Tableau Software Appoints Former Amazon Exec As CEO

Tableau Software, Inc. (NYSE:DATA) recently announced the appointment of Adam Selipskyas its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and president, effective Sep 2016. Its co-founder and current CEO Christian Chabot will henceforth act as chairman of the board. Selipsky was a former executive at Amazon.com's (NASDAQ:AMZN) Amazon Web Services division.

Following the news, shares of the company went up more than 5% in after-hours trading yesterday.

Selipsky joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) as senior executive in 2005. He was later promoted to the position of vice president of marketing, sales and support for AWS.Earlier, he had served as the vice president at Seattle’s RealNetworks for six years.

A graduate of Harvard Business School, Selipsky was also a principal at Mercer Management Consulting, a strategy consulting firm.

According to Chabot, ‘’Adam is going to take Tableau to the next level.’’ He added that “His experience in making AWS the world's leading cloud platform, his passion for servicing customers at a global scale and his authentic team player attitude make him an extraordinary fit for Tableau. He is the right person to lead Tableau to the next stage of growth."

In our opinion, Selipsky’s appointment is a sound choice, given his profound experience in the cloud computing platform space over the years. We expect the new CEO of Tableauto better understand the overall strengths and weaknesses of the business as he has in-depth knowledge of the market dynamics.

According to his LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) profile, “Selipsky helped take AWS from a pre-revenue position to a business with more than $10 billion in revenue while growing the team size from fewer than 10 to thousands.’’ His experience is expected to benefit the company and is expected to take the business to the next level.

Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Tableau engages in providing analytics and data visualization software. The company offers Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server and Tableau Public. It also provides related maintenance and support as well as professional and training services. The company's product helps a single user on a laptop analyze data from a simple spreadsheet. It also enables thousands of users across an enterprise to execute queries against databases.

Tableau is placed well to benefit from rising demand for business analytics tools. The company has been seeing strength in its offerings like the hybrid data architecture platform. The company has also taken a number of initiatives to boost its sales productivity and align its marketing efforts to drive growth.

However, competition from giants such as IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) and Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL) poses a significant threat.

At present, Tableau carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). On the other hand, Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).