Microstrategy, Spotfire and Tableau?

By cwardell • June 19th, 2010


By vallabh on June 18th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

I am also looking for comparison of Microstrategy, Spotfire and Tableau….  Please let me know on what parameters can I compare the tools. I am looking for a technology that offers ad-hoc analytics.

Ok, so this has the potential of opening up quite a bit of dialog. So I am making it a stand alone post. Please comment and contribute. I too would like to see what others are thinking in this space.

Your backend database and the size of your data is a big consideration.

MicroStrategy has the ability to to pull data into a repository for it’s multi-dimensional analysis OR perform pass through sql. They have accelerators for specific databases (even has optimizations for Aster, Vertica, Greenplum, Netezza, Teradata, on and on..) Obviously very powerful and the local cubes provide the slicing and dicing you would expect. They even have a free version that you can use. The reason why I mention “What is your backend, is because if you are using an MPP technology like Netezza, Teradata, Vertica, you may not need to pre-aggregate your data, andyou therefore just need a good visualization dashboard on top of sql queries.

Spotfire is somewhat of a different class and is fits in a space with QlikView as IN-MEMORY analytics. I have not had hands on with Spotfire, but in the Qlikview world, you extract your data into MEMORY-MAPPED files. Qlikview has pretty amazing compression and an AWESOME set of charting objects. I have been able to create incredible BI dashboards in a few hours that were extremely compelling. You need to keep your memory mapped files updated with scheduled extractions and publication. Qlikview provides the reporting and publishing servers to do so. With that said, I would imagine Spotfire to be very similar. Being owned by Tibco is not necessarily a bad thing either but Qlikview may be a bit more nimble. The cool thing is that the data is stored at the transactional level, so you can aggregate on the fly “IN RAM”. It’s 64BIT, can support large memory mapped files, and is pretty intelligent in how it retrieves and buffers the data off of disk.

Tableau may be more in the space with Pentaho, LogiXML, Jaspersoft. Unfortunately, I have not used Tableau either but did work briefly with Pentaho and LogiXML. The thing I like about Tableau and tools like Qlikview is the interactive nature in which you can work with the data and build reports. Tableau can connect to just about anything from flat-files to data warehouses.

An area where you may want to investigate is DUNDAS dashboard. I was extremely impressed with the visualization and the speed in which I could create dashboards. The rendering is based on silverlight in the browser and the objects looked awesome. The price is not bad either.http://www.dundas.com/Dashboard/Start/Samples/index.aspx

I happen to like Qlikview and Dundas, but all these products ALL have a free trial and in most cases even a free limited use version. I typically work with MPP databases, so I tend to avoid the need for CUBES and multi-dimensional analysis. I am fortunate that my options are usually wide open.

I hope that helps.

Comments(13) analytics, data warehouse, Latest News

Comments

By Vallabh on June 18th, 2010 at 1:00 pm

Hi Charlie,

I am looking for a comparison of Microstrategy,Spotfire and tableau .
I am not sure if this is the right forum for this query.
Please guide me to find some points on these tools.

Thanks.

By vallabh on June 18th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

Hello Charlie,

This was quite a useful information.

I am also looking for comparison of Microstrategy, Spotfire and Tableau.

I am not sure if this is the right forum for this query. Please let me know on what parameters can I compare the tools.

I am looking for a technology that offers ad-hoc analytics.

Thanks.

By Matt on June 19th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

Having tried Tableu and Dundas, I’d definitely agree with your affinity for Dundas Dashboard. It’s really easy to use and extremely powerful. I’m also a fan of the fact that the charts look good.

Good post.

By vallabh on June 21st, 2010 at 8:15 am

Hello Matt, Charlie,

It was a good overview of all the tools. Definitely, qlikview and dundas are the tools I am looking up to.

I am curious to know more about tableau. There is a lot of news about the tool.

I want to understand the longevity, legacy, production deployment, functionality, performance of tableau.

This shall help to compare the tool better with other leading products.

Thanks,
Vallabh.

By vallabh on June 21st, 2010 at 8:29 am

Hello Charlie,

Thanks for such a quick response. It is definitely very helpful information.

I am trying to fit in Oracle Exadata when compared to the other tools.

Could you also tell me what is a better way to handle ad-hoc analytics.Use a MPP in place of existing database or instead use microstrtegy or spotfire with the web logic.

Thanks,
Vallabh.

By cwardell on June 21st, 2010 at 11:36 am

Vallabh,

Please see my response here.

http://www.bcsolution.com/2010/06/adhoc-mpp-in-memory-bi/

Regards,
Charlie

By Vallabh on June 24th, 2010 at 6:10 am

Hello CHarlie,

I found an interesting article in gartner.
Hope everybody will find it interesting too. This article compares all technologies with pros and cons we have been discussing:

http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol13/article5/article5.html

Thanks,
Vallabh

By Michal Tsadok on October 6th, 2010 at 4:15 am

Hello There,

It looks like you have a lot of experience with BI solutions.

We are looking for a Web, OEM, Multi Lingual and interactive BI visual solution to embed it as part of our application.

I was wondering if you can give your 2 cents relates to this

OEM – is in the sense that we need to create “skeleton” dashboards and reports and once it is installed/executed, it would get the relevant parameters [db ip, strings of specific language, distribution which can be state depandant etc...]

Thanks in advance and waiting for your response,
Michal
Time To Know

By Charles Wardell on October 6th, 2010 at 1:55 pm

Hi Michal,

You have a lot to consider when OEM’ing a dashboard technology. Dundas, Qlikview, Micro-strategy al have OEM agreements. However the price point of your offering and the volume of data is really going to direct your vendor path.

In certain in-memory dashboarding solutions, I have seen the cost of almost $40k for the server license and a $1200 per month per seat cost.

In other technologies, I have seen server instances at $10k with seats as low as $500 per year.

Obviously I am talking about commercial tools because you mentioned OEM. The opensource world opens you up to many more options, but you need to make sure the open-source license agreement allows you to use it commercially.

Now if you application is very specific with the dashboard requirements. If you do not need the ability to have “business users” change the look and feel of dashboard objects you can use a library of charting objects.

FusionCharts is utilized in tons of commercial applications but it you need a developer to implemented it through an API. The benefit is total control and cost. The charts look incredible and the price is right. http://www.fusioncharts.com/

If my application was not going to change much from a charting perspective and I was launching a product, I would opt for fusionCharts.

However, if I had huge data requirements and needed rapid development of dashboards. I am biased towards Dundas and Qlikview.

Feel free to email me directly if you need to take this off-line.

Best Regards
charles . wardell @ bcsolution . com

By Chris on March 29th, 2011 at 10:17 am

Akuarela (www.akuarela.de) is a new software focusing on visual data analysis and ad-hoc dashboard creation. Dashboards can be created in a matter of seconds by dragging and dropping dimensions and measures on prefered UI elements like charts, maps and even interactive elements like sliders or drop down. So in case a well definded data model is available in a data warehouse, dashboards can be directly
created by the information consumer without having to ask IT professionals.

There is a free copy available on the website.

Regards
Chris

By Michael on November 17th, 2011 at 3:31 pm

If you’re looking for a BI tool that does everything, http://www.spreadsheetweb.com has been a staple in my tool box. Having tested/used the other 4-5 vendors SpreadsheetWEB on performance and pricing is the competitive advantage. Plus it’s easy to use!

 

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