Notes about Spotfire 6 Cloud pricing

2 months ago TIBCO (Symbol TIBX on NASDAQ) anounced Spotfire 6 at TUCON 2013 user conference. This as well a follow-up release  (around 12/7/13) of Spotfire Cloud supposed to be good for TIBX prices. Instead since then TIBX lost more then 8%, while NASDAQ as whole grew more then 5%:

For example, at TUCON 2013 TIBCO's CEO re-declared "5 primary forces for 21st century"(IMHO all 5 "drivers" sounds to me like obsolete IBM-ish Sales pitches) - I guess to underscore the relevance of TIBCO's strategy and products to 21st century:

1. 
   

   Explosion of data (sounds like Sun rises in the East);

   
   


2. 
   

   Rise of mobility (any kid with smartphone will say the same);

   
   


3. 
   

   Emergence of Platforms (not sure if this a good pitch, at least it was not clear from TIBCO's presentation);

   
   


4. 
   

   Emergence of Asian Economies (what else you expect? This is the side effect of the greedy offshoring for more then decade);

   
   


5. 
   

   Math trumping Science  (Mr. Ranadive and various other TUCON speakers kept repeating this mantra, showing that they think that statistics and "math" are the same thing and they do not know how valuable science can be. I personally think that recycling this pitch is dangerous for TIBCO sales and I suggest to replace this statement with something more appealing and more mature).

   
   

Somehow TUCON 2013 propaganda and introduction of new and more capable version 6 of Spotfire and Spotfire Cloud did not help TIBCO's stock. For example In trading on Thursday, 12/12/13 the shares of TIBCO Software, Inc. (NASD: TIBX) crossed below their 200 day moving average of $22.86, changing hands as low as $22.39 per share while Market Capitalization was oscillating around $3.9B, basically the same as the capitalization of 3 times smaller (in terms of employees) competitor Tableau Software.

As I said above, just a few days before this low TIBX price, on 12/7/13, as promised on TUCON 2013, TIBCO launched Spotfire Cloud and published licensing and pricing for it.

Most disappointing news is that in reality TIBCO withdrew itself from the competition for mindshare with Tableau Public (more then 100 millions of users, more then 40000 active publishers and Visualization Authors with Tableau Public Profile), because TIBCO no longer offers free annual evaluations. In addition, new Spotfire Cloud Personal service ($300/year, 100GB storage, 1 business author seat) became less useful under new license since its Desktop Client has limited connectivity to local data and can upload only local DXP files.

The 2nd Cloud option called Spotfire Cloud Work Group ($2000/year, 250GB storage, 1 business author/1 analyst/5 consumer seats) and gives to one author almost complete TIBCO Spotfire Analyst with ability to read 17 different types of local files (dxp, stdf, sbdf, sfs, xls, xlsx, xlsm, xlsb, csv, txt, mdb, mde, accdb, accde, sas7bdat,udl, log, shp), connectivity to standard Data Sources (ODBC, OleDb, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server Compact Data Provider 4.0, .NET Data Provider for Teradata, ADS Composite Information Server Connection, Microsoft SQL Server (including Analysis Services), Teradata and TIBCO Spotfire Maps. It also enables author  to do predictive analytics, forecasting, and local R language scripting).

This 2nd Spotfire's Cloud option does not reduce Spotfire chances to compete with Tableau Online, which costs 4 times less ($500/year). However (thanks to 2 Blog Visitors - both with name Steve - for help), you cannot use Tableau online without licensed version of Tableau Desktop ($1999 perpetual non-expiring desktop license with 1st year maintenance included and each following year 20% $400 per year maintenance) and Online License (additional $500/year for access to the same site, but extra storage will not be added to that site!) for each consumer. Let's compare Spotfire Workgroup Edition and Tableau Online cumulative cost for 1, 2, 3 and 4 years for 1 developer/analyst and 5 consumer seats :

	Cumulative cost for 1, 2, 3 and 4 years of usage/subscription, 1 developer/analyst and 5 consumer seats:
Year	Spotfire Cloud Work Group, 250GB storage	Tableau Online (with Desktop), 100GB storage	Cost Difference (negative if Spotfire cheaper)
1	$2000	$4999	-$2999
2	$4000	$8399	-$4399
3	$6000	$11799	-$5799
4	$8000	$15199	-$7199

UPDATE: You may need to consider some other properties, like available storage and number of users who can consume/review visualizations, published in cloud. In sample above:

• Spotfire giving to Work Group total 250GB storage, while Tableau giving total 100GB to the site.


