Spotfire

Pros

The various features associated with designs, complex data tables usage, ability to generate good info links to get desired data for visualization helps a lot of our clients .

Cons

We haven't come across any issues over the past 2 years of usage.

Pros

Flexibility, Data prep and data wrangling abilities within the platform. Spotfire will allow any end user to enhance their data discovery which will allow for faster decision making.

Cons

More customers should be using Spotfire. More capabilities than the two leading BI platforms on the market but they unfortunately own the market share. I've never met anyone that has used Spotfire that hasn't agreed Spotfire is a better tool. Spotfire's marketing strategy could use some work.

Pros

The range of different data analysis paths and visualisations available for use. Useful with large amounts of data.

Cons

Learning curve is very steep and sometimes the written help isn't as accessible. Very confusing interface and sometimes can crash.

Pros

It is extremely customizable so we have been able to create efficient templates that fit many of our process development engineering workflows. It links well with other systems to aggregate the data, and then using the tools we have created, we are able to easily line by/color by/trellis by a number of different experimental parameters to understand complex studies and DOEs with ease. It is a huge step up from our old workflow of graphing using Excel.

Cons

It can be difficult to learn how to customize complex templates with our giant data sets, so we had to specialize a small team of admins to create templates and troubleshoot issues. However, as an end user, it is very straightforward.

Pros

I love that Spotfire is able to process large file sizes extremely quickly, which means filtering millions of rows in seconds and making it easy to find and sort filter options. In addition, the visualizations in the tool are practically limitless and allow users to make incredibly complex but extremely useful and informative reports.

Cons

Spotfire is not easy to use and requires training from an experienced person to use. It is not nearly as user friendly as its competitors.

Pros

There are lots of different features available and lots of customizations you can make to your reports. I like that I can apply transformations to the data in there without having to modify my queries. I like how much I can do with my charts, and I really love the feature that highlights the rows of my data table that went into a particular part of my chart when I click on it.

Cons

It isn't as user friendly as what I'm used to (I'm used to Microsoft programs like Excel or Word, where everything is very straightforward). There was a longer learning period with this software before I was able to feel comfortable with it. The help guide here is kind of general. It doesn't have explicit instructions for everything, so I'm just experimenting a lot of the time to figure out how to do what I want to my report or chart. Also, it doesn't seem to have a feature that can automatically email you excel files. You have to log in and export the report yourself.

Pros

Spotfire has a nice user interface that is easy to figure out and set up automated tasks. Perhaps the biggest advantage of Spotfire over other data visualization tools is its connection with R and the ease in which one can connect R scripts with Spotfire visualizations. The beginning process of visualizing data and the suggested visualizations that Spotfire offers is nice, although it does require a few more clicks if you don't like the suggestions Spotfire suggests.

Cons

Spotfire is more expensive than other data visualization software, although I can see why. Spotfire has a host of additional graphical capabilities and analytical capabilities that I think justify the extra cost. It took me a little while to figure out how to set up the analytical models, but once set up, things run smoothly.

Pros

* User friendly interface and ease of access.
* Good design and functionality for graphs.
* Low cost.
* Ability to embed Python, HTML, and JavaScript.
* Plenty of data source options.

Cons

* Hard to customize some visualization objects.
* Few default functionality for computations especially on cross tables
* Sometimes the text editor is auto changing the code layout once saved.

Pros

This can be used across multiple data platform

Cons

Complicated administration takes time to understand infrastructure

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Spotfire

Switched From

Pros

can use javascript for integrating charts not existing on spotfire. best export tool to pdf and powerpoint. far away better than other tool.

Cons

bad text editor for javascript. iF the javascript errors, you need to restart the whole IDE. small community support.

Pros

Spotfire has allowed me to automate so many manual workflows that I thought I would be stuck with throughout my career and has helped free up a lot of my time

Cons

I wish there were more Spotfire power users that provided trainings on this tool

Pros

Spotfire is the gold standard when it comes to analyzing and presenting your data in a meaningful way. There are so many robust options and metrics that are at your disposal and once you master the tool, it can really help take your reporting to the next level.

Cons

Admittedly, there is a steep learning curve to mastering this tool, but that is to be expected. Once a basic understanding is reached, I do believe that the use will be able to start using some of the more advanced features in no time.

Pros

What not? A fully packed highly profitable & flagship product of TIBCO Software. It not only benefits the product owner, it benefits twice to Customers. One of the leading BI / Data Analytics Tool which has been chosen by Formula 1 for lap time and crashes simulator prediction.

It can integrate with wide variety of data Source. Can be adopted by industries like Finance, healthcare, energy and utility, logistics, etc

Cons

Pricing and Complex to install and use. Need skill.

