Tableau and Syncsort announced this week that they have entered a strategic partnership to make siloed information more consumable for data-driven enterprises.

Syncsort sells ETL software that helps organizations import data from mainframes and other legacy platforms into Hadoop. Tableau in turn offers analytics and visualization solutions that provide business users with direct access to insights. The two companies have married their respective technologies to deliver an end-to-end integration framework that allows decision makers to transform raw data into tangible business value using a simplified drag and drop interface.

“Big Data analysis is often complicated by the need to integrate data from multiple sources with multiple formats including key business data sources on Mainframes,” said Dan Jewett, the vice president of product management at Tableau. “The process of collecting and processing the data needs to be simple, fast, efficient and reliable from the time it is pulled from multiple sources until it is visualized for analysis. The partnership with Syncsort offers a complete and balanced solution to this challenge.”

Partnerships such as the newly formed alliance between Tableau and Syncsort are essential for the growth of the Big Data ecosystem. Case in point, rivaling data visualization vendor Pentaho recently teamed up with Splunk to develop a hybrid platform that combines machine data analytics with ad hoc querying, “advanced” visualization and support for relational and NoSQL databases.

Tableau’s channel strategy is also paying dividends. In its first quarter as a public company, the firm’s sales increased 71 percent to $49 million on the back of over 1,500 new customer wins. Chief executive officer Christian Chabo told investors to expect full-year revenue of $198 million to $202 million, up 57 percent over 2012.