Could an Informatica and Tableau Strategic Partnership Change Big Data?

On September 9, Informatica and Tableau Software (“Tableau”) announced a “strategic collaboration.”  There was no clear commitment to producing a combined solution, except that “Informatica is certifying PowerCenter Data Virtualization Edition and Informatica Data Services with Tableau.”  While the lack of a more in-depth solution commitment might calm some nerves in the Big Data software supply side, a truly strategic relationship between two of the top best-of-breed vendors in Big Data could send shivers of worry down the spines of plenty of competitors.  Consider that there are five critical factors to in a successful big data analytics project, in no particular order:

1. Understanding and cleansing data:  No enterprise software provider has more to offer in terms of gaining data insight and rounding data into shape than Informatica.
2. Visualization and analytics distribution:  Analytics without compelling visualization and an easy means of distributing results, preferably interactively and to mobile users, is a waste of effort.  Tableau has emerged as the de facto best-of-breed visualization vendor, despite efforts from well-established best-of-breeders like Microstrategy, and strong visualization entries from powerhouses like SAS Visual Analytics  and SAP Lumira.
3. Data Infrastructure:   This is the realm of the data warehouse/database, and the related hardware/networking/OS/virtualization infrastructure – not the realm of Informatica or Tableau per se, but something they accomplish primarily through partnerships.  That said, Informatica does offer a variety of products and services for data warehousing, though not directly competitive with, for example, Teradata.
4. Analytics models and frameworks:    Tableau might argue that they offer a long list of industry and role-oriented analytics models, but this is not their forte – yet.  Suffice it to say that in a big data analytics project it is often easier to begin with a pre-built framework, and augment and modify from there.  Tableau is on the right track.
5. Business-driven:   Ultimately the successful big data analytics project must be driven by those that understand the business, not those that understand the technology.   Were Informatica and Tableau to create a truly combined strategic offering they would look to partnerships with consultancies and systems integrators to help out on the business side of the equation.

Together, Informatica and Tableau solve about half of the Big Data analytics software equation, and can do it on-premise and/or in the cloud.  With a scaled-back notion of “Big Data,” let’s call it “Medium Data,” the twosome could solve roughly 75% of the software problem.  Most projects are not truly “Big Data,” and given a fair amount of well-trained internal expertise on the part of customers, as a duet they could take quite a bite out of the market.  Both organizations also share a cultural sense of urgency born by having to compete against much large mega-vendors.

I bet the new Chief Product Officer at Symantec, Anil Chakravarthy, will pay close attention to this potential powerhouse shared solution opportunity, but you never know – it is often difficult for best-of-breeders to see beyond the end of their own code.  Then again, I worked with Anil a little over at Symantec, and he is someone with integrity, energy, an excellent motivator, and should be an excellent addition to the Informatica line-up.