TIBCO Spotfire Reviews

• Embedded R scripts
• Mapserver

These features are key to separating BI tools from ETL tools. RDMS have ETL tools that run the transfer protocol. Some BI tools in the oil and gas industry have ETL features that take the place of accessing the database directly. In the big data ecosystem, the data cleansing process takes place before ETL processes are run to integrate the data. On the other hand, in RDMS, the data cleansing takes place after the data has been imported from disparate system into the database.

I used it in an academic setting as a resource to learn R scripting. I have found it an easy API to learn.

I encourage a seamless integration with Hadoop; a direct connection to Hadoop server from a session in Spotfire. This might exist for the Spotfire server connectivity, but I do not work with the server version.

I have infrequently used it for two years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I haven't used technical support.

I have used several BI tools and still maintain this diversity in product usage.

Initial setup was somewhat complex on the client’s system. I am not familiar with the server installation.

It is economical to consider desktop client usage when possible.

I also use QlkView, Tableau and MicroStrategy.

Consider how you intend to use the product before investing in functionality that you might not need.

Self-service analytics and easy visualisation are the most valuable features of this product to me. It shows where you are fetching data from, in the same way that you like to have a data model for a database. If you made a mistake in building a table, you need to start all over, there is no way to change it. That takes a lot of time.

This saves time in the analysis of the data structure and in fixing issues in the data structure of data tables.

It gives us better insight into data, taking things out of Excel and sharing solutions. We save many millions of dollars.

I would like it to be easier to see how data is combined and when a user changes. It would help when creating complex Spotfire files.

I have used this solution for 15 years.

Deployment is easy and stable.

Scaling was harder with prior versions, but better since 7.5.

I rate customer service 8/10.

I rate technical support 9/10.

The initial setup was simple, but that was 15 years ago. We are now at >10,000 users.

Implementation was performed by an in-house team with specialized contractors.

We looked at PowerBI, Tableau and Lumira. On features and on deployment in large organisations, Spotfire scores very well.

Being able to create dashboards on the fly while stakeholders give requirements in real-time is extremely valuable in advertising. Creating dashboards with high interactivity and drilling down with record sets of multi-millions of rows is very fast. Stake holders would have experience a very long lag with similar tools on the market.

Spotfire also has a sky-is-the-limit extensibility to it that is very impressive. I can say yes to almost anything a stakeholder asks for and be able to deliver.

There is a bevy of advanced analytics tools included that only SAS can compete with.

Our organization utilizes Spotfire in many ways, we have had major success in using Spotfire for resource utilization and project management as well as with big data in website analytics.

We have demonstrated creating tools using advanced analytics in Spotfire that our analytics team can run and get the information needed to provide insights extremely fast.

Some of the syntax for custom expressions can be complicated and the learning curve for advanced work is steep.

Training is only offered by Tibco and there are not many courses for advanced usage. There are a few internet blogs and community forums I can turn to, but I would like to see more training options available.

The only stability problems we have encountered are due to the anti-virus software running on the servers, but it is very rare and runs 24x7 for months without any intervention.

The product is very scalable. If server resources are running low, we can spin up a virtual server and create a new node to help share the burden.

Technical support can be a slow process involving email threads and scheduling screen share meetings, but they usually solve the problem in the end.

Implemented in house.

We evaluated Tableau and PowerBI

Spotfire is a very impressive solution and I would highly recommend it.

We utilize the solution for real-time analytics. We have some IoT devices connected to the dashboard, allowing us to view analytics related to the devices for our clients in the energy sectors.

TIBCO Spotfire can be connected to the cloud or deployed on-premise. TIBCO also offers cloud servers for cloud deployment.

The most valuable feature is the map visuals that help us connect to the geo-specialized data which is more advanced than other solutions.

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. It would be beneficial if we had a feature to assist us in connecting to the pages of our special data, thus allowing us to the relationships easily.

I have been using the solution for five months.

TIBCO Spotfire is a stable solution that is able to handle a large data set and continue working efficiently.

The technical support is good. 

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We had a few drag-and-drop items and some recommendations. Depending on the data sets the deployment can be completed within two days.

