Tableau Desktop 9 Bundle
(Tableau Software Photo)

Tableau Software has released monthly subscription prices for its data visualization products, following through on a plan first disclosed last year to pivot its pricing focus from perpetual licenses to subscriptions.

Here are Tableau’s new monthly prices: Tableau Desktop Personal, $35; Tableau Desktop Professional, $70 ; Tableau Server, $35; and Tableau Online, $42. Under the old model, a license, with annual maintenance, cost $999 for Desktop Personal and $1,999 for Desktop Professional. Server starts at $10,000 for 10 people, and Online is $500 per user per year. A Tableau spokesman said the licensing model will not go away entirely as the company wants to be able to accommodate however companies prefer to use the product.

Last year, Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky outlined plans to focus on a subscription model for the business moving forward. The company is dealing with greater demand for its data visualization products from customers that already use them. Big companies want to get more of their employees to use Tableau products, and subscriptions could make that easier, he said.

Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky speaks at Tableau Conference 2016. (Tableau Software Photo.)

Here’s how Selipsky described the move to subscriptions on an earnings call last year:

“Subscription licensing is a simpler model that’s more aligned with customer value, and it will benefit our customers. It will make it easier for businesses to get started with Tableau by lowering the initial investment required. It will provide more flexibility to scale Tableau widely, and it will reduce risk for customers.”

Tableau believes subscription models will become even more common in the next few years. The company cited a 2015 study from Gartner, saying that by 2020, 80 percent of software providers will change their business model from perpetual licenses to subscriptions, regardless of whether the software resides on-premises or in the cloud.

Subscriptions, with lower upfront costs, could open up Tableau to a greater variety of customers. Tableau said it has more than 54,000 customer accounts worldwide. But Selipsky said last year the company has more work to do in building greater diversity among its customers.

“There are many places where we have not succeeded,” Selipsky said. “There are many organizations in enterprise as well as mid-market, public sector, nonprofit and startups, that probably can’t even yet spell Tableau, and those are all opportunities for us.”

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