• Spotfire costs less than Tableau Online for similar configuration (almost twice less!)

Overall, Spotfire giving more for your $$$ and as such can be a front-runner in Cloud Data Visualization race, considering that Qlikview does not have any comparable cloud options (yet) and Qliktech relying on its partners (I doubt it can be competitive) to offer Qlikview-based services in the cloud. Gere is the same table as above but as IMage (to make sure all web browsers can see it):

3rd Spotfire's Cloud option called Spotfire Cloud Enterprise, it has customizable seating options and storage, more advanced visualization, security and scalability and connects to 40+ additional data sources. It requires an annoying negotiations with TIBCO sales, which may result to even larger pricing. Existence of 3rd Spotfire Cloud option decreases the value of its 2nd Cloud Option, because it saying to customer that Spotfire Cloud Work Group is not best and does not include many features. Opposite to that is Tableau's Cloud approach: you will get everything (with one exception: Multidimensional (cube) data sources are not supported by Tableau Online) with Tableau Online, which is only the option.

Update 12/20/13:  TIBCO announced results for last quarter, ending 11/30/13 with Quarterly revenue $315.5M (only 6.4% growth compare with the same Quarter of 2012) and $1070M Revenue for 12 months ended 11/30/13 (only 4.4% growth compare with the same period of 2012). Wall Street people do not like it today and TIBX lost today 10% of its value, with Share Price ending $22 and Market Capitalization went down to less then $3.6B. At the same time Tableau's Share Price went up $1 to $66 and Market Capitalization of Tableau Software (symbol DATA) went above $3.9B). As always I think it is relevant to compare the number of job openings today: Spotfire - 28, Tableau - 176, Qliktech - 71

2 Free Microstrategy Visualization tools Disrupt it all!

Famous Traditional BI vendor got sick and tired to be out of Data Visualization market and decided to insert itself into it by force by releasing today 2 Free (for all users) Data Visualization Products:

• MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop™ (Free self-service visual analytics tool)
• MicroStrategy Analytics Express™ (Free Cloud-based self-service visual analytics)

That looks to me as the huge Disruption of Data Visualization Market: For example similar Desktop Product from Tableau costs $1999 and Cloud Product called Tableau Online costs $500/year/user. It puts Tableau, Qlikview and Spotfire to a very tough position price-wise. However only Tableau stock went down almost $3 (more then %4) today, but MSTR, TIBX an QLIK basically did not react on Microstrategy announcement):

And don't think that only MIcrostrategy trying to get into DV market. For example SAP did similar (in less-dramatic and non-disruptive fashion) a few months ago with SAP Lumira (Personal Edition is free), also SAP Cloud and Standard edition available too, see it here http://www.saplumira.com/index.php and here http://store.businessobjects.com/store/bobjamer/en_US/Content/pbPage.sap-lumira . 

SAP senior vice president and platform head Steve Lucas 10 weeks ago was asked if SAP would consider buying Tableau, Lucas went in the opposite direction. “We aren’t going to buy Tableau,” Lucas said with a smile on his face. “There’s no need to buy an overvalued software company.” Rather, SAP wants to crush companies like Tableau (I doubt it is possible, but SAP is free to try) and build own Data Visualization product line out of Lumira, read more at
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/30/sap-platform-head-tableau-overvalued/#yFzUpzOh6ivMYvqP.99
If I will be Tableau, Qlikview or Spotfire I will not worry yet about Microstrategy competition yet, because it is unclear how the future R&D for free Analytics Desktop and Express will be funded - out of MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise™ R&D budget? That can be tricky, considering as of right now Tableau hiring hard (163 open job positions as of yesterday!) and Qliktech is very active too (about 93 openings as of yesterday) and even TIBCO has 36 open positions just for Spotfire alone.But I may start to worry about other DV Vendor - Datawatch, who recently completed the acquisition of Panopticon. Datawatch grew 45% YoY (2012-over-2011), has only 124 employees but $27.5M in sales, very experienced leadership, 40000+ customers worldwide and mature product line. May be another evidence of it here: http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20131023-907942.html

New MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise 9.4 includes data blending, which allows users to combine data from more than one source; the software stores the data in working memory without the need for a separate data integration product.  9.4 can connect with the MongoDB NoSQL data store as well as Hadoop distributions from Hortonworks, Intel and Pivotal. It comes with the R, adds better ESRI integration. The application can now fit 10 times as much data in memory as the previous version could, and the self-service querying now runs up to 40 percent faster.

