Data visualizations are sometimes pretty cool. This chart that shows the number of servers for various companies uses size and color to help the reader distinguish the different values. The major Internet companies are listed: Intel, Google, Rackspace, Akamai, and others. I'm sure you can guess who the largest piece of the pie is devoted to.

Over the years I have seen some interesting ways to present data, along with a number of tools that make it easier for humans to work with data. If you've ever had to try and analyze hundreds of rows of data, you quickly realize that a line of numbers isn't easy to read. I think that's why we've turned to so many graphical tools to assist us and we see more and more of them being released every year.

A few years back I saw a demo of Tableau Software's data visualization tool and thought they did a fantastic job of making it easy for users to compare data sets. They use shapes, color, size, and a variety of different display technologies to make patterns and trends easier to find. Excel has also added a number of visualization tools, such as trendlines that can be integrated into a row of data, and Reporting Services seems to grow the number of visualization options in every release. The new map capabilities for SSRS reports are very cool.

As users work with more and more data, and have to make decisions for business based on that data, it becomes important  to present that data in a way they can use and understand. Those of us working to build software, reports, and the other tools should learn to effectively use all the different techniques we have to present data. This is definitely a career skill that will benefit data professionals in the future.

And for those of you wondering where Microsoft is in the chart? They don't report their numbers of servers, along with some other big companies like IBM and Yahoo. If those companies were added in, I am sure we would have a much different perspective of this chart.

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