In the self-service business intelligence (BI) tool space, Tibco Spotfire is one of the easiest tools a business can use to visualize its data. This is especially true for the cloud version that runs in a browser as a business can have a dashboard within a few minutes of importing its CSV or Microsoft Excel data. Beginning at $2000 per year, a Tibco Spotfire subscription is similar to Tableau Desktop (although the latter wins our Editors' Choice award in this self-service BI tool review roundup, along with competitor Microsoft Power BI).

The cloud version of Tibco Spotfire limits Microsoft Excel and CSV imports to 30MB files. Other file types include Standard Test Data Format (STDF), log files, and Tibco Spotfire's own DXP format. If you want to make use of other data formats, Tibco Spotfire is similar to other BI tools such as Microsoft Power BI, which requires a Windows client and a data connector to first obtain the data on your desktop and then upload it. There are more than 20 different connectors, including various SQL databases, Hadoop, Hive, Teradata, and Salesforce.com.

The user interface revolves around two main menu panels. One is a toolbar across the top of the screen that is used to manipulate data, add new visualizations, apply filters, and include sidebar comments—similar to a series of instant messages (IMs) attached to the dashboard—that carry individual comments and are seen by other team members. One of these tools will bring up a window of recommended visualizations where you can specify two measurements and see a series of charts that might fit the situation. That is handy. Another menu panel on the left-hand side is used to explore your data schema. The desktop toolbar stretches across the top of the screen showing the array of options available; the cloud toolbar has fewer chart types and other options.

One nice feature is the ability to click a particular data element in your graphs and drill down to see how it is charted on the remainder of your desktop. This is ideal for letting your management explore their data and perform sensitivity analysis. Each chart can be quickly annotated with comments by clicking the icon on the top toolbar (another handy collaboration mechanism). There are also tools for filtering the data by particular data elements.

Dashboards and visualizations can be made public (associated with a URL so that anyone can see them) or private (just for registered team members). They can also be exported and posted to a Twitter account.

Learning Spotfire

Tibco offers a wide variety of instructional resources for Spotfire, including more than a dozen on-demand webinars that go through the basics on up to how to set up your visualizations and create your business models. Once a month, Tibco also offers a live webinar that takes you through the basics of the product. These are all free, but there are also a number of for-fee classes that are offered in person and online for several thousand dollars apiece. There are numerous sample data sets available that illustrate the product's features.

There are also more than a dozen in-depth, quick reference topics that will show you how to set up things such as data filters or regression analysis, and provide example data sets that you can manipulate as part of the online tutorial. Finally, if this isn't enough, there is a custom consulting package that you can design for your specific circumstances. This combination of learning methods is very comprehensive, and on par with what both Microsoft Power BI and Zoho Reports offer.

One shortcoming, though, is the online documentation for the cloud version: it isn't as easy to figure out what to do as it is with competitors' products, and this leaves major gaps in your product knowledge. On the plus side, there is a nice introduction to Tibco Spotfire using a variety of sample visualizations (that you can access from within the product's data library) that will show you how to start using the tool.

I ran into another issue testing the desktop version using Internet Explorer 8 running on Windows 7: Spotfire requires an updated security setting to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) v1.1, or a more recent browser version in order to establish a connection between the desktop and its cloud servers.

Visualizing Data

Similar to Qlik Sense Enterprise, Tibco's market maturity affects its outlook on data visualization. Where many new BI tools focus exclusively on data visualization, Tibco is turning a mature, sophisticated data analysis tool into something that not only paints data as a picture, but is accessible by more than data scientists and experts. The company is, however, fully embracing the cloud as a deployment and data dissemination medium. It recently announced that all of its Spotfire editions will be built on the same code base, including the cloud version, and this ensures that charts and graphics created in Spotfire can be used not just in other documents but also in other web apps or dashboards via its API.

Spotfire has all of the usual drag-and-drop charting capabilities we've seen in other data visualization tools, but it takes pains to maintain its core analytical capabilities in this new paradigm. Data prep, for example, is an integral part of building any visualization in Spotfire rather than something you need to ask IT to do or, worse, do yourself in a third-party tool like Excel. Whether you're scrubbing data, transforming it, or creating new pivots, Spotfire makes this part of the basic self-serve query process rather than a separate operation.

On the graphic side, you'll find all of the usual charting options, but Tibco has been focusing heavily on mapping graphics over the past year and will likely continue to do so in the future. It's combining that with an emphasis on data drill-down features that aim to improve customers' ability to build on-the-fly questions and live action data discovery.

Pricing and Versions

You can access Spotfire using multiple deployment options, including any 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 or later operating system (OS) with Microsoft .NET Framework v4.5.2 installed. There's also a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model as well as a mobile app that supports iOS 7.1 or later. Apple OS X is only supported via the SaaS version, not with a downloadable on-premsises package.

Tibco's only public pricing is for the SaaS version, which costs $200 per month or $2000 per year. The on-premises version, dubbed the Spotfire Platfrom, supports Windows, Linux, or Solaris server versions built to power entire enterprises. It can be had in subscription, perpetual, or term license models, but it requires a conversation with Tibco sales to get an actual price. The company offers a dedicated program for non-commercial users that provides free licensing to academics, journalists, and non-profit organizations.

Overall, Tibco Spotfire excels at drilling down into and annotating dashboards, and offers solid collaboration features. It's one of the easiest ways for Microsoft Excel junkies to graduate from their favorite spreadsheet to genuine BI.

Additional reporting on this review by David Strom.