Item: Spotfire
Rating: 10
Author: Roy Carter

Overall Satisfaction with Spotfire

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Spotfire is used across Chevron in multiple different applications. We have a Chevron Spotfire Users Day conference which highlights many of the problems currently being addressed with Spotfire. Any issue that has loads of data is using Spotfire.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Providing multiple different avenues to connect to structured data and providing the option to sit on top of the data or embedding data into the analysis.
Location analytics (maps) have been greatly improved in the latest versions of Spotfire.

Cons

Very steep learning curve.
Although I am an advanced user, it can be daunting for a new user. Almost too much functionality. Too bad there is not a Spotfire basic for the new user.
Area charts like in Excel are missing.

Alternatives Considered

I haven't evaluated any additional products. I have heard good things about some of Spotfire competitors like Cloudera, Tableau and Adobe BI but have not personally used or evaluated them in any great depth.

Likelihood to Recommend

Any analysis that utilizes more than a few hundred data points will benefit from Spotfire.
Any analysis that you don't know what you are looking for. You can easily create multiple different views to analyze data.
Any analysis using structured data currently residing in databases
Advanced users can do on-the-fly analysis of data which is very impressive
Not useful for basic graphs. Leave that to Excel.

Spotfire Training

Training Types Used

Online training
In-person training

In-Person Training

It was solid training with a good introduction but was a bit like drinking from a fire hose. Almost too much information to fully comprehend and adsorb. The Spotfire examples and notes are top notch though and if you make an effort to work through the examples, you can learn a great deal.

Online Training

The on-line training is go at your own pace which has benefits because you can tailor the training to fit your schedule. The downside is that it is easy to put off or become caught up with other duties. The online training is well done but [I] would only recommend it for the most devoted of people.

Ease of Spotfire Training

Comments

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Spotfire is kind of awesome but not for the faint of heart or easily frustrated

Software Version