TableauThis past December, Tableau CEO Christian Chabot told GeekWire that he expected his company to make some acquisitions over the next two years — and now we’re seeing that come to fruition.

The Seattle-based data visualization and analytics company today announced the acquisition of HyPer, a high performance database system born out of research done at the Technical University of Munich.

Tableau will integrate HyPer’s technology into its own products to help customers conduct transaction processing more quickly and improve the overall quality of analytics produced by the company’s software.

hypertableau1Professors Dr. Thomas Neumann and Dr. Alfons Kemper created the original HyPer research project back in 2010. Four of the project’s Ph.D students will join Tableau, which will open a research and development office in Munich to expand its research into high performance computing. This is Tableau’s second office in Germany, and 17th worldwide.

Tableau, which also was created out of research done at the university level, did not make a single acquisition during the first 12 years of its existence. This past August, though, the company bought its first company, swooping up Infoactive, a 3-year-old startup based out of Montreal that turns data into infographics.

That acquisition was more of an acqui-hire, as Infoactive shut down and its three employees joined Tableau. The HyPer purchase is a little different, with it being more of a research project versus a full-blown business.

“This technology acquisition is focused on advancing the work HyPer has begun and developing new technologies to advance data analytics as a whole,” Tableau Chief Development Officer Chris Stolte said in a statement.

Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot at the Tableau Conference. (Courtesy Tableau Software.)
Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot at the Tableau Conference. (Courtesy Tableau Software.)

Shares of Tableau Software fell nearly 50 percent last month following a devastating fourth quarter financial report in which executives claimed “softness” in customer spending. Tableau lost $41 million during the quarter, despite adding a record 3,600 customer accounts.

In a conference call with analysts, Chabot said that competition has gotten “thicker and thicker” over the years, but noted that competition from companies like Microsoft has little do to with the slowness Tableau is seeing.

Tableau CFO Tom Walker added that the company will continue to invest to boost its presence in the market.

“We have seen a lot of competitors get attracted to the overall market space, and so it is very, very important for us to recognize … what a rich opportunity it is and how much beyond (business intelligence) it is, and so we want to continue to go and be the leader there,” he said. “And we think the best way to do that is through investing.”

Those investments are coming in the form of acquisitions like today’s, as well as hiring. Chabot told GeekWire two months ago that Tableau plans to bring on another 1,000 employees this year, a move that comes as it looks to move into a new headquarters building in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood later this year. The company employs 1,200 in the region, and just over 3,000 worldwide.

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