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SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs TIBCO Spotfire comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

SAP BusinessObjects Busines...
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
TIBCO Spotfire
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
14th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is 3.8%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Spotfire is 1.1%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Sumeet  Zalpuri - PeerSpot reviewer
Fully integrated enterprise-level tool
The initial setup was not straightforward. Since it is a complete enterprise tool, it needs a certain level of expertise to set up the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. There are a lot of steps involved. You need to get the user accepted and you need to validate the data. So you need to understand the architecture of the application. I would rate the initial setup as moderate since it's not very easy or much difficult. For a small enterprise, the installation would take one day. You must ensure you are on a supported platform like Windows or Linux and if your database is not on the server but in a different zone of the network, you need to ensure connectivity. You must also ensure the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform supports your organization's browser. These are the major things that must be taken care of before the installation. Around 500 users are using the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform in my company. We are a team of around eight technical people involved in the deployment and maintenance of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you run a SAP shop with ECC, the best solution is the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform because it's tightly integrated. You'll get lots of offers from SAP when it comes to licensing. So there's an advantage. But if you are not a SAP shop, the licensing becomes a hindrance. So if you have SAP as a source, then I recommend people to go with SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform as it's a tool that works wonders. I have been working on POCs where we use SAP data for BI, which was a nightmare. So if you have ECC and SAP in the back end, go with the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform. If you have any other tools in the back end, then try to negotiate and see the use case.
Mohsin Pathan - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, offers a single pane of glass, and is highly customizable
There's one area I see that specifically needs improvement. That is when you do the data loading. It is slow. For historical data, when you talk about gigabytes of data, terabytes of data, then it becomes prolonged. Loading could be improved. That's one part. That is actually there with every tool. I would not say that this is a specific problem with Spotfire. However, it is a problem with all the BI tools. That is one area which can be improved. When you are doing analytics, you see that the value has to come perfect. There was a missing feature of alerting out of the box within Spotfire. However, they have released this in version 12.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature of BusinessObjects is its integration with the SAP ERP system. If an organization is using SAP as its ERP system, and they want to do business intelligence, reporting, or analysis, SAP BusinessObjects is the only tool that I see doing that quite efficiently. That's because of the fact it is tightly integrated, and it gives a good user experience in terms of faster reporting. Its integration is the feature that I have found most valuable, but there are also other factors."
"To share a metadata service layer, you don't need to add a user or write a SQL query. Instead, you can present a raw database to your end user."
"The solution is stable."
"​Provides autonomy for all the business users to develop their own reports.​"
"First of all, visualization tools, productivity, and predictive forecasting are mature."
"The common metadata environment means that the entire organisation has the same definition of core measures rather than these being derived in spreadsheets or specific reports."
"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 provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly-complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."
"It's scalable."
"Spotfire is excellent for scientific applications, especially because of its integration with RNG."
"Data discovery is very simple."
"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 out-of-the-box features are simple and easy to use across the board."
"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."
"The ability to create a real-time data mark, using just one piece of software, is the best feature of this product."
"R and automation services."
 

Cons

"It needs to be more flexible for the end-user."
"The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."
"Over the years, the product tends to rename and rebrand itself and change its direction. This is a deficit of the solution."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has always struggled with dashboarding."
"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."
"The solution can improve by having more analytical features."
"We would like to see a native version of BusinessObjects and Web Intelligence created for the cloud."
"​This product could be improved with Cloud Integrations and Predictive Analytics functions integration."
"Compared to competitors, the UI is quite dated."
"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 can be difficult."
"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."
"Print capability and trigger-based events."
"The layered features within Spotfire can make it a bit complicated sometimes as compared to Power BI."
"The design of the UI could be improved."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
"It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
"It is not a subscription model, but you must purchase a perpetual license for this."
"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 price and the pricing model are fine. We find the solution does not give us a lot of additional value."
"The SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform has to improve its licensing cost."
"It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
"Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
"The ROI is nearly impossible to calculate."
"The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels."
"The cost is a few hundred dollars per user per year."
"The cost of TIBCO Spotfire could improve. It should be less expensive. It's the most expensive visualization tool in our company."
"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 Tibco sales teams have been very difficult to work with - ignoring requests, misrepresenting level of demand, etc."
"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."
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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
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
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 been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
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 process.
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. While they assisted with the setup, we conducted the POC ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TIBCO Spotfire?
Compared to other tools, Spotfire's pricing is competitive, especially with its enterprise licensing.
What needs improvement with TIBCO Spotfire?
Spotfire requires better documentation. Unlike competitors like Power BI and Tableau, Spotfire lacks comprehensive metadata dictionaries. This makes it difficult to generate usage metrics, which ar...
 

Also Known As

SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
Spotfire
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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: March 2025.
842,161 professionals have used our research since 2012.