In comparison to other solutions such as IBM Cognos, TIBCO Spotfire is more affordable.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

I recommend TIBCO Spotfire.

It's not specific, but in general, the product's ability to handle large volumes of data through its in-memory OLAP is valuable, as well as its data visualization capabilities.

For most organizations which are generally not so tech-savvy, people usually rely on Excel to do their data analytics. But once the size of data hits a certain level, it becomes very inefficient to manage your Excel files. Once you are at this stage, you could either get a developer to come up with a solution (most likely an enterprise tool or some sort of OLAP database solution), or you could get a stand-alone version of Spotfire.

If you have someone in your team with a little bit of database development skill, learning to use Spotfire is not too difficult and you could save time and money on implementing a full-blown solution by IT consultants.

Our old executive reports were heavily text-based. People responsible for generating reports would spend a lot of time writing a report that nobody read. Once we implemented Spotfire, the reports have become data-driven and visually appealing.

We carefully designed the analytic report in a way that condenses text-based information into visual information that is easy to digest. It is true that you could also achieve the same outcome with Excel or other MS Office tools, but with Spotfire's data visualization capabilities, the job is much easier.

I'm not a technical expert, but based on my experience from the user/designer point of view, the level of visual customization (e.g., how graphical objects are displayed) needs more flexibility.

Learning to use the scripting language (Python) proved a challenge for me personally due to lack of good documentation, and the scripting editor is not so user-friendly. If you want greater flexibility and more powerful features than what's offered, you may need to hire a Spotfire developer to do the coding.

I have used the solution for around two to three years.

Generally speaking, the software is quite stable (both the application and back-end server). However, we did experience application crashes from time to time when memory usage is heavy, but we aren't technical experts, so we could not identify exactly when/why it crashed.

In terms of its ability to handle a big volume of data, it's highly scalable. But in my organization in which Spotfire was used mainly as a reporting tool, we found it a bit challenging to scale up our report configuration. For example, with MS Access, you create a master layout which can be used for several projects or customers. In Spotfire, we ended up having to create separate master layouts for every project. When there was a request to modify the report layout, it was a tedious task.

I haven't had enough experience dealing with technical support to answer this question.

We used a combination of out-of-the-box software solutions and Excel/Access before we added Spotfire to make our lives a bit easier. We did not switch completely from existing tools to Spotfire. It's more about adding Spotfire in order to enhance our existing system.

Our requirements were simple (only at the department level in a large organization). So the initial setup of the Spotfire server was straightforward and was done within a few days. The main issue was obtaining security credentials from the IT department to access database servers we need to generate reports.

A less-straightforward step is when we needed to design our analytical reports that meet the requirements of our executives. Here, it is nothing to do with Spotfire or any other software but more about good communication with the stakeholders.

My advice based on personal experience would be to start small and scale up when you're certain that Spotfire is the right tool for you. In our organization, we started with a couple of stand-alone licenses for one year. Only after that, we decided to implement a server-based license to expand our user base for the whole department.

We tried Spotfire and liked it, so we did not have the need to evaluate other options. However, other well-known (perhaps more popular) options include Tableau and QlikView. You can refer to the Gartner's Magic Quadrant report on BI tools.

In addition to what I have written regarding pricing and licensing, I suggest that having an in-house power user in your organization - who understands both the tool and your needs - is highly critical.

• It has the best types of visualisations.
• We can do lot of scripting for better analysis.

I am giving an answer that considers one scenario. For example, we have health care client. They need their standards as high as possible all the time. For that reason, they want to know their drug risk level calculation for every time zone throughout the world. I developed one dashboard that can show them their drug risk level and calculate new risks, etc., whenever they required.

Room for improvement is in comparison with another tools. I need to see more options that do not require scripting in the tool, and I need more enhancements on the statistical server side. The reason is that for some every-day, simple things that are directly available as options in other tools, we need to script them in Spotfire.

I have been using this solution for the past two-and-a-half years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Technical support is really good. For every TIBCO product, there is a community where we can post our questions and get answers from experts from throughout the world.

