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Spotfire and Qlik Sense PositioningMarch 2016Licensed for distributionSummaryTIBCO Spotfire and Qlik Sense are two of the most prominent offerings in a new generationof business intelligence platforms. They both major on data visualization, exploration anddiscovery, with excellent support for mobile devices and diverse data sources, and can beprofitably used by people with widely varying skill sets. However, a look under the surfacesimilarities soon reveals that they are quite different products. Spotfire is actually much morethan a pure data visualization platform, and its long history is reflected in a mature set ofcapabilities. These include the ability to handle tens or hundreds of thousands of data pointswithin a visualization, a set of easy-to-use advanced analytics tools (clustering for customersegmentation for example), text analytics, predictive analytics, statistical analysis and a highlyconfigurable architecture. Qlik Sense on the other hand is essentially a pure-play data visualization and exploration platform, with excellent data discovery delivered through its associative data engine. Both products support good extensibility through scripting languages, andthe ability to create new chart types if needed.Both products have been engineered for ease-of-use, and can be used in a single-userstand-alone context, or as an enterprise BI solution with hundreds or thousands of users.Somewhat ironically, Spotfire may be more suitable for novice users because of its recommendation engine. Ultimately the decision to select one or the other of these products willdepend on need, and particularly the scope of analysis that must be accommodated. Spotfire can be used purely as a data visualization platform, and is used as such by many users.However as skills and requirements grow, Spotfire allows users to move into new types ofanalysis in a seamless and incremental fashion. This is more important than many users appreciate, since it means there is no need to embrace additional tools to grow the analyticscapability of the business. It also needs to be said that visual analysis is often the first step inthe analytics process, and not the destination. Sooner or later there is a need to act on analysis, and this is where Spotfire excels, since it is part of a much broader suite of products fromTIBCO, which directly supports the move from insight to action. This might mean putting apredictive model into production (credit assessments, for example), or applying rules to realtime streaming data. For organizations that need a pure-play data visualization platform, QlikSense has advantages over many competing products. These come in the form of its associative data engine, where relationships between data sources are often automatically displayed, and the ability to extend the platform for bespoke requirements. Various APIs meanvisualizations can be embedded into production applications, that unusual data sources canbe accommodated, and that modified visualizations can be created. Qlik Sense does nothowever support any other forms of analytics.Spotfire and Qlik Sense come as stand-alone products and enterprise platforms, and areavailable as cloud offerings. The decision to choose Spotfire will primarily be driven by theneed to scale - data volumes, analysis complexity and types of analysis. Qlik Sense will bechosen for its excellent data discovery capabilities. Finally the licensing models of these twoproducts are quite different, although it has to be said that the Qlik Sense model is particularlycomplex.Copyright butleranalytics.com1

Spotfire and Qlik Sense PositioningMarch 2016SpotfireAs one of the most complete visual analytics platforms available, Spotfire anticipates many ofthe emerging trends in business intelligence and data visualization. It successfully combinesease-of-use with advanced capabilities, makes pervasive visual analytics available to users ofevery skill level, provides powerful visual data preparation capabilities for complex data, andhas advanced analytics built in. More recently it has embraced additional big data resources,including SparkSQL, SparkR, SAP Hana and enhanced support for OLAP. For enterprisescale deployment, Spotfire now supports cloud type scaling and management of the run-timearchitecture. This means compute resources can be programmed to automatically adapt todiffering workloads.There are many productivity enhancers embedded into Spotfire: Visualizations are recommended based on the data being analyzed – a capability especially valuable for novice usersto kick-start their analytics experience with minimal training; Grouping - data can be groupedso that several values are treated as a single value (different spellings of a city for example).A large number of functions ease the job of data preparation, and the user interface is enhanced through support for multiple monitors, with all visualizations interlinked. Collaborationis a strong point in Spotfire where users can create a dialogue about specific issues or insights found in their data, save views and discoveries on each message within the conversation. Similarly, annotations allow users to add commentary to their analysis and be included ina dialogue.Spotfire comes in three flavors: Spotfire Desktop is a stand-alone Windows program withconnectivity to a large number of data sources, Spotfire Platform is a server based implementation for departments and businesses, and Spotfire Cloud provides the same businessauthor and consumer clients as Spotfire Platform (with a couple of analytical tools absent),but hosted in the cloud. It needs to be emphasized that Spotfire’s architecture is capable ofhandling visualizations with hundreds of thousands of data points - without breaking a sweat.Here is a brief summary of the functionality provided by each:Spotfire Desktop runs on a Windows desktop computer and can access both local andremote data sources. These sources are too numerous to list here, but whatever data sourcea user might need to access, it’s likely Spotfire can accommodate it. The user interface andease-of-use factor was significantly improved with version 7, providing recommended visualizations, easier data management and more attractive visualizations. It is difficult to see howthe user experience could be more accommodating, even for complex visualization tasks.Some advanced chart types are supported including heat maps, 3-D scatter plot, mapcharts,treemaps, box-plot etc. The analytical tools really distinguish Spotfire Desktop, and typicallydo not require any coding at all. Predictive analytics, location analytics, hierarchical clustering,forecasting and a large number of data functions come as standard. Dashboards and chartscan be exported to PDF, Powerpoint, Html, or data file.Spotfire Platform is server based and provides an enterprise data exploration and visualization environment with several powerful analytical tools. A web based interface supportsCopyright butleranalytics.com2

