TIBCO Launches New Spotfire BI Software With Automated 'Recommendations' Capabilities

TIBCO Software debuted a new release of its Spotfire data visualization and analytics platform Tuesday, offering new automated analysis guidance capabilities, new data discovery processes and an improved user interface.

TIBCO is targeting the new Spotfire 7 toward a broad range of potential users, in contrast to competing with big data analysis software that either provides complex tools for expert analysts or goes after everyday business users with oversimplified capabilities.

"We're calling this the 'smart analytics release,'" said Leslie Miller, product marketing manager, in an interview.

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Usability for everyday business users is, nevertheless, a key element of Spotfire 7: Miller noted that some 75 percent of knowledge workers are not using any kind of business intelligence software.

Key to Spotfire 7's new automated guidance capabilities is the inclusion of the company's recently unveiled Recommendations engine, a built-in analytics intelligence wizard that guides users to the best data visualizations and charts based on the attributes of the data and the kinds of results the user is looking for. With Recommendations, a user can build an analytics dashboard with a few clicks, Miller said.

TIBCO first announced the Recommendations technology in January when it added it to its Spotfire Cloud service.

Spotfire 7 also boasts a number of new data exploration capabilities, including the "Data Panel" feature for data searches, sorting by data type (such as time-based data, geographical, and so on), and filtering visualizations. Also new is a grouping function for combining columns of data into a single group, and new "Business Author" tools for quickly configuring data visualizations.

The new release also has undergone a significant face-lift to improve its user interface and add more customization features. "The idea here is to put business analytics in a business context," Miller said.

Spotfire 7 is for on-premise and desktop deployments. While TIBCO sells Spotfire directly to large customers, it relies heavily on its solution provider partners to sell to small and midsize customers. TIBCO also works with systems integrators to sell and implement its business analytics software.

PUBLISHED MARCH 3, 2015