The three MicroStrategy Analytics Platform products also share a common user experience—making it easy to start small with self-service analytics and grow into the production-grade features of Enterprise. Desktop and Express from Microstrategy can be naturally extended (for fee)  to a new enterprise-grade BI&DV Suite, also released today and called MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise™ (known under other name as MIcrostrategy Suite 9.4).

MicroStrategy Analytics Enterprise™ Suite is also available starting today for free for developers and non-production use: 10 named user licenses of MicroStrategy Intelligence Server, MicroStrategy Web Reporter and Analyst, MicroStrategy Mobile, MicroStrategy Report Services, MicroStrategy Transaction Services, MicroStrategy OLAP Services, MicroStrategy Distribution Services, and MultiSource Option. 1 named user license of development software, MicroStrategy Web Professional, MicroStrategy Developer, and MicroStrategy Architect The server components have a 1 CPU limit).
Quote from Wayne Eckerson, President of  BI Leader Consulting:
"The new MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop makes MicroStrategy a top-tier competitor in the red-hot visual discovery market. The company was one of the first traditional enterprise BI vendors to ship a visual discovery tool, so its offering is mature compared to others in its peer group, but it was locked away inside its existing platform. By offering a stand-alone desktop visual discovery tool and making it freely available, MicroStrategy places itself among" Data Visualization Leaders.

You also can read today's article from very frequent visitor to my blog (his name Akram), who is the Portfolio and Hedge Manager, Daily Trader and excellent investigator of all Data Visualization Stocks, DV Market and DV Vendors. His article "Tableau: The DV Market Just Got More Crowded"  can be found here (cannot resist to quote: "Microstrategy is priced like it has nothing to do with this space, and Tableau is priced like it will own the whole thing."):http://seekingalpha.com/article/1760432-tableau-the-dv-market-just-got-more-crowded?source=yahoo

[caption id="attachment_4413" align="aligncenter" width="510"] Heatmap generated by Microstrategy Analytic Desktop[/caption]

MicroStrategy Analytics Desktop.

It's free visual analytics: Free Visual Insight, 100M per file, 1GB total storage, 1 of user, Free e-mail support for 30 days. Free access to online training, forum, and knowledge base, Data Sources: xls, csv, RDBMSes, Multidimensional Cubes, MapReduce, Columnar DBs, Access with Web Browser, export to Excel, PDF, flash and images, email distribution. The product is freely available to all and can be downloaded instantly at:http://www.microstrategy.com/free/desktop .

[caption id="attachment_4415" align="aligncenter" width="510"] TRellis of Bar Charts generated by Microstrategy Analytics Desktop[/caption]
http://www.microstrategy.com/Strategy/media/downloads/free/analytics-desktop_quick-start-guide.pdf Kevin Spurway, MicroStrategy’s vice president of industry and mobile marketing said: "The new desktop software was designed to compete with other increasingly popular self-serve, data-discovery desktop visualization tools offered by Tableau and others". To work with larger data sets, a user should have 2GB or more of working memory on the computer, Spurway said.

MicroStrategy Analytics Express.

MicroStrategy Analytics Express is a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based application that delivers all the rapid-fire self-service analytical capabilities of Desktop, plus reports and dashboards, native mobile applications, and secure team-based collaboration – all instantly accessible in the Cloud. Today, the Express community includes over 32,000 users across the globe.

