Spotfire

I have to confess that I have always liked Spotfire. The marketing may not have been as aggressive as some competitors, and it might not have had the immediate sex appeal of other products, but for anyone serious about visual analytics it is almost unbeatable. I use the word “serious”…

The productivity of a BI platform is the number one concern of businesses choosing a product. While the hardware and software costs vary, these are dwarfed by the cost associated with the actual use of a platform, and as such it needs to be as productive as possible. Listed below…

Your CEO asks for a status update, and so you present her with a dashboard containing fifteen charts, tables and graphs. If your CEO is polite (unlikely) she will take a look, pretend to understand, and quickly move on. What is more likely, is that she will become a little…

TIBCO Spotfire is one of just a handful of visual analytics platforms that successfully combines ease-of-use with some very advanced analytics. Of course the term ‘advanced analytics’ is relative, and for someone familiar with scatterplots and bar charts, clustering will seem considerably more advanced. The beauty of Spotfire is that it…

Visual Analytics – Sophistication vs Ease of Use 2016 Ease of use and sophistication are usually conflicting properties of software technology. Sophistication usually implies steep learning curves and high skill levels. However some products seem to do very well in both respects, and the chart above plots out those that…

5 Power BI Alternatives 2016 Microsoft Power BI comes as a Windows desktop platform and  as a cloud service. Platforms that might be considered alternatives include: Qlik Sense is a drag-and-drop data visualization and discovery platform capable of addressing most business intelligence needs apart from heavy duty production reporting. It…

BI Platforms with Advanced Analytics Business Intelligence has traditionally delivered a look in the rear view mirror, providing a description of what has happened or is happening. Advanced analytics are more concerned with the future, allowing businesses to predict how customers, suppliers and other aspects of business will behave. Right…

Data Visualization Software. Visual analytics is the act of finding meaning in data using visual artifacts such as charts, graphs, maps and dashboards. In addition, the user interface is typically driven by drag and drop actions using wholly visual constructs. The up side to this is ease of use –…

5 Qlik Sense Alternatives Qlik Sense is an easy to use visual analytics platform, with an excellent data discovery engine and good extensibility. This list of five alternatives contains products that have other strengths and may represent a better fit for some needs. Tableau is probably the highest profile visual…