Pros

It's a great visualization tool when itegrated with a more robust BI (Business Intelligence) tool. The filtering capibility of this tool are impressive! On a side panel, as you keep applying filters, on the other side, you can easily visualize the results. I remember taking all the training online which was easily available and we were also able to contact a representative for questions. They also help with professional installation.

Cons

I selected and implemented this tool at a cilent site. Where the visualization features were pretty robust, we needed to integrate this with a stronger BI tool to be able to do complicated analytics. It can a bit pricey but it's meant for bigger organizations, hence not that big of a concern.

Pros

The ease of use, the way you can set up reporting to show exactly what you want to see, along with the UX.

Cons

The reports aren't the easiest to set up, although they do show incredible amounts of data in great visualizations.

Pros

Dashboards are used to make business decisions which are data driven and are very powerful , intuitive in nature. Data can extracted from any format almost.

Cons

You got to spend years to fully utilize the tool. It is such a powerful tool.

Pros

Easy to use and create visual reports, more exciting design and layout for analysis.

Cons

Need more manuals training for the advance features.

Pros

If you are used to BI tools, setup and learning curve are very straightforward.
It is very easy to connect to the usual relational data sources, I would say easier than many other rival products.
The off-the shelf visualizations are very attracting and some of them can pinpoint data patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed. Even better, the visualization wizard actually analyzes your data before suggesting a default visual.
Machine learning is built on the tool, by following a simple tutorial you can start training ML models on your data.

Cons

When accessing a data source, you can only join tables, but you cannot - for instance - specify custom SQL instructions.
The desktop tool cannot JOIN data sources coming from separate DBs. (a feature that I often use, in a competing product)
As I said, there are some very good visualizations, but they are hard or impossible to customize.
I found some situations where compiling a dialog box (perhaps with illegal Machine Learning parameters, given my inexperience with the tool) and pressing "OK" did nothing and did not show any error or warning message. Without some informative feedback, these dialogs are unhelpful for the novices.

Pros

Graphs and charts available helps to analyze the data. Integration with Python also helps to analyze and manipulate the data as per the requirement. Documentation is very detailed. User community very supportive.

Cons

Integration with R is also required for statistical analysis and prediction using the data.

Pros

- A convenient platform to organising and arranging large volume of data to identify patterns and trends

Cons

-This platform is not convenient for small set of data.
- Convenient only for quantitative data analysis.

Pros

TIBCO Spotfire can be used to create quick and clean visualization plots. It is not difficult to use and can be easily learned.

Cons

There have been significant changes in the recent versions. Joining data tables could be confusing if not properly paid attention to.

Pros

Intuitive data viz software that allows you to build interactive dashboards which tend to dazzle non-technical colleagues. You can build products and share it with your team or leadership and let them explore the data in a controlled, safe environment.

Cons

Not the best software for true statistical analysis but that's probably a given. Also if you have messy datasets you may want to invest in a software to help you transform the data and prep it before integrating into Spotfire.

Pros

Allows you to group and visualize data in many different ways.

Cons

Requires some trainings to use the software.

Pros

Multiple data formats supported, strong analytical background heavy duty statistical chops, ability to produce strong data visualizations

Cons

Less than stellar customer support, price higher than most competitors (offset somewhat by evaluation capabilities)

Pros

Once you learn how to use the software it is very helpful. It is extremely helpful when using CSV files that are too big (too many rows) to use in excel.

Cons

The biggest drawback is that the software has so many functions and buttons, that it is very hard to know how to use all of the buttons. It is kind of overwhelming. It may be helpful if they make the look more simple and consolidate buttons by type (kind f like how has all its functionalities sorted by tabs).

Pros

Great for analyzing data and has interactive dashboards and can hold many filters in the same page

Cons

The tool can be improvised a lot and made easy to create visualisations

Pros

Can handle large data batches with no problem without impacting the overall loading speed . You can also store documentation on the cloud ,there is plenty of storage space and it is easy to access . The visualization aesthetics are pleasing to look at and you can also include graphs in them .

Cons

Learning the ropes is a bit hard and the available tutorials have some areas that are not easy to understand . Fortunately the community is really helpful . Incorporating data from too many different regions can get messy.

Pros

The customizability and ability to create templates is amazing to tailor the different features of the product for all types of business pages.

Cons

The software is hard to manage in terms of set up and updates to the templates. You have to have decent knowledge about scripting to do advanced things.

Pros

I personally work on Tibco Spotfire for more than 4 Years.
Best things are:
1) Ease of use for all category of users (End user, Developers, Statisticians)
2) Intuitive, Drag Drop
3) Continuous New enhancement in new version so it always remains uptodate with latest trend in technology. Recent example is a "Recommendation" feature which is excellent and enable one as analyst even though you don't know about technology.

Cons

They should come with some cheaper version so that small scale industry and small budget people can take advantage of this product which is so immense powerful.

Pros

The software allows a multitude of visualization options and charting types. The built in integrations (with R for example) are incredibly powerful and save a lot of time.