I worked for three months on Cognos. Compared to it, Spotfire is easy to learn and we can develop wonderful visualisations.

In Cognos, it took too much time to run the reports. In Spotfire, it takes a lot less time.

The server setup and all remaining installations are very easy. There are many sources in Google to get solutions for our queries and also many docs exist from TIBCO.

I have implemented everything on my office machine. I would like to suggest that if we are not able to provide the exact solution for a user’s needs, then we have many options in this tool to provide the best solution.

Those who are willing to make analytics easier with better understanding, this is the best tool and it is the easiest tool to learn quickly.

There are many valuable features but Information Designer is one that is more valuable. It gives a data model created, so the user doesn't have to go into the SQL details. There are filters, joins, stored procedure call, parameterized info links, and so on.

It got rid of a static report, there is now no need for multiple reports, and it provides user interaction. A single report serves multiple users, and they can access it via web browser.

Maintenance is greatly reduced.

I would like to see a few more charts and properties, easy integration with HTML design, d3 charts, and custom charts. This would take reporting to new heights in terms of UI and design as report features are plenty. It needs more flexibility in terms of designing a report.

I have been using this solution for five years.

I did not encounter any deployment issues.

They are awesome. Tibco has a support cell and we can raise a ticket that has an SLA for them. Also, there is a large user community and technical information for Spotfire, so there is no issue as such to get assistance.

We used to use SSRS and Excel.

Old versions are static and need a lot of maintenance and repeat work.

Initial setup was straightforward and a guide is available.

I implemented it by myself as I do have implementation knowledge already. My advice is to follow the steps and guidelines. It is all nicely written and proven over a long period of time.

We realize ROI through less maintenance, one-time work, easy accessibility, and less manual work.

Pricing is little on the high side but looking at long-term benefits, the company can bear it.

There are other products in the market but don't go only on sales talk. They will always talk big magical things.

Evaluate first what it has, period.

See the flexibility.

Plan for your needs.

Use the guidelines.

.NET SDK, IronPython and R integration

We are BI Consultants and this tool is by far the most complete software for data analysis. It has helped many organizations to analyze, predict next trends and report findings using interactive dashboards. One of the best features is the capability to export the analysis to make it run in a web browser without loosing the core interactive and filtering functionality making it available to anyone without having to install any software. This characteristic can represent in huge savings in custom web application programming efforts.

The look and feel is not very customizable out of the box, which is the cherry on the cake when it comes to analazing data. If you are looking for a nice looking sexy reporting tool, this is not it but I doubt you will find one with the brains and sophistication Spotfire has.

6+ years in different projects and 2 years doing full time Spotfire consulting

As any other software, deployment has its challenges, but once the server is up and running, it is reliable stable. If you follow the well written Spotfire documentation, you should be good to go.

Issues come and go by the Spotfire development team via the hot fixes and constant version updates. No major issues with stability from my end. If there are any, the issues are addressed quickly.

They have new version releases twice a year, which is hard to keep up with the latest version since it requires migration efforts from the IT admins. If you do not keep up to date, in a few years Spotfire will no longer support your outdated version. Another issue is that once you convert and old version analysis to a new version, you can no longer save it as an old version, but that is rarely the case to be backward compatible.

I am a technical guy, but according to the business, they are very responsive and generous.

They have a strong Spotfire community where they discuss technical issues. My experience with technical support is limited.

I was born with Spotfire so I never "switch" but I tried other tools, however it is hard to compare apples to apples.

With the right technical skills, especially in reading and following instructions, you should not have any issues installing and configuring the Spotfire Server. For the client, it is straightforward.

We are Spotifre consultants, so we are that vendor team that implements Spotfire to our customers.

I do not have that figure

It really depends on the complexity of the client. Each project and client are different hence, each each implementation will have a different setup cost.

No

If you are looking for an analysis tool, this is the one. It has great features. It is also great for interactive dashboards that can save huge web development work. A 3 months web application sashboard project, even with third party controls to consume data from a database can be done in a couple of hours with Spotfire.

Also, I have a technical blog that helps developers extend Spotfire beyond its out of the box features http://spotfired.blogspot.com