In this release, Express inherits all the major functional upgrades of the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform, including new data blending features, improved performance, new map analytics, and much more. For a limited time, MicroStrategy is also making Express available to all users free for a year. With this valuable offer, users will be able to establish an account, invite tens, hundreds, or even thousands of colleagues to connect, analyze and share their data and insight, and do it all at no charge. For some organizations, the potential value of this offer can be $1 million or more. Users can sign up, access the service, and take advantage of this offer instantly at
www.microstrategy.com/free/express
MicroStrategy Analytics Express includes Free Visual Insight, Free web browser and iPad access, Free SaaS for one year, 1GB upload per file, unlimited number of users, Free e-mail support for 30 days. Free access to online training, forum, and knowledge base. Data Sources: xls, csv, RDBMSes Columnar DBs, Drobbox, Google Drive Connector, Visual Insight, a lot of security and a lot more, see http://www.microstrategy.com/Strategy/media/downloads/free/analytics-express_user-guide.pdf

All tools from Microstrategy Analytics Platform (Desktop, Express and Entereprise Suite) support standard list of Chart Styles and Types:

• Bar (Vertical/Horizontal Clustered/Stacked/100% Stacked),
• Line (Vertical/Horizontal Absolute/Stacked/100% Stacked),
• Combo Chart (of Bar and Area),
• Area (Vertical/Horizontal Absolute/Stacked/100% Stacked)
• Dual Axis ( Bar/Line/Area Vertical/Horizontal), 
• HeatMap, 
• Scatter, Scatter Grid, 
• Bubble, Bubble Grid, 
• Grid,

• 
  
• Pie, Ring, 
• ESRI Maps, 

• Network Visualization of Nodes, with lines representing links/connections/relationship,

• Microcharts and Sparklines
• 
  

Data and Word Clouds, and of course any kind of interactive Dashboards as combination of all of the above Charts, Graphs, and Marks:
Interactive Dashboard Generated by Microstrategy Analytics Express

Spotfire 6 is announced

Yesterday TIBCO announced Spotfire 6 with features, competitive with Tableau 8.1 and Qlikview.Next (a.k.a Qlikview 12). 
Some new features will be showcased at TUCON® 2013, TIBCO's annual user conference, October 14-17, 2013, and more details will be shown in webcasts and webinars (I personally prefer detailed articles, blogposts, slides, PDFs and Demos, but TIBCO's corporate culture ignores my preferences for years) on 10/30/13 by Steve Farr

• here: http://lp.spotfire.tibco.com/Global_Webcast_2013Spotfire6OctoberAM.html and
• here: http://lp.spotfire.tibco.com/Global_Webcast_2013Spotfire6OctoberPM.html

Spotfire 6.0 will be available in mid-November, presumably the same time as Tableau 8.1 and before then Qlikview.Next so TIBCO is not a loser in Leap-frogging game for sure...
TIBCO bought the Extended Results and will presumably will show the integration with PSUHBI product, see it here: http://www.pushbi.com/ ; TIBCO called it as Delivery of  personal KPIs and Metrics on any mobile phone, tablet or laptop, online or offline (new name for it will be TIBCO Spotfire^® Consumer):

Another TIBCO's Purchase is MAPORAMA and integration with it TIBCO called (very appropriately) as the Location Analytics with promise to

• Visualize, explore and analyze data in the context of location
• Expand situational understanding with multi-layered geo-analytics

Mashup new data sources to provide precise geo-coding across the enterprise

Spotfire Location Services is the Agnostic Platform and supports (I guess this needs to be verified, because sounds too good to be true) any map service, including own TIBCO, ESRI (Spotfire integrates with ESRI previously), Google:

TIBCO has Event processing capabilities (e.g StreamBase, they bought a few months ago, see it here: http://www.streambase.com/news-and-events/press-releases/pr-2013/tibco-software-acquires-streambase-systems/#axzz2hiEjnr9X) and it will be interesting to see the new Events Analytics product (see also: http://www.streambase.com/products/streambasecep ) integrated with Spotfire 6:

• Identify new trends and outliers with continuous process monitoring
• Automate the delivery of analytics applications based on trends
• Operationalize analytics to support continuous process improvement:

One more capability in Spotfire mentioned (this claim needs to be verified) in recent TIBCO blogpost http://www.tibco.com/blog/2013/10/11/connecting-the-loops-the-next-step-in-decision-management/ as the ability to overlap 2 related but separated in real-life processes: the processes of analysis (discovery of insights in data) and execution (deciding and actions) could be separated by days, but with Spotfire 6.0 the entire decision process can happen in real time:

For business user Spotfire 6 has new web-based authoring (Spotfire has a few "Clients", one called Web Player and another called Enterprise Player, both are not free unlike Tableau Free Reader or Tableau Public). Bridging the gap between simple dashboards and advanced analytic applications, Spotfire 6.0 provides a new client "tailored to meet the needs of the everyday business user, who typically has struggled to manipulate pivot tables and charts to address their data discovery needs".