Cons

The software has a learning curve with some of the more advanced features. Training manuals for older versions are not readily available online.

Pros

1. Easy to use interface for building dashboards
2.Tight Integration and connector for popular databases

Cons

1.Tighter cloud integration
2.Need more Training material
3.New features and functionalities compare to Qlik or Tableau

Pros

This tool is too great specially for us who are analyzing large data. I really really recommend this application.

Pros

I like being able to combine multiple data sources to create data analysis and charts that reflect complexities that would be difficult to other explain. Using spotfire and automating the reports makes reporting so much easier

Cons

There is a learning curve to setting up and using Spotfire and sometimes it seems as though there is a lot of manual setup that could probably be more easily accomplished with wizards.

Pros

It is blazingly fast. I work with datasets that have hundreds of thousands of entries, each with dozens of fields. Spotfire makes analyzing this data real time a snap.

Cons

The learning curve is a bit steep, it takes a while to learn how to use it well. But the investment is well worth it.

Pros

The interface is really friendly and it is easy to use.

Cons

The web version is very different from the software, and sometimes it may be tricky to use when you're used to the software version.

Pros

It was so straightforward to learn and apply to basic applications. To learn, I recreated a file that a colleague had already made in order to teach myself the basics. This took about an hour. Then, I was able to play around and make beautiful visualizations!

Cons

There were a few features that were hard for me to figure out -- such as, applying a formula to change what an axis is measuring. This was never intuitive for me, so I would just mess around with the axes until it looked like I wanted it to. Occasionally, this would become frustrating.

Pros

The product continues to be developed and offer business a user enabling and powerful tool for visually analyzing data.

Cons

Support from Vendor in the area of customer service is weak. Implementation as companies is done with little or no training making support a vital feature to organizations.

Pros

If is a strong tool for reporting and business intelligence, allows many data sources with a hugh potential.

Cons

The visualization is not the strongest thing, charts and graph are not too customizable and easy to read.

Pros

Connects to all of your data points, and makes it fairly easy to generate reports. Lots of functionality included in the software to meet pretty much all your demands.

Cons

Not always able to fully customize the reports in the manor in which we would like. Sometimes we had issues with connecting separate databases on common fields.

Pros

This product is easy to use. The start up is fast, and the visuals are great to work with. I like the front end design elements. Everyone I have demoed Spotfire for has been impressed by the visuals, details on demand, filters, highlighting functions etc. I enjoy developing in Spotfire and learning more and more about it.

Cons

Modifying custom SQL is very finicky in the information services library. For example, after optimizing the SQL in SQL Server, Teradata, etc, you still have to fix the individual elements and joins, which is frustrating because, in my opinion, getting the code correct should be more difficult than jamming it back into the Information Services.

Pros

It was not hard to get stared and create some visualizations and analysis which is the main purpose of a BI interface.

Cons

Maybe is because I'm comparing it with another BI tools like Qlik or Tableau and that is why I think is an inferior product and just don't quite like it.

Pros

Scientific, data exploration, high performance, statistical integration and SDK.

Cons

Fewer connectivity options versus some other product
Less training available although the product is easy to use

Pros

Dashboards help to make data driven decisions for the business. Spotfire is really a very powerful tool to play with data and generate value out of it. Not very expensive and helps to save millions.

Cons

Needs training to utilize the power of spotfire. Takes a lot of time to get used to wide variety of graphs.

Pros

ability to quickly identify outliers in the datasets

Cons

support documentation for external domain authentication is lacking for advanced infrastructure

Pros

Very user friendly and user can manage without IT assistance
Easy to use with dynamic dashboards and interactive visualization

Cons

Lacking embedded BI and production reporting. A bit expensive and less practical than Qlik for quick report. Spotfire is not the best BI Tool for analytics reporting.

Pros

Spotfire is one of the best BI tool made for real analysts, not only analysis designers. The cross analysis functions are amongst the best with few scripting requirements.Spotfire is definetely a tool for analysing and discovering features: "Searching for something you do not know", instead of mere reporting.

Cons

A bit expensive and less practical than Qlik for quick reports. Spotfire is not the best BI tool for analytics reporting.

Pros

This is the best way to visualize your sales numbers. You can slice and dice the numbers and present in numerous ways. It is a great tool.

Cons

It is a little bit hard to get into but once you make the leap it is well worth the time you have invested.

Pros

Spotfire allows you to quickly identify outliers and explore data with high performance. Along with this is easy to use and has a convenient platform to identify trends and patterns. Spotfire is such a powerful tool that allows you to visualize data in an easy manner.

Cons

Although it is easy to pick up, you will need to look online or consult training manuals for advanced features. It takes a long time to master this program.

Pros

I like this tool's in Memory visualization functionality.

Cons

Metadata management. it should have been more robust. Also building report logic is bit confusing