Spotfire is an excellent data visualization and data analytics tool

I've been around and used this application for many years. It is a great tool for data visualization, data dashboarding, tracking information, etc. It is just a very flexible data analytics tool. One thing that has remained constant is that you need to realize it's a very expensive tool as well. Many small companies are shut out without budget. They also used to require a 3 year commitment up front, and it would of course be licensed per user, plus annual license and support for the server, database etc... not sure if this is still the case. I am fortunate not to have to worry about that.
Currently our company is using version 6.5 but will be upgrading in the near future. Spotfire continues to improve on features.

I do not have the control over these kinds of decisions. However once an organization invests time and resources to configure usable tools around this application, it would be tough to replace with another software package.

I was not involved in our company's initial implementation. In my first experience with Spotfire, which actually was called Spotfire Decisionsite, the implementation was fairly easy. As long as you have expertise in house that can assist with setting up the database instance and the application server, it is not that difficult to implement with no customization.

The in person training I have experienced with the vendor has usually been very good. In the past the west coast representatives would actually offer free on site seminars that are usually very helpful. Because my job role includes training scientists to use Spotfire on a regular basis, we usually do not use training from the vendor.

I haven't had too much experience with contacting customer service or support. I couple of times I had sent in questions with no response. I heard recently that in an agreement with Perkin Elmer, Spotfire was going to leverage their support team to take over customer support.

I rate usability fairly high for a product of this kind. However, it's probably not something that research scientists can just pick up on their own without specific training.

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.