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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform 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)
SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 4.5%, down from 5.7% 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.
MukeshMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
Visualization is better than other tools, offers good dashboard and analytics features but it is not easy to adapt to the product
As per my opinion, because SAP is a very worldwide product or very useful product, I'm not talking about improvement, because I just think that SAP can focus on the pricing factor. The cost of this product, so every company is not suitable to use it. Because of the very huge amount of integrations, every organization can not use it. So, it is a very costly product. Secondly, from an educational point of view, So, it is not easy to adapt to each and every IT person because some, most, in India, most cities, such as Delhi, Bangalore, or Chennai, only metro support the educational platform for that. So, just my suggestion is SAP should focus on every user; it should be easy to pick the product and, easy to carry, easy to use in every life. So, SAP must try to improve in this part.
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

"The initial setup is quite straightforward."
"A drag-and-drop interface for selecting creating ad hoc reports makes this product very easy to use."
"One of the strong suits of Cognos is its robust corporate reporting capability."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"The Report Studio that is aimed at professional report writers."
"The tool can join data from different sources, write back to databases, generate alerts, and be customized to our preferences. It's an enterprise BI tool that's more powerful than just visualization tools like Power BI or Tableau."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"It is stable and robust. It has pretty direct integration with SAP ERP. It is easy to use."
"The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries."
"​The report development tool called SAP Web Intelligence under the BI Launch Pad portal has been the most valuable feature."
"The Dynamic HTML (DHTML) client option of Webi has been enhanced adding features that were previously only available with the Java client including conditional formatting and support of XLS as a data provider."
"​It is a very good product, stable, and has good technical capabilities.​"
"The feature that allows pivot users to create the report dashboards and run them when they want with a lot of flexibility with the drill-downs is very useful. The drill-down features are very good because, in other solutions, such as Excel, you have to create separate pivot tables and a lot of other operations to do drill-downs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform tool does the drill-downs automatically. Overall the solution is user-friendly and has a lot of drag and drop features."
"Through the use of Business Intelligence reporting and scheduling features, reports are generated and automatically sent according to a schedule. This has freed up countless hours spent performing the same tasks, month over month."
"The solution's user security is extremely effective. You can profile very well. All the users and all the functionality is protected and that includes information and data segregation."
"The ability to create a real-time data mark, using just one piece of software, is the best feature of this product."
"From a scalability standpoint, I would say it's pretty fantastic."
"Live Query data on demand, R and Python integration, and the ability to write HTML and JavaScript text areas are all valuable features."
"We particularly like the data angling feature of this solution. This gives us the ability to work on data transformations, join files, and carry out other data preparation tasks all in a single tool."
"It’s stable and straightforward."
"I appreciate Spotfire's range of visualization options, advanced analytics features, and seamless integration with other TIBCO products."
"R and automation services."
"The solution is an affordable one."
 

Cons

"I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older versions like IBM Cognos 10 or 8. Additionally, the Event Studio, which offered great flexibility in previous versions, is no longer available in IBM Cognos Analytics 12. These are areas that could be improved to enhance the product."
"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"It would be better if it is was easier to implement without extensive training for it."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"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."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"It needs to be more flexible for the end-user."
"The combination of Lumira along with Design Studio merger last year still needs development from a visualization standpoint."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive and not cost-effective. It should also be improved in terms of end-user experience. It requires further improvements for usability and ease of use. It should have more dashboarding metrics and much faster integration with ERP so that when you double click, you can instantly see the scenario-based result."
"The biggest area for improvement would be the dashboarding capabilities due to the recent change from Xcelsius to Dashboard Designer. This has created a gigantic ripple in many companies because the skill sets required are drastically different."
"Its data visualization tool is not as good as Power BI and Tableau. Currently, for data visualization, you need to spend more money to buy another solution such as Power BI or Tableau. It is also very hard to integrate it with other third-party solutions. Its integration with other solutions should be improved."
"This solution is complex to configure and administer."
"The UI could be updated a bit."
"The user interface should be easier to use and navigate."
"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."
"We would like to see some development in the visualization aspect of this solution, as they can currently only be configured in the cloud, which limits us to one endpoint. It would be helpful if this could be integrated with other tools."
"Personalising Spotfire, as a whole, is painful and is something that could be made easier."
"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."
"The initial setup of TIBCO Spotfire is in the middle range of difficulty. The initial setup of Power BI is easier."
"The initial setup can be difficult."
"The solution might be generic."
"The number of charts available out of the box in Spotfire can be enhanced."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is averagely priced."
"The solution is affordable."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"Pricing should be improved."
"My company uses IBM Cognos with another IBM product, so I think only one license is used."
"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."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
"​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
"The price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"We purchase licenses through Epic. So, we get an Epic price as opposed to the SAP price. If we were going to use other products like Webby that they offer or exclusively use BI Launch Pad, it would cost a lot because half of our employees would touch it in some fashion. So, we use Epic-Crystal integration to keep the licensing cost down. I believe the BI Launch Pad licensing is something like $800 for each, and the Crystal Report licensing is something like $500 for each, but that's not what we pay."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"This product carries a monthly licensing charge, with the amount depending on the features that are to be included. This costs also covers the use of technical support."
"The Tibco sales teams have been very difficult to work with - ignoring requests, misrepresenting level of demand, etc."
"The cost of TIBCO Spotfire could improve. It should be less expensive. It's the most expensive visualization tool in our company."
"The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels."
"In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable."
"I would describe TIBCO Spotfire as an averagely-priced product."
"The cost is a few hundred dollars per user per year."
"The solution is affordable one."
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Comparison Review

it_user6663 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 25, 2013
SAP Business Objects vs. Microsoft BI
A quick look at the whole idea on another weblogs gives you a sense that all of them just talked about very brief things like report refresh feature in BO or cube feature in MS Analysis Service. I choose MS BI and I want to share my reasons and opinions on why I choose it and give you another quick…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
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...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
What do you like most about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform?
What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making ...
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
SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
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.
SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
Allergan, ASSS de Montreal, Avantium, Blue River, Bank of Montreal, Citibank, FrieslandCampina, Hellmann Logistics, Merck, Novartis
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs. TIBCO Spotfire and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.