Spotfire and Qlik Sense PositioningMarch 2016business authoring of visualizations, and a consumer client allows viewing through the webbrowser. As with the desktop version, a large number of data sources can be accessed,and network graphs (an add-on for network analysis) are added to the chart types. Platformcomes with the same analytical tools as Desktop with the addition of the R Runtime Server- an optimized environment for running R analytics tasks. Several services are also availableincluding: Advanced Data Services - for integrating data from diverse sources.Automation Services - for scheduling analysis and reports, with email distribution.Location Analytics - for analysis that involves the location of objects, people and events.Statistical Services - with support for R, S , SAS and MATLAB native functions.Various mechanisms exist to share reports and dashboards, and a Guided Analytics facility isavailable in all three versions to tell a visual data story. A conversation panel allows users totrack comments, and a web panel supports integration with any external web tools (TIBCOoffers tibbr - one such tool).Spotfire Cloud is targeted at workgroups and comes with the business authoring and consumer web based clients. Users can build their visualizations completely within the webbased client, and consumers can view them in the browser as well. A secure area is providedto share visualizations and collaborate, or if desired they can be broadcast publicly to asmany consumers as necessary. An Enterprise version of Spotfire Cloud is available as a dedicated instance.Spotfire ArchitectureThe speed of Spotfire is greatly enhanced by its clever memory and data management. Formore modest data sets the in-memory processing ensures very high performance. Largerdata sets can be processed in-database, and a hybrid approach called On-Demand optimizes the data held in local memory and that held in the database. This is unique to Spotfire.For more advanced analytics there is the TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R (TERR), providing ahigh performance production environment to run R scripts, and TIBCO Spotfire Statistics Services (TSSS). This integrates R, S , SAS, MATLAB and in-database analytics into the Spotfireecosystem. The accommodation of R is worthy of note since the execution of R scripts hasbeen parallelized and the TERR engine is compatible with the RStudio IDE (much loved bymany R analysts).The Spotfire Server manages a library of analysis files, takes responsibility for authenticationand authorization, persists links to external data sources and runs on Linux, Solaris and Windows. A core component in this is the Web Player. This cleverly normalizes data access byrouting users to Web Player instances already accessing relevant data sources. New instances can be created as needed, giving virtually unlimited horizontal scalability.Copyright butleranalytics.com3

Spotfire and Qlik Sense PositioningMarch 2016Spotfire SummaryThe central feature of Spotfire that distinguishes it from nearly all the competition is the abilityto start with easy to use desktop data visualization tools, and as needs and skills develop, tomigrate to a full enterprise analytics environment. It satisfies the needs of novice users, business managers, data analysts, and data scientists in one homogeneous environment. Noviceusers will find a supportive, guided experience, while advanced users can develop and deploy very advanced analytics on big data using the Spark architecture. In this sense Spotfireis unique, and in the context of TIBCO’s broader product architecture businesses can moveall the way from insight to action in one seamless environment. Spotfire is essentially analyticswithout boundaries. The most important differentiators of Spotfire are:1 A single environment for novice and expert users alike.2 Ahead of the visual analytics curve with advanced analytics and excellent data preparationfor complex data.3 Highly scalable and programmable architecture for demanding requirements.4 High visual analytics productivity through recommended visualizations and guided interface.5 Part of a broader analytics capability with a direct route from insight to action.Copyright butleranalytics.com4