Over the course of about three months, shares of Tableau Software (DATA, $75.55), a provider of data visualization analytics solutions, soared 70%, hitting a new all-time high in late February at $102.37.

The subsequent momentum correction took the stock down to a low of $52.02 in the middle of May, a quick decline of 49%. The shares are now trading back in the mid $70s.

There certainly was no pause in the fundamentals to cause the big pullback; the stock simply had gotten ahead of itself in terms of valuation.

*In Q1, Tableau’s revenue surged 86% to $74.6 million, coming in more than 18% above the consensus estimate of $63 million.

*In Q2, revenue advanced 82% to $90.7 million, 14% above the consensus of $79.4 million.

*For Q3, the company guided revenue to $90 million-$94 million, vs. the consensus of $87.2 million.

*The 2014 consensus revenue estimate of $374.5 million indicates growth of 61%; the Street-high estimate is $400 million.

Tableau has been working its way into enterprises via a land-and-expand strategy, often from positive word of mouth (two key drivers: cheaper and easier to use than traditional business intelligence solutions) that spreads from one department to the next, helping the company further penetrate existing accounts. In Q2, the company closed 157 deals worth more than $100,00 each, up 96% from 80 in the year-ago quarter.

In addition, Tableau is signing up new customers at a blistering rate, adding 1,800+ accounts in the March quarter and more than 2,200 in the June quarter, bringing its total customer count to more than 21,000.

A big positive development for Tableau: There has been a major shift when it comes to the involvement of IT departments, which now often lead the push for the company’s solutions, wanting to move business intelligence to the self-serve model.

According to Tableau CEO Christian Chabot, IT departments are championing the company’s style of analytics because they see that its solutions require fewer resources, aren’t difficult to learn and empower employees by offering clearer results, making data easier to interpret.

Older-generation tools for business intelligence (from the likes of Cognos and Business Objects) continue to be held back by their complexity and high costs, with some customers forced to pay 3x for services over the price of the actual software to cover training and upkeep.

Chabot says Tableau is seeing big growth from customers who didn’t participate in the last generation of pricey analytics, as well as from those deciding to switch over to newer offerings.

Tableau’s growth opportunities include organizations that have only used Excel for analytics in the past, but there’s also a whole pool of potential customers (mainly Global 2000 companies) with older-generation solutions that they don’t even use anymore.

According to Chabot, the $14-billion total addressable market (TAM) for business intelligence only includes legacy systems; he argues that the actual TAM could be 3x the size when all greenfield opportunities are taken into consideration.

Tableau 9.0, the company’s next major product release (set for debut sometime next year), will help drive growth through 2015. Analysts on average are looking for top-line growth next year of around 35%; the Street-high revenue estimate of $553 million represents growth of nearly 48%.

Download the September 2014 issue of Tech-Stock Prospector to your Kindle or Kindle for iPad/iPhone reading app.

Order the latest issue of TSP for Kindle.

Here are some of the topics covered in the September 2014 issue:

*What’s ahead for Facebook in 2015

*Worldwide smartphone adoption driving mobile messaging growth

*Our latest growth & valuation analysis on Apple

*Mobileye a leader in the automotive technology megatrend

*Security Watch: Imperva names a new CEO as it improves execution

*Fortinet gaining ground in enterprise security, closing more big deals

*Palo Alto Networks moving into new growth sectors of IT security

*Nimble Storage expands its product portfolio to win larger accounts

*Small-Cap Watch: Gigamon shows early signs of improvement

*Ciena lands a major infrastructure contract with AT&T

*Cloud Watch: Workday expands its enterprise ecosystem

*Cloud software gaining traction in HR/human capital management

*Aruba Networks sees growth acceleration from WiFi upgrade cycle

*Authentication a key requirement in enterprise wireless networks

*Big Data Watch: Splunk rapidly building its customer base

*Why some smart money managers like Veeva Systems now

*Akamai Technologies on a competitive upswing in content delivery

*YouTube delivers video advertising growth for Google

*Positive metrics in cloud-software sector could drive more acquisitions

Download the August 2014 issue of Tech-Stock Prospector to your Kindle or Kindle for iPad/iPhone reading app.

Order the latest issue of TSP for Kindle here.

Here are some of the topics covered in the August 2014 issue:

*7 Q2 earnings season winners positioned for a strong second half

*Why IT security companies delivered big Q2 numbers

*LinkedIn launches its expanded Sales Navigator service

*Facebook has advertising revenue upside

*Twitter fair-value price target update

*Positive fiscal 2015 catalysts at Apple

*Cloud Watch: Zendesk is a new force in customer service

*Small-Cap Watch: Imperva shows Q2 improvement

*Enterprise cloud deployments continue to gain traction

*ServiceNow brings the cloud to operations management

*Qlik Technologies starts its new product cycle in BI/analytics

*Tableau Software is closing larger data visualization deals

*Yelp focuses on local ad revenue growth

*Healthy demand for packet optical gear among telecom service providers

*Web 2.0 datacenter build-outs providing a robust tailwind

*Why some smart money managers like Ciena shares now

*TripAdvisor expands its travel search brand & mobile presence

*Electronic Arts benefiting from continued shift to digital games

*Networking Watch: F5 Networks beats estimates and raises guidance

*Deal Report: Recent IPOs of TubeMogul & Arista Networks