Salesforce buys BI and analytics firm Tableau for $15.7 billion

Tableau will continue to operate under its own brand with the same leadership team

Salesforce has entered into an agreement to acquire analytics firm Tableau for $15.7 billion.

In a press release published on the Salesforce website, the company says it will acquire Tableau in an all-stock transaction. The acquisition of Tableau is expected to be completed during Salesforce's fiscal third quarter this year which concludes on 31 October.

Tableau, founded in 2003, was one of the early proponents of self-service analytics, providing data visualisation dashboards to open up the process to business users. In 2017, it recorded revenues of $877 million, and has been on a buying spree of its own in recent years, acquiring natural language query startup ClearGraph, database HyPer, infographics startup Infoactive and statistical analysis system Empirical Systems.

Under Salesforce ownership, Tableau will continue to operate under its own brand, will remain based in Seattle, and with the same leadership team headed by CEO Adam Selipsky.

For Salesforce, the acquisition will add a more advanced analytics element to its existing cloud-based CRM services, particularly in combination with the AI platform Salesforce Einstein, the company claims.

"We are bringing together the world's number 1 CRM with the number 1 analytics platform. Tableau helps people see and understand data, and Salesforce helps people engage and understand customers. It's truly the best of both worlds for our customers - bringing together two critical platforms that every customer needs to understand their world," said Salesforce chairman and CEO, Marc Benioff.

For Tableau, CEO Adam Selipsky said: "Joining forces with Salesforce will enhance our ability to help people everywhere see and understand data. As part of the world's number 1 CRM company, Tableau's intuitive and powerful analytics will enable millions more people to discover actionable insights across their entire organisations."

Recent aquisitions by Salseforce include Mulesoft, Bonobo AI and MapAnything.