Likelihood to Recommend A high level of data integration is available here it supports various data sources and so on. Collaborating features allow users to give access to the dashboard and merge data analytics with other team members. It can meet the demands of both small and large size business enterprises. A customized dashboard and reports are provided to meet the specific needs and get support of extensibility through APIs and customized scripts.
Read full review TIBCO Data Virtualization is well suited for customers who are challenged to deal with extracting data from dozens of different sources and systems, and do not have the time and liberty to hire data engineers and/or ETL developers to write dozens or hundreds of complex ETLs. However, there are situations where TIBCO Data Virtualization severely underperforms, and those are where we are dealing with large volumes of data, in tera bytes or peta byte scale system. For example, a messaging queue which sends 200 million messages every hour will choke TIBCO Data Virtualization if the technology is chosen to route the data.
Read full review Pros It has the best coding integration (python, R) of any BI product The ability to work with very large datasets (10 mil+) is better than competitors Export options are more complete and have better functionality The data canvas is the best tool to join and transform data vs. competitors Jim Putnam Director, Advanced Analytics and Data Science
Read full review Connecting to different data silos and presenting the data as a singled unified layer of data. Exposing data to Technical and non technical users through Web UI or reporting tools Secured exposure of data as web services. Row level and column level data security Multi tenancy data security. Real time data by connecting to the operational databases Historical data generation Read full review Cons The donut chart is I guess a powerful illustrations but I hope it should be done quite simple in Spotfire. But in Spotfire there are lots of steps involve just to build a simple donut chart. Table calculation (like Row or Column Differences) should be made simple or there should be drag and drop function for Table Calculation. No need for scripting. Information Link should be changed. If new columns are added to the table just refreshing the data should be able to capture the new column. No need extra step to add column Read full review Performance of TDV Studio (its own IDE) is poor. Performance of TDV repository database is rather poor for larger numbers of objects .(Note: We have approx. 9tsd objects introspected in TDV and approx. 20tsd objects generated in upper DV layers.) Propagation of privileges to parent/child dependencies does not work when applying recursively on a folder. (It's a huge setback when working with large number of objects organized semantically into subfolders.) Lack of command line client interface for scripting at the time of version 8.4 (I had to write my own CLI.) TDV Studio does an absolutely horrible job with its own code editors when indentation is in place. Also, the editor is brutally slow and feature-poor. Tracking privileges on the level of table/view columns causes occasional problems when regranting. TDV's stored programs ("SQL scripts" in their own terminology) compiler leaves out many syntactic and semantic checks, making them hugely prone to run-time errors. TDV Server's REST API is a very poor (in terms of features) and flawed cousin to its SOAP API (at the time of version 8.4). Read full review Likelihood to Renew -Easy to distribute information throughout the enterprise using the webplayer. -Ad hoc analysis is possible throughout the enterprise using business author in the webplayer or the thick client. -Low level of support needed by IT team. Access interfaces with LDAP and numerous other authentication methods. -Possible to continually extend the platform with JavaScript, R scripts, HTML, and custom extensions. -Ability to standardize data logic through pre-built queries in the Information Designer. Everyone in the enterprise is using the same logic -Tagging and bookmarking data allows for quick sharing of insights. -Integration with numerous data sources... flat files, data bases, big data, images, etc. -Much improved mapping capability. Also includes the ability to apply data points over any image.
Read full review It is useful for us to see the data and do analysis. Also we use it to generate reports and see trends or gather insights
Read full review Usability Basic tasks like generating meaningful information from large sets of raw data are very easy. The next step of linking to multiple live data sources and linking those tables and performing on the fly analysis of the imported data is understandably more difficult.
Read full review TDV's interface is a bit dated and not entirely intuitive. Would recommend some UX design review as the interface leaves a bit to be better understood to be used by users without inherent knowledge of Tibco. Overall I'd suggest more improvement here to ensure usability by a lesser tech audience.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Even though, it's a rather stable and predictable tool that's also fast, it does have some bugs and inconsistencies that shut down the system. Depending on the details, it could happen as often as 2-3 times a week, especially during the development period.
Alex Naumov Global Pricing and Marketing Operations Lead, Analytics & Research
Read full review We have never encountered issues where it was unavailable when we needed it.
Read full review Performance Generally, the Spotfire client runs with very good performance. There are factors that could affect performance, but normally has to do with loading large analysis files from the library if the database is located some distance away and your global network is not optimal. Once you have your data table(s) loaded in the client application, usually the application is quite good performance-wise.
Read full review This product's performance is very consistent. It is extremely rare for templates to fail. I've been using this software for 5 years and find it to be both simple and powerful. The impact within the company has been very positive as different processes in different areas, such as data analysis, development, and integrations, have been improved, and, best of all, it has not affected the users. Various systems with which it is connected in order to obtain information.
