.
“Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce. “It’s truly the best of both worlds for our customers - bringing together two critical platforms that every customer needs to understand their world.”
According to Benioff, the transaction is motivated by a desire for Salesforce to play an “even greater role” in driving digital transformation, with a specific focus on Customer 360.
Through such an offering, Salesforce will provide an “intelligent view” of customers across every touchpoint, spanning sales, service, marketing, commerce and more.
Coupled with Salesforce Einstein, the addition of Tableau will help the software giant deliver an “intelligent, intuitive and visualisation” platform for every department and user within an organisation.
“Salesforce’s incredible success has always been based on anticipating the needs of our customers and providing them the solutions they need to grow their businesses,” added Keith Block, co-CEO of Salesforce. “Data is the foundation of every digital transformation, and the addition of Tableau will accelerate our ability to deliver customer success by enabling a truly unified and powerful view across all of a customer's data.”
The acquisition is expected to be completed during Salesforce’s fiscal third quarter ending 31 October 2019, with Tableau set to operate independently under the Tableau brand.
Tableau will also remain headquartered in Seattle and will continue to be led by CEO Adam Selipsky and the current leadership team.
“Joining forces with Salesforce will enhance our ability to help people everywhere see and understand data,” Selipsky said. “As part of the world’s #1 CRM company, Tableau’s intuitive and powerful analytics will enable millions more people to discover actionable insights across their entire organisations.
“I’m delighted that our companies share very similar cultures and a relentless focus on customer success. I look forward to working together in support of our customers and communities.”
Founded in 2003, Tableau was heralded as a pioneer in self-service analytics, serving more than 86,000 customers around the world, such as Charles Schwab, Verizon, Schneider Electric, Southwest and Netflix.
The acquisition will also see the coming together of two large-scale communities, with Salesforce already housing an ecosystem of more than 1.4 million ‘Trailblazers’, backed by a Tableau network of over one million data enthusiasts.
