(Bloomberg) — Salesforce Inc. appointed a new head for Tableau as it works to better integrate the $15.7 billion acquisition into its suite of products.
(Bloomberg) — Salesforce Inc. appointed a new head for Tableau as it works to better integrate the $15.7 billion acquisition into its suite of products.
Ryan Aytay, Tableau’s new chief executive officer, said he’s focused on serving the unit’s core users — data visualization professionals — while making the product more relevant to other job functions and Salesforce customers.
“For every customer I talk to, data has never been more relevant,” Aytay said in an interview. “This only gets stronger with this new generative AI environment.”
Acquired in 2019, Tableau was one of the massive deals that fueled Salesforce’s expansion. Now that the software-as-a-service pioneer is under pressure from investors to rein in spending and boost profitability, it has focused on integrating large acquired companies, including Tableau, Slack and MuleSoft.
Aytay said the team has been adding new capabilities to Tableau, including ways to work more smootly with Slack. The company will announce more tools during a user conference in Las Vegas next week. Tableau’s annualized revenue has roughly doubled since it was acquired, he added.
During a March earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said that Tableau had made “great progress” and was part of each of the largest 10 deals in the quarter.
Salesforce recently restructured the division, ousting Chief Executive Officer Mark Nelson in late December. Other unit executives have also left in the past year. Tableau was hit in company-wide layoffs announced in January, and some of its offices have been closed.
Aytay previously was chief revenue officer of Tableau, starting February 2022. Previously, he served in a variety of roles in his 16-year tenure at Salesforce, including chief business officer under Benioff. He will be reporting to Chief Operating Officer Brian Millham in the new role.
A Salesforce veteran also recently took the helm at Slack, the workplace communication tool acquired in 2021 for $27.7 billion. Lidiane Jones became chief executive of that division in December 2022 after co-founder Stewart Butterfield left. She was previously an executive vice president of Salesforce’s commerce and experience cloud units.
After a tumultuous few months due to slowing sales growth, activist pressure, and executive departures, Salesforce has regained some investor confidence. Benioff said in March that the company would boost margins multiple percentage points faster than analysts expected and end the company’s streak of large acquisitions.
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