Microsoft R Open / Revolution R Enterprise vs. Spotfire Data Science

If you are a MS shop specifically, or have more generic data requirement needs from Microsoft sourced data this will work well. If you have a lot of disparate data across a number of unique platforms/cloud systems/3rd party hosted data warehouses then this product will have issues or a lack of documentation on the net. Performance-wise this product is equal to other R platforms out there.

Incentivized

If you have an analytics department, Data Science is perfect for making analyses quicker. Data Science works well for web querying, automating analyses, sharing advanced analyses with others, and performing lots of other advanced analytical processes. Data Science is not a good fit if the analytics you do is stuff that Excel can do. The software is powerful, with lots of features, and unless you actually plan on using those features, it's not worth paying for.

Incentivized

• It allows distributed algorithm runs on Hadoop HDFS cluster
• It allows using different file formats such as SAS7BAT files or complex files in tab or comma delimited making data munging easier
• It provides scalable solutions by allowing users to re-use R scripts and distributing the computing over nodes through RHadoop

• It has a great user interface, easy to navigate and learn on the fly.
• There are lots of great options for data organization and analysis! Makes it a handy tool for presentations as well.
• A collaborative ability is highly valued for my company where we often work from home or on site. Being able to share the data with those in the office so multiple people can look at it is a great tool!

Incentivized

• Very steep learning curve... for such a quick and useful tool the learning curve is unacceptable.
• Very dangerous in the wrong hands. Because most add-ons are pre-written, you have to trust the community that malicious script is not used.

Incentivized

• Unfortunately, some functionality is hidden per upgrade to other versions. Feel data mining functionality would be useful, but not budget for software. At the current price point, would have expected more (such as Mathematica breadth of functionality for one price).
• It is light on optimization capability.
• Slow when considering very large datasets, performing things such as distribution identification

Incentivized

In general, Revolution Analytics brings a lot of value to the organization. The renewal decision would be based on return on investment in terms of quantified actionable insights that are getting generated against the cost of the product. Additionally, market brand of the tool and reputation risk in terms of possible acquisition and its impact to overall organizational analytic strategy would be considered as well.

The company is hesitant to spend this much on software. They are primarily an engineering firm, and they don't understand the use of analytical software for environmental professionals.

Incentivized

It is good, easy to use, improvements are being made to the product and more info being shared in the community. It just needs some more time to become more integrated to other platforms and tools/data out there.

Incentivized

Generally support comes through the forums and user generated channels which are helpful, easy to access, quickly turned around and provided by knowledgeable users. However the support channels are not employees and the channels are often used as a way to learn quick difficult elements of R. Better design, users interface and tutorial options would alleviate the need for this sort of interaction.

Incentivized

The two are different products for different purposes. But for someone who has little or no experience in R programming, Power BI would be better for starting with. Having said that, Microsoft R is built on R, thus allowing for customization of complex calculations not typically available otherwise.

Incentivized

I prefer Spotfire Data Science's approach. It is more natural and fits the way I think. I prefer to use Spotfire Data Science's VB for writing macros. It is real code, meaning that I do not need to trick the software to do what I need and there are no implied loops over solving simple problems. The graphs are publication quality and can be edited by hand or using a macro if I am building hundreds of them. Spotfire Data Science had a user-friendly approach to building lengthy data processing streams (in its workspaces). It is just so fast for analyzing a dataset that you have never seen before and efficient for ongoing work on the same data.

• Helped save company money versus buying other stat software

Incentivized

• Our company has had the program for less than 1 year. We don't expected a positive return this year. The goal is for Data Science to led to defined projects by the end of the end of the year and implementation in the following two. Overall, we are planning on 4 years to fully recoup the cost of the software and the cost of implementing identified projects.

Incentivized