With this new web application, known as TIBCO Spotfire^® Business Author, business users can visually explore and interact with data, whether residing in a simple spreadsheet or dashboard, a database, or a predefined analytic application. It will definitely compete with Web Authoring in Tableau 8.1 and incoming Qlikview.Next.

For me personally the most interesting new feature is new Spotfire Cloud Services (supposedly the continuation of Spotfire SIlver, which I like but it is overpriced and non-competitive storage-wise vs. Tableau Public and Tableau Online cloud services). Here is the quote from yesterday's Press Release: "TIBCO Spotfire^® Cloud is a new set of cloud services for enterprises, work groups, and personal use (see some preliminary info here: https://marketplace.cloud.tibco.com/marketplace/marketplace/apps#/sc :

• Personal: Web-based product, Upload Excel, .csv and .txt data, 12 visualization types, 100 GB of data storage
• Workgroup: Web-based and desktop product, Connect and integrate multiple data sources, All visualization types, 250 GB of data storage
• Enterprise: Web-based and desktop product, Connect to 40+ data sources, All visualization types, Advanced statistics services, 500 GB of data storage

TIBCO Spotfire^® Cloud Enterprise provides a secure full-featured version of Spotfire in the cloud to analyze and collaborate on business insights, whether or not the data is hosted. For project teams seeking data discovery as a service, TIBCO Spotfire^® Cloud Work Group provides a wealth of application-building tools so distributed teams can visually explore data quickly and easily and deploy analytic applications at a very low cost. For individuals looking for a single step to actionable insight, TIBCO Spotfire^®Personal is a cost-effective web-based client for quick data discovery needs."

Spotfire 6 has enterprise-class, R-compatible statistical engine: TIBCO Enterprise Runtime for R (TERR) which is  the part of excellent TIBCO Spotfire Statistics Services (TSSS). TSSS allows Integration of R (including TERR), Spotfire's own S+ (SPlus is Spotfire's commercial version of R), SAS® and MATLAB® into Spotfire and custom applications. TERR, see http://spotfire.tibco.com/en/discover-spotfire/what-does-spotfire-do/predictive-analytics/tibco-enterprise-runtime-for-r-terr.aspx supports:

• Support for paralelized R-language scripts in TERR
• Support for call outs to open source R from TERR
• Use RStudio – the most popular IDE in the R Community-to develop your TERR scripts
• Over a thousand TERR compatible CRAN packages

Among other news is support for new Data Sources: http://spotfire.tibco.com/en/resources/support/spotfire-data-sources.aspx including SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse v.7.0.1 (required TIBCO Connector Link).

General note: I maintain my opinion that the best way for TIBCO to capitalize on tremendous hidden market value of Spotfire is to spin-it off as EMC did with VMWare. My other concern is too many offices involved with Spotfire: (Parental) TIBCO's HQ in California, R&D office in Sweden and Main marketing, sales and consulting office in Massachusetts. My advise to have only one main office in MA, which is compatible with spin-off idea. Tableau has advantage here with concentrating their main office in Seattle.

The BI is a dead horse, long live the DV!

Last month Tableau and Qliktech both declared that Traditional BI is too slow (I am saying this for many years) for development and their new Data Visualization (DV software) is going to replace it. Quote from Tableau's CEO: Christian Chabot: "Traditional BI software is obsolete and dying and this is very direct challenge and threat to BI vendors: your (BI that is) time is over and now it is time for Tableau." Similar quote from Anthony Deighton, Qliktech's CTO & Senior VP, Products: "More and more customers are looking at QlikView not just to supplement traditional BI, but to replace it".

