TIBCO Spotfire Reviews

It is difficult to identify the most valuable features as it typically depends on the project. I would say that the feature that is a ‘must have’ for all projects is the Details on Demand. This feature allows me to immediately identify the details associated with a visualization without having to create query against it.

Most currently, I have been leveraging scatterplots, geographical mapping, and linear regression visualizations.

I have produced numerous models on customer segmentation, leveraging cross-tab; summary tables; scatterplots; k-means clustering; and custom filtering. One such tool has essentially allowed us to create real-time custom segments of customers based on similar customer attributes. Historically, we used P$YCLE codes for segmenting but now we can create 10-13 segments on the fly based on our own customer data.

Spotfire needs to allow for more of a database feel when using multiple data files. In order to use more than one file in a visualization (e.g., customer and customer sales history), the user has to build relationships between the tables on a one-to-one basis. Some visualizations allow the user to pull data from multiple tables while others are limited. Building the relationships between tables also feels somewhat clunky. Much of the power behind the Details on Demand (DOD) feature is adversely impacted by only being able to view details for the source table. This means that data contained within related tables (by way of the previously built relationships) cannot be previewed through the DOD unless the user inserts columns of the related table(s) into the source table. This inserting procedure is also somewhat clunky and leads to manipulating the original source file.

I have been using the Spotfire application for about two years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues. Spotfire is a robust visual analytics platform capable of crunching a lot of data. Because the processing is in-memory, users are only limited by how much memory that they have on their system.

Technical support is exemplary.

I have used other so-called analytics tools in the past but Spotfire buries most others. Even Microsoft Power BI is unable to compete with the ease of the Details on Demand feature available within Spotfire.

Setup was simple.

We implemented on our own.

Pricing is competitive, as it relates to most other enterprise-wide applications.

The UI is very easy to pick up and learn. I would also say that people considering Spotfire should preview the predictive analytics component. It is really smooth and provides the necessary statistical tools to help build forecasting models.

Data visualization: Spotfire is an incredible, powerful tool capable of creating data analysis "templates" or "dashboards", which can be shared globally and can be used to visualize data to make business decisions.

We have used Spotfire to monitor test equipment utilization worldwide, and are able to respond to testers that have been identified as "down." This type of analysis also reduces costs because, instead of the test facilities purchasing new equipment, we can work on increasing utilization.

Version 7 was recently released, so I am still not familiar with all the features. However, ease of connecting to Oracle databases and parameterizing the database queries would be useful.

I have been using it since June 2011 (five years).

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

I can't say; I have not reached out to customer service for Spotfire. However, there is an abundance of knowledge online which I have used to solve problems in the past. The online community is pretty active.

The company I previously worked for used Excel for their data analysis and would not consider paying for Spotfire. But, I highly recommend Spotfire if your data analysis needs are pretty extensive.

I use this solution to handle business intelligence issues.

The ability to create a real-time data mark, using just one piece of software, is the best feature of this product.

I would like to see the visualization library in this solution expanded, so that I can increase what I can offer to our clients.

I would also like an option for dashboard creation on mobile and tablet to be added to this solution. At present, the mobile functionality is not as well developed as the web functionality.

I have been working with this product for seven years.

I have found this solution to be very stable.

This solution is easily scalable. Even if you didn't project the correct number of users during implementation, it only takes a day or two to open the system up.

The customer support for this solution is very good.

Positive

The initial setup of this solution was very simple, and straightforward.

The price-point for this solution is negotiable depending on usage levels.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it for reporting and metrics.

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.

It does very well at collecting metrics and giving us concise reports based on what we need.

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 want something that is easier to get over to AWS.

Its stability has been good. We experienced crashes a few versions back, but the current version that we're on has been stable.

We are heavily into AWS; the company is about 75% into AWS. 

We have over 10,000 employees with about 5000 active users of the product.

I would recommend evaluating it against other products. When I got onto the team, we didn't evaluate it against any other products. It was the one that was already in-house, so we went with it. If somebody wants to evaluate it for use, I would recommend that they have two or three other products that they could compare it against.

We use it a lot with TIBCO EMS. It works relatively well with that. It is able to gather performance metrics on it.

We are using the non-AWS version.

• Text areas
• R and automation services
• Schedule updates

We were able to automate manual reports, which we then email a report copy to the user's mailbox instead of someone manually creating the report and sharing it in bigger user groups.

• PDF export
• Print capability and trigger-based events
• Real time reporting

Five years.

Data refresh got stuck few times.

No, we have 700GB of Web Player Nodes. We have never consumed more than 10% of the available memory.

Excellent.

Yes, we had challenges with the firewall, but those were internal. Expect the rest of the setup to be quite straightforward.

Scale the servers based on need and follow standards in developing reports. Reuse information links, columns, filters, etc.

The quick data mash-up and manipulation and the visualization of large amounts of data.

