Tableau Software , the global leader in rapid-fire business intelligence software, today announced the general availability of Tableau 5.0, the next generation of the Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server product suite. With more than 60 new features, Tableau 5.0 helps businesses of all sizes see and understand their data better than ever. New dashboard and interactive visualization capabilities, along with improved scalability and performance make Tableau 5.0 ideal for large business intelligence deployments. Customers such as Cornell University and Primeline are among the first to experience the benefits of this release.

"Imagine every person in your organization making better, faster business decisions by using live, active dashboards on the Web. Imagine them--with no special training--drilling through trends, finding stories in data and sharing information," said Christian Chabot, CEO of Tableau Software. "With Tableau 5.0, all of this and more is possible, and the software supporting this can be up and running in minutes and can scale to thousands of users."

Tableau 5.0 now offers unparalleled capabilities to create active dashboards and interactive visualizations that enable people anywhere in an organization to track and explore their most important metrics. Tableau business dashboards give users the ability to highlight and filter related data--known as brushing and linking. Users can share and follow emerging stories in their data using guided analytics that include links to other dashboards, reports and applications. But unlike complex business intelligence software, ordinary users with just a minimum of experience can set up active dashboards and interactive visualizations that deliver information to thousands of people.

"By definition, interacting with and exploring data by using interactive visualization requires only the most intuitive of tasks, such as clicking on a pie wedge, or circling the dots on a scatter plot," said Kurt Schlegel, VP of Research, Gartner. "Since interactive visualization is actually fun to use--more fun than a spreadsheet, that is--it will drive much wider adoption. For the most part, interactive visualization can be added to a BI platform architecture without a significant investment."