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Spotfire is kind of awesome but not for the faint of heart or easily frustrated
March 10, 2017

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

Roy Carter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Desktop

Overall Satisfaction with Spotfire

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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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.
  • 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 Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
9.0
Customizable dashboards
9
Report Formatting Templates
9
9.0
Drill-down analysis
10
Formatting capabilities
7
Integration with R or other statistical packages
9
Report sharing and collaboration
10
6.3
Publish to Web
5
Publish to PDF
7
Report Delivery Scheduling
7
8.7
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
9
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
9
Predictive Analytics
8
7.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
7
Role-Based Security Model
Not Rated
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
7
7.0
Responsive Design for Web Access
7
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding ()
Not Rated

Spotfire Training

  • Online 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.
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.