Spotfire allows me to combine data from disparate data sources quickly and to investigate if my joins are appropriate visually. Additionally, the data transformations available when bringing in the data allow for quick changes such as pivoting and unpivoting, data type change, and renaming of columns. I am also able to load in large amounts of data within Spotfire and slice and dice this data as desired. I’ve had over 50 million rows of data in a single file and was able to create drillable visualizations with the entire data set.

Due to the creation of information links directly against our ArcGIS database feature classes, we are able to have live updated interactive shapefiles shared across the company.

We are also able to create visualizations in an interactive (investigative) dashboard combining data from multiple databases. These dashboards can serve somewhat as a self-service investigative tool by our team members to answer questions they might have about a particular issue.

I believe the number one feature that needs improvement is the ability to edit the data table construction/modification steps after the fact, similar to the Microsoft Power Query interface. Although you can prototype quickly in Spotfire, if you’ve made a mistake in building your table, you often times have to start from scratch to fix your error. Being able to modify these steps would greatly enhance the data preparation ability of Spotfire.

Also, further control over the stylization of shapes and shapefiles would be beneficial (e.g., dashed lines in shapefiles, different fill patterns rather than solid, etc.).

I have been using it for four years.

As far as deployment, everything I have experienced has been ok. We did have some issues in getting everything set up with Kerberos authentication and had to work with Tibco quite a bit on how to configure everything properly.

The stability is pretty good. However, if you have a decent-sized data set (maybe 100 columns by a few hundred thousand rows) and you create a lot of complex visualizations, sometimes the program will crash on you. As there is no auto-save feature, this can cause an issue sometimes.

I can’t really speak to the scalability issues as I haven’t been involved with that.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d say customer service is a 9. Their customer service representatives are usually extremely responsive and knowledgeable. For more complicated issues, they will schedule WebExes to facilitate a more efficient customer service experience. Furthermore, they are good at adding your requests as enhancement requests if the feature in question doesn’t exist.

I switched from using Excel to Spotfire about four years ago. At that time, I was not part of any other program evaluations. I was just provided with Spotfire.

Currently, I have worked with Power Query, PowerPivot, Power Maps, and Power BI and find them to be useful tools, especially for a reduced cost (sometimes free). However, I would classify these solutions as SpotfireLite. For many users at a company, the Power Suite would probably be suitable for general data investigation. Yet, you will reach a point at which the Power Suite cannot achieve the same functionality in such a controllable way as Spotfire. E.g., trend analysis, box plots, easy drillability, etc.

• Ability to handle large amounts of data from multiple sources and quickly visualize it for users.
• Connectivity to widely used data management (MDM) solutions in place in most organizations
• Easy to train users in how to use the dashboards, visualizations and maximize their performance as users

From a safety standpoint, I have developed visualizations that have highlighted trends in past history. When identified, they helped the business determine where to put more focus and consciousness in operations so that they can reduce injuries.

I would like to see improved mobile capabilities.

I would like more functionality in the formatting of the pages so that they can have more of an application with the look and feel of other custom-developed solutions with the organization.

I have used it for eight years.

I have never had issues with deployment or scalability, TIBCO offers different versions to fit customers’ needs (desktop, web based, etc.).

Technical support is average; however, the user conferences that are held regionally and nationally provide a lot of value.

I previously used Oracle OBIEE. We switched because:

• Development time was too long.
• Overhead of resources required to maintain it was too high.
• Spotfire will offer very fast enterprise data and visualization capabilities in a short amount of time.

Initial setup is straightforward; there are downloads that you perform in order that make it easier than it used to be, but it is not quite plug and play for an enterprise implementation.

I implemented it with an in-house team.

You may not need one, but establish a contact number at TIBCO for extra help should you encounter problems.

ROI depends on the maturity and adoption of the organization. Spotfire can have an exponentially higher ROI than what it costs, if implemented well, adoption programs are in place and users are trained.

Users can license and download directly from the TIBCO website and be active within minutes.

I highly recommend Spotfire.

The most valuable features of this product, for me, are:

• Applying transformations to data tables: With these transformations, I can make the structure of the data most suitable for answering the user's questions with the visualisations.
• The visualisations: They look very good, are easy to use and can answer almost any business question.

I would like to see the improvements in the following areas:

• The info designer feature: The user interface could be more graphical, it would make it more user friendly and flexible.
• The transformations and insertions of rows and columns: Tables can be created by using transformations and inserting rows and columns. I would like to have more ability to make changes to these transformation and insertions without having to recreate the complete table from scratch.

I have used this solution for three years.

I did not encounter any issues with deployment.

I rate technical support 9/10 (very quick and good response, good level of knowledge).

I previously used IBM Cognos products also as a consultant. I choose Cognos because I thought (and still think) that Cognos is a good product.

I am no real technical consultant, but I found the initial setup pretty straightforward. After installing the software, no enormous or complex configuration is needed.

We implement for our customers and also for customers of TIBCO.

Start small but think big. When you start using the product - regarding setting up authorisation and setting up the library, for instance - work structured and with a kind of policy that is scalable and flexible regarding maintenance.