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Tibco Spotfire and Microsoft Power BI are two of the top business intelligence and data analytics platforms in the market.
Both data platforms are in heavy demand as companies need to make major use of data analytics to gain competitive advantage. Virtually all divisions of companies – across all industry sectors – are data-dependent and hence lean heavily on data tools like Tibco Spotfire and Microsoft Power BI.
As two highly regarded analytics platforms, users are often forced to choose between Power BI and Spotfire. There are strong arguments in favor of both data platforms. But which platform is best for your business?
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Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Key Features Comparison
Microsoft encompasses a massive number of associated platforms and applications. So Power BI offers a diverse set of features that range far beyond BI and analytics. Integration with the likes of Microsoft Office, Office 365, Teams, Azure, and SharePoint is a major selling point. Specific to analytics, Power BI encompasses data preparation, data discovery, dashboards, and visualization.
Spotfire is a mature product offering strong analytics, dashboard, visualization, data preparation, and workflow capabilities. It allows users to harness data science techniques, geoanalytics, and real-time streaming analysis in easily consumable forms, and can automatically suggest visualizations.
How about the latest features and updates? Microsoft releases weekly updates to its cloud-based Power BI service. Recent feature additions include AI-infused experiences, smart narratives (NLG), and anomaly detection capabilities. A Power BI Premium version enables multi-geography capabilities and the ability deploy capacity to one of 42 data centers around the world. Its toolsets help with collaboration and tracking of key metrics
The latest updates for Tibco Spotfire include a better interface for administrators, data source names available from server diagnostics, and connection to Tibco Cloud Data Streams from Spotfire on-premises installations. It also offers new connectors (such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Amazon Redshift, Apache Spark SQL, and SAP HANA), single sign-on (SSO) to data sources, and more security features.
Both Power BI and Spotfire offer comprehensive features, so the winner here comes down to which product offers the functionality the user specifically desires.
Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Ease of Use
Newer users appear to find Power BI relatively easy to use. But as the complexity rises the platform grows more difficult to navigate.
Spotfire is said to be easier in terms of enabling more users to access, customize, and use sophisticated dashboards and visualizations. Some users complain about a lack of offline data modeling capabilities. But Spotfire gets high marks for visualization. The conclusion: both have done a fine job of making their platforms accessible to non-technical audiences.
This category does not offer a major difference between the two solutions, but Microsoft gets the win as it was rated slightly higher by users on ease of use.
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Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Analytics Capabilities
Power BI offers plenty of visualization features. It is also good at crunching and analyzing real-time data. Spotfire has excellent analytics qualities, too. It harnesses machine learning to transform data and provide insights. The platform also has top notch visualization, dashboard, and customization features.
There is little to choose between Spotfire and Power BI on analytics; your selection likely depends on your individual situation.
Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Cloud and On-Premises
Power BI is focused on the cloud. There is a fully functional SaaS version running in the Azure cloud. But Microsoft also offers an on-premises version resident in Power BI Report Server. And there is Power BI Desktop that is offered for free as a stand-alone personal analysis tool. When power users are engaged in complex analysis of multiple on-premises data sources, they need to download Power BI Desktop. These on-premises Power BI offerings, however, are not as rich as the cloud version with regard to dashboards, streaming analytics, natural language, and alerting.
Spotfire is strong in the cloud and on-premises. Spotfire beat Power BI hands down on-premises as that is where it originated. And it has made progress on providing cloud and hybrid functionality.
Who is the winner? Microsoft wins in the cloud, Spotfire wins on-prem.
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Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: CRM
CRM and BI often go together. Power BI integrates relatively well with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Users can quickly download one or the other and be confident that they will integrate well, share data, and be able to smoothly link CRM and BI functions. Thus, it becomes easily possible to analyze CRM data and vice versa to feed the results of analysis back into the CRM platform as part of campaign planning and lead generation.
Spotfire offers sales and marketing teams plenty of great visualizations and dashboards. But it stops short of CRM. It is set up to integrate well with third-party CRM systems. Whether you use Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, or another CRM systems, Tibco can integrate it with Spotfire.
Microsoft Power BI wins when a business wants a unified BI/CRM package. But if the organization is not a Microsoft CRM user, Spotfire offers more flexibility in terms of the CRM and marketing related platforms it can be used with for analysis purposes
Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Integration
Microsoft has an extensive array of integration options, APIs, and partnerships. Power BI is tightly embedded into much of the Microsoft and Windows ecosystems. The company, though, is addressing some integration challenges. Gartner noted that Power BI’s handling of content promotion and publication can generate administrative overhead. This isn’t an easy fix, which will add manual labor between Power BI apps and its collaborative development environment known as Workspaces.
Spotfire, similarly, is in the midst of its own integration challenges. Integrating with the acquired Information Builders BI platform will take time but will bring additional functionality in the long run. Already it is bearing fruit as seen in the recent updates to the platform.
Furthermore, Spotfire has a hyperconverged analytics vision that is ongoing. Some users noted that the technical capabilities of this have yet to match the hype. But the company is working hard to close the gap via tighter integration.
Microsoft outperforms Spotfire on integration due to the depth of its partnership relationships that it has established over the decades.
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Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Pricing
Microsoft is very good at keeping prices low as a tactic in growing market share. It offers a lot of features at a relatively low price. Power BI Pro, for example, costs approximately $10 per month per user. The premium version is $20 per month. The bottom line for any rival is that it is hard to compete with Microsoft Power BI on price when it comes to automated ML capabilities and AI-powered services.
Spotfire lacks a solid reputation on pricing and contract negotiating. The company doesn’t publish prices online. But it looks like there are different prices for analysts, business authors, and consumers of analytics data. These range from $25 a month per user to $125 per month. In this category, users should check pricing as it applies to their specific environments.
In most cases Power BI will win. Licensing on Spotfire looks more complex. The company also charges for integration with other platforms.
Tibco Spotfire vs. Power BI: Conclusion
Microsoft is committed to investing in Power BI and enhancing its integration across other Microsoft platforms. Any organization that is a heavy user of Office 365, Teams, Dynamics, and/or Azure will find it hard to resist the advantages of deploying Power BI.
And those advantages are only going to increase. On the AI front, for example, the company boasts around 100,000 customers using Power BI’s AI services. The company is also putting effort into integrating with other applications and in making it easy to autotune query performance. Those with an eye on budget that still want a rich BI platform will probably favor Power BI.
Consider, too, the existing sales teams and distribution channels for Microsoft products. With such a huge user base and so many tentacles across the world, Power BI may only be a click away for many organizations.
Tibco Spotfire also has a loyal following among data scientists and power users. It is particularly strong in life sciences, high-tech manufacturing, transport and logistics, and energy. But outside of its installed base, it lacks momentum. Gartner said it rarely comes up in surveys of who is bidding for different projects.
For those verticals in Spotfire’s areas of strength, it probably it just ahead of Power BI. But for other verticals, Microsoft might be a better choice. It is hard, after all, to compete head-to-head against Microsoft. Against the larger Microsoft ecosystem, it has an uphill battle to make progress and gain market share. But outside of that ecosystem, Spotfire gives Power BI a run for its money.
Overall, Microsoft offers the largest range of features and integrations, whereas Tibco Spotfire beats it in terms of depth in certain markets. Gartner’s latest “Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms,” graded Power BI ahead of Spotfire. As such, Power BI is a Leader whereas Tibco is a Visionary.
Feedback and ratings from users has the two platforms evenly matched overall. Power BI scored higher in coloration, social BI, mobile exploration. Tibco Spotfire was ahead on publishing and embedding of analytic content.
But for now, Power BI wins overall.
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