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Microsoft Power BI vs TIBCO Spotfire comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
315
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
TIBCO Spotfire
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 23.0%, up from 22.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Spotfire is 1.1%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
Amol Rane - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics
The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.
Fuad Mammadli - PeerSpot reviewer
A scalable tool to create dashboards for financial reporting
I have experience with Qlik. Our company moved from Qlik to TIBCO, as the latter provided us with easier options to make dashboards. We consider TIBCO to be better for our company in some of the areas related to automation and analytics. The data monitoring team in our company prefers TIBCO.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Previously, we were doing static reporting. Management would request a report, and it would take staff a week or more to provide it. With Cognos, we have dynamic reporting, and it has reduced both reporting and decision making times significantly. With the solution's dashboard, the company's management team has updated records at their fingertips. This means that they can directly access the data they need to make decisions."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"Even while a user is using a cube for reporting, there will not be a situation as ' Cube file locked; unable to build or deploy'."
"Mapbox integration for geospatial analytics down to longitude/latitude layers."
"It has a very powerful edit feature which allows users to back out of changes (undo) without forcing them to recreate entire reports."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"Integration with Office can enable the 'download' mode of storytelling.​"
"The reports are easy to create."
"It allows individuals to do the analysis themselves​."
"Key features are its dashboard functionality and ease of integration with various data sources."
"It is in the cloud, which makes it easy for mobile access of reports and data."
"It is low-cost and easy to deploy. It is fully-featured."
"The solution is easy to use."
"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."
"We have found the product very stable and reliable."
"The product's initial setup phase was simple."
"I appreciate Spotfire's range of visualization options, advanced analytics features, and seamless integration with other TIBCO products."
"We used it pretty heavily in gathering data, which goes to our VPs. They are able to base their next revenue planning based on this metric. So, it has been invaluable."
"The two features that I have found most valuable are its ability to customize the dashboards when it comes to the evaluation. The second feature is its ability to handle a large amount of data, which is also something very unique about it."
"The most valuable features of TIBCO Spotfire are visualization. It's very nice, clear, and, flexible. You can analyze many data types and the user interface is very good."
"TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves."
"It’s stable and straightforward."
"It allows users to quickly analyze data from a variety of sources and visualize it with powerful, interactive graphs, and charts."
 

Cons

"I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"I would like to see is more easy building, movement in the reports, and dashboard functionality within reporting. Overall more simple elements within reports. If the elements are simple then you don't have to render a full page, but you can move separate parts in the page."
"The solution's support could be better."
"The high cost of a license makes it hard to scale up on a budget."
"We would like to see development of the product's UI function, to make it more of a UI tool that can be configured as required."
"The visualization aspect needs to be improved and I believe, this is being resolved in upcoming versions."
"I would like them to reinclude PowerPlay. One thing that I am missing in the current Cognos is what was formally named PowerPlay. They have basically removed PowerPlay from it, which is something that I fail to understand because it was the most wonderful tool for business intelligence that I've ever used. As far as I know, they don't provide this functionality anymore, so this is one thing that I dislike about Cognos."
"I would like to see better, undisturbed stability without any interruptions."
"The mobile app is very poor."
"Actionable insights could be better."
"The way you navigate the product, compared to other products in this industry, that could be improved a bit."
"Microsoft BI lacks integration capabilities, so it needs to consider increasing its integration capabilities."
"If you look at the new tool, even though they promised that you could do data modeling, that you could do everything from the Power BI side, if your data is really large in volume, sometimes it doesn't work on the Power BI. More feature testing from their side would certainly help users."
"We did have some issues building the Microsoft blog."
"Power BI could be improved by implementing more options for data integration. Nowadays, the cloud takes care of scalability and security. As we all know, data sources are increasing, so we get data from a variety of streams. But if we could get the downstream data into the database and update the reports more easily, Power BI would be better."
"When it comes to data manipulation, there are features which are good, but one of the features which has really been missing in Spotfire is an offline ability for data manipulation."
"I would like to see the visualization library in this solution expanded, so that I can increase what I can offer to our clients."
"We would like an easier way to get the product to the cloud. Right now, we have the on-premise version, and we would like to find a way to make it easier to migrate it over to the cloud."
"We encountered difficulties connecting the special data sets, as the post data set did not contain any shared columns, making it difficult to establish a connection between the data sets."
"The layered features within Spotfire can make it a bit complicated sometimes as compared to Power BI."
"Compared to competitors, the UI is quite dated."
"The Text Area feature needs to be more user-friendly. It is a little clunky to use, and it is difficult to consistently format text."
"One aspect where Spotfire could improve is its global recognition, especially in terms of support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"IBM Cognos price is on the higher side of the spectrum. However, with the features that it brings, such as correlation analysis, it's worth the money. They should look at the pricing more clearly because it's a little on the higher side."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"Pricing should be improved."
"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."
"In general, Microsoft BI's price is lower compared to Alteryx."
"The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided."
"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"This product offers good value for the money."
"Their price is good."
"It would be better if the price was cheaper."
"Microsoft BI is considered to be competitively priced when compared to other similar solutions in the market."
"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."
"The cost is a few hundred dollars per user per year."
"The Tibco sales teams have been very difficult to work with - ignoring requests, misrepresenting level of demand, etc."
"I would describe TIBCO Spotfire as an averagely-priced product."
"The solution is affordable one."
"In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable."
"The ROI is nearly impossible to calculate."
"The pricing seems competitive and reasonable. The value delivered by the product far exceeds the cost."
"The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Answers from the Community

Esteban Fabiani - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 18, 2022
Jan 18, 2022
Hi @Esteban Fabiani ​- you may also read this comparative study on peerspot https://www.peerspot.com/produ...
2 out of 3 answers
EB
Jan 17, 2022
Hi @Sai-Krishna, @Santosh Kurakula, @DenisGauder, @reviewer1441695 and @reviewer1431795, Can you please help answer this question to @Esteban Fabiani? Tnx.​
AM
Jan 18, 2022
Hi @Esteban Fabiani ​- Thank you for posting this great question. All the tools have base-level functionalities which could serve your day-to-day data analysis and visualizations.  There are various aspects that you would need to consider before choosing these tools such as  1. what are the primary use cases? Who will be using them? (Power BI is more user friendly) 2. Do they require a lot of customisations on the UI/UX  ( Spotfire can be more flexible with IronPython scripts for custom UI development, Tableau has the best quality UI and charts) 3. Which cloud platform or server you would be using and what kind of computation power is required (if you are a Microsoft shop then Power BI should be preferred as it can be integrated with many MS applications at ease) 4. Cost - probably one of the key concerns  (Power BI will be cheaper (desktop version is free) than Spotfire and Tableau)  5. Availability of talent within an organization as well as in the market (more talent available for Power BI and Tableau) 6. Many Oil & Gas, Manufacturing companies prefer Spotfire, but a slow move towards Power BI or Tableau or other visualization tools based on use cases. Many companies use Microstrategy for enterprise reporting 7. You may download free buyer guide reports from Peerspot, which would help you to choose the right one.  All the best. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Educational Organization
41%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Energy/Utilities Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
What do you like most about TIBCO Spotfire?
TIBCO Spotfire is easy to use. We initiated Spotfire as POC, with support from a tech team based in South Africa. Whi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
Spotfire is a bit costly in terms of money, but it is value for money if you are installing it and working with it. C...
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
The hierarchies or the maps to some extent may need some modifications. The layered features within Spotfire can make...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
Spotfire
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. TIBCO Spotfire and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.