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.

Driving details visualizations is the most valuable feature of this product to me. One of the greatest strengths of the tool comes from being able to build high-level projects that can be implemented in many ways. In my industry, we are attempting to consolidate analytical tools to give our engineers a few “one-stop shops" rather than each person doing their own work in a bubble. It allows us to collectively write a procedure for data transformation that can accommodate most if not all of our team’s needs.

We are moving away from a single person exploring data and giving presentations towards team exploration of data in a conference room environment.

From what I understand, some of the issues I’ve had have been addressed in 7.0, but my company has not upgraded yet. Layering multiple levels of aggregation is something I’m constantly asked to provide, which has been difficult to do in the versions I have used so far.

I have used the solution for eight years.

Some of the previous versions have had stability issues, but 6.5 appears very stable.

I have run into issues with large datasets (>2M records), and attempting to build relationships between tables for use in a single visualization.

I’ve never been part of the original setup of Spotfire. I’ve worked for four different companies, all of which already had their own server installed. I can say that there hasn’t been much of an issue moving from company to company, other than general organization methodology.

Start small. Tibco tends to push the higher level subscriptions, and want you to buy their server. I’ve found that the base version is a great introduction at a reasonable cost, and allows teams to evaluate whether they want to continue using the product with minimal effort from the IT department (You can just download the base version from the internet and start using it.)

I still currently use a myriad of solutions – it all depends on if I think there will be followup questions asked of the data. Often times, the engineers I work with are not familiar/comfortable with the data, so requests become iterative as projects evolve. There are certainly times where dumping data to Excel and giving a customized pivot table is a better solution because the engineer finds that less daunting.

Make sure you have people dedicated to data quality/analytics. Spotfire isn’t a software package that you can dabble in and make it worth your while. Once you understand how they organize the tools, it is fairly easy to navigate, but things like syntax for expressions/calculations trip people up in their early stages. The reasons to choose Spotfire over other BI tools are that the other tools are more difficult to implement and they will require a significant time investment.

The following features are the most valuable to me:

• Ability to import data from disparate sources and manipulate/transform that data
• Ability to create visualizations that communicate insight
• Integration with R

This application has reduced the amount of time we spend manipulating data in Excel.

Allow insert columns to be changed after the initial operation. Currently, if an insert columns operation needs to be changed, the user must replace the entire table and this could involve significant rework.

Expand the statistical modeling functions.

Allow lines in line charts to be formatted.

I have used this solution for 3.5 years.

I have found that the manuals for deployment can be lacking in detail and explanation. I frequently open help desk tickets when working on installations.

I rate technical support 7/10 and getting better.

I know that we had a vendor team do the initial installation but have done all upgrades and additional product (Stats Services) installations ourselves. Again, the manuals are often lacking in detail and explanation.

Spotfire seems to be more expensive than other tools and negotiating with the vendor can be difficult. They could make purchasing the product a lot easier by being more transparent on pricing and having the same pricing or pricing tiers for all customers. Customers absolutely hate this negotiation process because it is not transparent, and also because the negotiations seem to take a long time. Be transparent and fair.

I have only used Spotfire. Every oil and gas company I have worked for uses it.

The vendor has historically provided two updates per year, although there can be more. In my opinion, updates twice a year with new features is pretty good given the amount of testing required to rollout an updated version of the product.

Also, if you find defects in the software and report them to their HD, they will notify you when hotfixes have been created, and they are pretty good about pushing out hotfixes for known issues.

Creating reports and dashboards for end users to get insights of business fetching data from multiple data sources. 

It is one of the best BI tools that gives deep insights into our data along with analytical exposure and statistical services.

Data Connections, Information Links, WMS and TMS layer in Map Chart, In-Memory Analysis, Scheduled Updates, Support to IronPython, R-Script, S+, MATLAB for analytical capabilities.

With every new release of Spotfire comes up with new features which help the user experience like theme based visualizations, recommendations engine for visualizations, waterfall and KPI chart, annotations, comments on the charts, combining data for categorical values is very useful, nested aggregations and ODATA connectors are very important features which would edge to the dashboards.

More appealing in user interface like other tools. Sometimes users complain of only basic visualizations availability compared to other tools. These are available from third party but if those could be added in Spotfire itself then it would be great.

Nothing significant.

Easy to scale

Customer Service:

Good

Technical Support:

It's good but need improvement.

It was straightforward to setup the Spotfire environment provided you have some knowledge how the thing works in system but few things need lot of time and expertise.

In house team

Pricing and licensing are high compared to other tools, but ROI is great.

One of the best data visualization and analytical tools I have worked with and would definitely suggest others to evaluate and go for Spotfire to get the best ROI.

The following features are the most valuable to me:

• The ability to analyze your data quickly
• Extensibility: Quintus consultants develop QuintusVisuals and custom extensions using the Spotfire SDK.

In a previous job, I implemented a signaling system for calls coming in from the first line support desk. I placed Spotfire on top of a small live data sheet. It reloaded Spotfire with an external script and exported the analysis to HTML. After that, another script (created by a co-worker) ran to extract the contents and place the items in an automated web page, where tabs were switched every couple of seconds.

This tool was even able to run in the Network Operation Center on a big screen.

I'd like to see the following improvements:

• Configuration options (properties screens are too crowded)
• Licensing system: Make it more clear or get rid of the special groups and their special tick boxes that can only activate on that specific group.
• Enhance multiple scales in line and bar charts to grouped scales (group numerical, percentage etc. columns).

I have used this solution for about seven years.

In the recent version of Spotfire, 7.5 or 7.6, I was able to corrupt my webplayer services deployment with no way to restore it. I had to re-install it. Luckily, this is very quick to do.

Technical support provided very fast response times and helpful people. Excellent.

Initial setup was a straightforward process.

Because we are a Spotfire partner, we have the ability to deploy Spotfire in-house.

I tried to evaluate a version of Tableau but it felt hard to configure and not as easy as I’m used to with Spotfire.

It’s a business tool, but it’s always a good thing to have IT stand behind your decision when implementing it.

In my opinion, TIBCO Spotfire is the best tool that really serves the business analysis needs.

• 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.

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.