Tableau bolsters product roadmap with machine learning, data processing tools

At its annual customer conference Tuesday, Tableau laid out a three-year product roadmap aimed at bolstering the company's suite of data visualization and analytics tools. The roadmap covers a bevy of hot-button concepts -- including cloud computing, natural language processing, machine learning, and collaboration -- which Tableau hopes will carry the company throughout 2017 and beyond. Among the most notable items is a new data engine based on the in-memory Hyper technology acquired when Tableau bought German data processing startup HyPer back in March. The Hyper database system provides the ability to analyze datasets of all sizes in near real-time. It's slated for availability next year.