Tableau and Spotfire are two giants in the self-service
business intelligence (BI) market. They allow users of varying skill levels to
visually analyze data with dashboards, charts and reports. While both reduce
dependence on IT through greater BI accessibility, the two solutions aren’t
interchangeable.
Comparing Products
The following are excerpts from our Tableau and Spotfire
reviews that summarize each solution:
Tableau – With intuitive BI tools, Tableau enhances
data discovery and understanding for all types of users.Its drag-and-drop
features make it easy to analyze and access key data, share critical
information across the enterprise and create innovative visualizations.Its
drag-and-drop features make it easy to analyze and access key data, share
critical information across the enterprise and create innovative
visualizations.
Its drag-and-drop features make it easy to analyze and
access key data, share critical information across the enterprise and create
innovative visualizations. In addition, Tableau users are able to create and
embed dashboards into their current applications, such as Jive, SharePoint and
Salesforce, for quick analytics where they need them most.
Spotfire – Organizations that need self-service
discovery and quick answers to critical questions may want to evaluate TIBCO
Spotfire.
It allows anyone, from non-IT gurus to data-mining
enthusiasts, to conduct simple (and even advanced) analyses in real time,
without requiring technical support from IT.
Plus, Spotfire users can drill down to explore the reasoning
behind important business decisions – and can even identify trends or patterns
within the data that highlight hidden issues or opportunities.
How They Stack Up
Data analytics
Each offering has its own unique approach to data analytics.
Tableau: With Tableau, users can manipulate and
visualize large data sets. It connects with over 40 data sources, ranging from
Microsoft Excel to Hadoop clusters, allowing users to generate a variety of
reports. Several users have mentioned Tableau doesn’t have many statistical
features, meaning it won’t do Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA)
models, decision trees or other complicated calculations by itself. However,
it’s able to visualize trends by repeating patterns in data sets.
Spotfire: Spotfire has built-in competences for
statistical analysis and modeling, accessible directly from its dashboard.
Users can perform MATLAB, SAS, R or S+ functions directly from the user
interface, allowing them to base predictions on their calculations. Spotfire
connects with over 25 data sources, and the solution also allows users to work
with data sets in different formats.
Bottom Line: Both Tableau and Spotfire connect to various
external data sources, albeit Tableau connects to more. But Spotfire enables
users to integrate data sets that have different formats while forming a
connection with outside data sources, something Tableau can’t do.
Visualization
Tableau and Spotfire are known for their robust
visualization capabilities. Both come with interactive dashboards that allow
for quick visualization and understanding of structured data sets. But when you
consider the drill-down features, the tools scale differently 200+.
Tableau:This solution has successfully met the demand for
easy data visualization. Tableau can import and visualize large sets of data
with several customizable options, allowing business users to make queries and
drill down into insights. The simple navigation allows users to easily explore
data, even if they don’t specialize in data analytics.
Spotfire: Spotfire comes with the same general visualization
capabilities as Tableau, but it has a more dated interface and fewer
customization options. Users can create reports, explore data and create
dashboards, but visualizations are less sophisticated in Spotfire than in
Tableau.
Bottom Line: Tableau has excellent visualizations for
reports, graphs and dashboards. Spotfire also offers good quality visuals
compared to most BI solutions. One should note, both Tableau and Spotfire can
visually interpret outliers in a data set. Most BI visualization tools can
interpret trends, but lack the capability to spot outliers, which can cause
inaccurate forecasts.
Customer Support
You want to ensure that when you face an issue with Tableau
or Spotfire, you can rely on helpful and responsive customer support. Here’s
how each vendor handles customer service.
Tableau: Tableau offers four levels of customer support:
complimentary, technical support, the Elite program and the OEM program.
Non-critical problems like software defects, configuration-related questions,
access to minor and major releases, and installation assistance are covered
under complimentary support. Technical support handles critical issues and
automatically comes with a one-year license purchase. The Elite program
includes a technical account manager to make sure support cases are prioritized.
The OEM program assigns a Partner Support Engineer to customers who’ve
integrated Tableau into their existing software suites.
Spotfire:For technical support, Spotfire users can visit
the TIBCO Support Central portal to submit requests and access a knowledge base
of troubleshooting guides. They can also
register on the Spotfire Community forum to connect with other Spotfire users.
In addition, TIBCO offers discounted training packages in the form of
Educational Passports. For instance, an enterprise that wants TIBCO to conduct
onsite training can buy up to eight units a day for up to 12 employees.
Bottom Line: Tableau offers varying levels of support to its
customers, along with on-demand training, live weekly webinar training and
access to aknowledge base. Spotfire also offers access to a community and
knowledge base, but doesn’t have premium support.
Pricing
The two BI tools take different pricing approaches.
Tableau: Tableau’s pricing plan is broken into three
categories: Desktop, Server, and Online. All are offered at a monthly price per
user, billed annually. The Personal Desktop edition costs $35, while the
Professional Desktop edition costs $70. Tableau Server costs $35 and includes
on-premises or public cloud installation. Fully-hosted Tableau Online costs
$42.
Spotfire: Spotfire Cloud is available for $200 per month or
$2,000 for the year. Spotfire services for Amazon Cloud start at 99 cents per
hour. There are two other service categories with custom pricing: the
on-premise Spotfire Platform and the fully-managed Cloud Enterprise Solution.
Users interested in these services can contact Spotfire for a quote based on
their unique needs.
Bottom Line:Spotfire is considerably more expensive than
Tableau. While Tableau offers a cut-and-dry pricing plan, Spotfire is more
focused on customizing the experience for users based on their needs and
preferences icloud.
Takeaways
Tableau and Spotfire are robust data analytics and
visualization tools that fulfill similar needs. But selecting one over the
other depends on the user needs. Spotfire has built-in capabilities for
statistical analysis, but those who need great visualizations may want to opt
for Tableau.
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