What is most valuable?
.NET SDK, IronPython and R integration
How has it helped my organization?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
6+ years in different projects and 2 years doing full time Spotfire consulting
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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 If you do not keep up to date, in a few years Spotfire will no longer support your outdated version.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.
How are customer service and technical support?
Customer Service:
I am a technical guy, but according to the business, they are very responsive and generous.
Technical Support:
They have a strong Spotfire community where they discuss technical issues. My experience with technical support is limited.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I was born with Spotfire so I never "switch" but I tried other tools, however it is hard to compare apples to apples.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
We are Spotifre consultants, so we are that vendor team that implements Spotfire to our customers.
What was our ROI?
I do not have that figure
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
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
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Does this tool have multidimensional database modelling support?