It’s been a busy week of events across the tech industry, but two are the focus of this roundup: Tableau Conference and ThoughtSpot Beyond. The two companies shared their thoughts on the state of data and AI through new announcements, exciting partnerships, and strong customer stories.
Not surprisingly, an ongoing theme in AI has been how we think and work with experiences like generative AI, large language models (LLM), and GPT. Each vendor has their own approach, and it’s worth checking out some of the announcements made this week.
Tableau Focuses on Fundamental AI and Empowering Developers
Tableau’s announcement revolved around three themes: expanding the reach of data with AI, embedding data everywhere, and harmonizing all data. On the AI side, several of Tableau’s announcements hinge on the success of what I consider to be the biggest announcement, Tableau GPT. It serves as the underlying technology to power new experiences and add more intelligence. Mind you, Tableau has had this kind of functionality in the past. Ask Data, Data Stories, and Data Explain have been around for years, but Tableau GPT adds a new foundational level of intelligence across his Tableau platform.
A perfect example of this can be seen in the announcement of Tableau Pulse, which brings new experiences to data consumers. Uncover personalized metrics, integrate data into workflows, and accelerate AI-powered insights at scale to make data usable for everyone. Pulse is powered by Tableau GPT, which powers different experiences within Tableau and across key collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, also owned by parent company Salesforce.
Tableau will also add a metrics layer within the platform, allowing stakeholders to define new metrics. The important thing to understand here is that the industry has been hearing about the democratization of data for far too long, but never seeing it happen. These announcements from Tableau create an opportunity to deliver on that promise. These are not announcements for data analysts. They are almost entirely focused on data consumers.
Another key theme common to several Tableau announcements was to empower developers. Developers are responsible for building data-driven applications. I agree with his Tableau stance on this matter. In short, every application should be an analytical application powered by data, analytics, and AI. This highlights the growing interest in embedded analytics. This is important because embedded analytics is the fastest growing aspect of Tableau’s business.
The highlight announcement here is VizQL Data Service, which provides access to Tableau Engine from anywhere. Think of this announcement as Tableau’s foray into headless business intelligence (BI). Again, it’s all about empowering developers to leverage a centralized data model and simplify application development to inject data experiences everywhere. A great example of that power is the fact that Tableau Pulse was built using VizQL.
ThoughtSpot Becomes a Leader in AI-Powered Analytics
ThoughtSpot may be the first vendor to announce a GPT-like experience in this space. ThoughtSpot is focused on the idea that AI-powered analytics should be as easy as using your favorite phone app. This is where ThoughtSpot Sage comes into play. First announced in March 2023, Sage continues to be a key focus for ThoughtSpot. Sage aims to deliver AI-curated engagement and insights, leveraging GPT for business data. This includes the following features:
- Natural language search powered by AI.
- AI-generated answer.
- AI-powered search recommendations.
- Data modeling powered by AI.
- Continuous AI learning based on interactions.
One of our key announcements is that ThoughtSpot Cloud is now available on Google Cloud, making ThoughtSpot Cloud officially a multi-cloud SaaS product. This partnership and several tool integration announcements highlight the importance of openness in supporting a diverse data ecosystem of tools from different vendors. These include the following features:
- New platform connector.
- ThoughtSpot search cache improves performance.
- Improved data modeling capabilities through guided UI.
- Tighter integration with leading data catalogs enables bi-directional metadata sharing.
ThoughtSpot is really picking up steam in this space. The event featured announcements related to Google Workspace with the Google Sheets and Slides plugin. There’s also ThoughtSpot for Excel, giving Excel users free access to AI-powered analysis. There’s also Git integration for lifecycle management and CSS support for app builders to deliver better, custom experiences powered by data. For data app builders and data storytellers, realization and efficiency are key. These announcements will make BI invisible, empowering key stakeholders to build the interactive data applications they want with flexible APIs and customizability.
It’s a GPT world and we all just live in it
An old saying goes that if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Powering GPT-like experiences, LLM now acts as the hammer for nearly every vendor, and every aspect of the platform is rapidly being nailed down. We’re just getting started with generative AI and experiences like GPT, but we continue to be amazed at the speed at which these features are becoming a critical factor. Even if your customers are somewhat reluctant to trust your recommendations and interactions, the efficiency gains cannot be ignored.
