Salesforce’s Bret Taylor Talks Tableau and the ‘New Normal’ Among Businesses

Throughout his career, Bret Taylor helped create some of the most widely used services on the internet, including Google Maps and Facebook’s “like” button.

Now, as president and chief product officer at Salesforce, he is helping the company move beyond its roots in cloud-based customer management software into tools that businesses can use to better understand the data they generate. Last week, Salesforce took a big leap in that direction by announcing the $15.7 billion acquisition of Tableau Software, a maker of data analytics tools. In an interview, Mr. Taylor said the Tableau deal—the largest in Salesforce’s history—stemmed from its growing desire, along with that of its customers, to understand trends in their businesses.