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Practical Analytics for Better Decisions

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The growth of the traditional analytics vendors, 2008-2010 (Gartner and other data sources)

Growth rate
Winners- Microsoft, Oracle and IBM
Laggards- SAP and SAS

Market share
Winners- SAP, Oracle and SAS
Laggards- IBM and Microsoft

Growth combined with market share (using three-year ranks)
Winners- Oracle, SAP and Microsoft tied at 2nd
Laggards- IBM and SAS

From the recent Gartner press release, “There was little change year-on-year in terms of vendor rankings. SAP remained the No. 1 vendor in combined worldwide BI, analytics and PM software revenue in 2010, accounting for 23 percent of the market (see Table 1), followed by Oracle, SAS Institute, IBM and Microsoft.” I find this fairly interesting since the vast majority of companies I work with all cite Excel as the most frequently used analytics tool, by a long-shot. For more details on this thought, please review our second analysis that includes Excel in the “Analytics” market.

Without further delay, here is a dashboard summarizing the results, we have added data from 2008 for additional context and insight.

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Quick reference for graph and dashboard design- print, Android and iPhone

Freakalytics has published to Amazon, Android and iPhone a new quick reference for building better graphs and dashboards. This app is complimentary on the Android and iPhone thanks to our sponsor, Tableau Software. Note that the iPhone and Android apps are now released: search for “Rapid Dashboards” on the iPhone (click here to open it in App Store web site) and “Rapid Graphs and Dashboards” on the Android application stores (click here to go to it in the Android Market web site.)

The Amazon version, “Rapid Dashboards Reference Card”, has all 64 tips readily available on four full-color, laminated pages. The card serves as a handy reference for yourself, your team and even your business audience during design meetings.

iPhone preview, also on Android
Page 1 Excerpt, buy it at Amazon
Page 3 Excerpt, buy it at Amazon

Over the coming year, we will post a sampling of the tips from the reference card on our site. Freakalytics, helping you take your graphs and dashboards from good to great!

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Where is the authoritative Tableau reference guide???

As you are likely aware, we wrote the first book on Tableau, “Rapid Graphs with Tableau Software“. It is intended to guide people through the overall capabilities, product flow and key features of Tableau. At 160 pages, it is an intentionally light and quick-flowing introduction to using Tableau for typical data analysis and visualization needs. A new version of the book for version 6 of Tableau will be out soon.

However, we occasionally hear from advanced users seeking an authoritative reference guide on Tableau. Given the breadth of Tableau capabilities

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Product summary and download links for Tableau Software desktop products

Tableau has three desktop products available for download. The last two are absolutely free for anyone to use!

Tableau Desktop is the full-featured version of the revolutionary visual data analysis software. Connect to almost any data source to explore, visualize and quickly gain insights. Wrap it all up with dynamic, easy to create dashboards! Go to

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Tableau Tips: displaying growth rates in maps

A recent training attendee asked how to show year over year growth in a map. In particular, they wanted to use the Year over Year growth selection from the Quick Table Calculation menu. This simple dashboard

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A response to the TDWI article, “An Imperative to Build, Not Buy, Agile BI”

As TDWI and vendors catch on to the success of “Agile BI” being created with products like Tableau, I find the need to reply to the idea that the same old technology will work in this new world.  This article from TDWI energized me to write a response to this frequently cited idea.  In case you aren’t familiar with the acronmym “BI”, it simply means business intelligence, typically referring to traditional tools like Cognos, Business Objects, Excel, Microstrategy, SAS and many other products. 

What is Agile BI? 
“Agile BI” is new-found jargon that describes what

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Map dashboard, state budget shortfalls for 2011, just 30 minutes with Tableau

Time magazine recently published a map of state budget shortfalls for 2011 by state. While this was a good attempt, I thought it would be informative to show this data in Tableau to offer additional insight. The image of Time’s map is not as clear as a regular scanned image since I used my iPhone- taking the photo on a flight!

There are three primary areas for improvement

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The BI Challenge, “Feature lists miss the point” on DataDoodle

From datadoodle,

So many people who should know better seem to miss the point when they mention Tableau. Why? I asked BI veteran Stephen McDaniel for his thoughts — which he gave, but then went on to suggest an almost unheard of challenge: a data analysis face-off among vendors

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