Read full review Support Rating Support has been helpful with issues. Support seems to know their product and its capabilities. It would also seem that they have a good sense of the context of the problem; where we are going with this issue and what we want the end outcome to be.
Tim Daciuk Product Manager - Mobile Computing Analytics Cloud Platform
Read full review On a few occasions I have asked TIBCO technical support for help because I have adapted perfectly to their tools, but in those few that I have communicated with their technical team I have received personalized, attentive, responsible attention and I am always assisted by an expert staff the topic. A TIBCO technical support technician spent more than an hour helping me to solve a problem in the initial stage of implementation in my department and this is something that I always appreciate.
Read full review In-Person Training The instructor was very in depth and provided relevant training to business users on how to create visualizations. They showed us how to alter settings and filter views, and provided resources for future questions. However, the instructor failed to cover data sources, connecting to data, etc. While it was helpful to see how users can use the data to create reports, they failed to properly instruct us on how to get the dataset in to begin with. We are still trying to figure out connections to certain databases (we have multiple different types).
Read full review Online Training The online training is good, provides a good base of knowledge. The video demonstrations were well-done and easy to follow along. Provided exercises are good as well, but I think there could be more challenging exercises. The training has also gone up in price significantly in the last 3 years (in USD, which hurts us even more in Canada), and I'm not sure it is worth the money it now costs (it is worth how much it cost 3 years ago, but not double that.)
Read full review The training was helpful. I was able to understand how to use TIBCO for the data load process that we implemented and how to perform various troubleshooting steps based on the training I received. The technician was thorough and took the time to answer any questions. Once we were shown how to use TIBCO in the test environment, we were able to configure the production environment ourselves.
Read full review Implementation Rating The original architecture I created for our implementation had only a particular set of internal business units in mind. Over the years, Spotfire gained in popularity in our company and was being utilized across many more business units. Soon, its usage went beyond what the original architectural implementation could provide. We've since learned about how the product is used by the different teams and are currently in the middle of rolling out a new architecture. I suggest:
Have clearly defined service level agreements with all the teams that will use Spotfire. Your business intelligence group might only need availability during normal working hours, but your production support group might need 24/7 availability. If these groups share one Spotfire server, maintenance of that server might be a problem. Know the different types of data you will be working with. One group might be working with "public" data while another group might work with sensitive data. Design your Library accordingly and with the proper permissions. Know the roles of the users of Spotfire. Will there only be a small set of report writers or does everyone have write access to the Library? ALWAYS add a timestamp prompt to your reports. You don't want multiple users opening a report that will try and pull down millions of rows of data to their local workstations. Another option, of course, is to just hard code a time range in the backing database view (i.e. where activity_date >= sysdate - 90, etc.), but I'd rather educate/train the user base if possible. This probably goes without saying, but if possible, point to a separate reporting database or a logical standby database. You don't want the company pounding on your primaries and take down your order system. Read full review Other vendors have clearer, more visual implementation documentation. We also did not have our data architect and and server administrator available full-time for implementation. In the future, we will secure the necessary internal resources.
Jim Putnam Director, Advanced Analytics and Data Science
Read full review Alternatives Considered Spotfire is significantly ahead of both products from an ETL and data ingestion capability. Spotfire also has substantially better visualizations than Power BI, and although the native visualizations aren't as flexible in
Tableau , Spotfire enables users to create completely custom javascript visaualizations, which neither
Tableau or Power BI has.
Tableau and Power BI are likely only superior to Spotfire with respect to embedded analysis on a website.
Read full review We did not need to evaluate another technology in the same category for data virtualization, since we are 100% sure of the capabilities and benefits that we would have with TIBCO Data Virtualization, both for market positioning as well as success stories from other companies. great renown worldwide. From the first day of use, it meets our needs to provide the expected solutions.
Read full review Scalability In an enterprise architecture, if Spotfire Advanced Data services(Composite Studio),data marts can be managed optimally and scalability in a data perspective is great. As the web player/consumer is directly proportional to RAM, if the enterprise can handle RAM requirement accomodating fail over mechanisms appropraitely, it is definitely scalable,
Read full review Good scaling
Read full review Return on Investment It is costly, so not suitable for small scale implementations. Dashboards are as good as the developer, so need experience to get most out of it You need to be on Spotfire 11 at least to implement out of the box visualizations Integration with Python and R is a game changer, it comes very handy to onboard data scientists without much hassle performance is exceptionally well. Secure Read full review We took spreadsheets that took hours a month to update and made them update automatically using TDV, saving hours a month of analyst time The incremental cost of TDV relative to straight spotfire licensing made it a no-brainer due to the ease of data management We continue to automate legacy business processes in TDV, saving time all over the organization. Read full review ScreenShots TIBCO Data Virtualization Screenshots