One of my clients - large corporation (obviously cannot say the name of it due NDA) asked me to advise of what to choose between Traditional BI tools with long Development Cycle (like Cognos, Business Objects or Microstrategy), modern BI tools (like JavaScript and D3 toolkit) which is attempt to modernize traditional BI but still having  sizable development time and leading Data Visualization tools with minimal development time (like Tableau, Qlikview or Spotfire).

Since main criterias for client were

• minimize IT personnel involved and increase its productivity;
• minimize the off-shoring and outsourcing as it limits interactions with end users;
• increase end users's involvement, feedback and action discovery.

So I advised to client to take some typical Visual Report project from the most productive Traditional  BI Platform (Microstrategy), use its prepared Data and clone it with D3 and Tableau (using experts for both). Results in form of Development time in hours) I put below; all three projects include the same time (16 hours) for Data Preparation & ETL, the same time for Deployment (2 hours) and the same number (8) of Repeated Development Cycles (due 8 consecutive feedback from End Users):


It is clear that Traditional BI requires too much time, that D3 tools just trying to prolongate old/dead BI traditions by modernizing and beautifying BI approach, so my client choose Tableau as a replacement for Microstrategy, Cognos, SAS and Business Objects and better option then D3 (which require smart developers and too much development). This movement to leading Data Visualization platforms is going on right now in most of corporate America, despite IT inertia and existing skillset. Basically it is the application of the simple known principle that "Faster is better then Shorter", known in science as Fermat's Principle of least time.
This changes made me wonder (again) if Gartner's recent marketshare estimate and trends for Dead Horse sales (old traditional BI) will stay for long. Gartner estimates the size of BI market as $13B which is drastically different from TBR estimate ($30B). TBR predicts that it will keep growing at least until 2018 with yearly rate 4% and BI Software Market to Exceed $40 Billion by 2018 (They estimate BI Market as $30B in 2012 and include more wider category of Business Analytics Software as opposed to strictly BI tools). I added estimates for Microstrategy, Qliktech, Tableau and Spotfire to Gartner's MarketShare estimates for 2012 here:


"Traditional BI is like a pencil with a brick attached to it" said Chris Stolte at recent TCC13 conference and Qliktech said very similar in its recent announcement of Qlikview.Next. I expect TIBCO will say similar about upcoming new release of Spotfire (next week at TUCON 2013 conference in Las Vegas?)


These bold predictions by leading Data Visualization vendors are just simple application of Fermat's Principle of Least Time: this principle stated that the path taken between two points by a ray of light (or development path in our context) is the path that can be traversed in the least time.

Fermat's principle can be easily applied to "PATH" estimates to multiple situations like in video below, where path from initial position of the Life Guard on beach to the Swimmer in Distress (Path through Sand, Shoreline and Water) explained:

Even Ants following the Fermat's Principle (as described in article at Public Library of Science here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059739 ) so my interpretation of this Law of Nature ("Faster is better then Shorter") that  traditional BI is a dying horse and I advise everybody to obey the Laws of Nature.

If you like to watch another video about Fermat's principle of Least Time and related Snell's law, you can watch this:

Google+

Qlikview.Next will be available in 2014

Qlikview 10 was released around 10/10/10, Qlikview 11 – around 11/11/11, so I expected Qlikview 12 to be released on 12/12/12. Qliktech press release said today that the next (after 11.2) version of Qlikview will be delivered under the new nickname Qlikview.Next in 2014 but "for  early adopter customers in a production environment in 2013". I hope I can get my hands on it ASAP!

The new buzzword is Natural Analytics: "QlikView.Next’s key value as an alternative BI platform is in its use of Natural Analytics". The new Qliktech motto that "Qlikview is a Replacement of Traditional BI" is similar to what we heard from Tableau leaders just 2 weeks ago on Tableau Customer Conference in Washington, DC.  Another themes I hear from Qliktech about Qliview.Next are sounds familiar too: Gorgeous, Genius, Visually Beautiful, Associative Experience, Comparative Analysis, Anticipatory, Drag and Drop Analytics.

Qlikview.Next will introduce "Data Dialogs" as live discussions between multiple users about Data they see and explore collectively, enabling "Social BI". This reminds me the integration between TIBBR (TIBCO's collaboration platform) and Spotfire, which existed since Spotfire 4.0.

Details about new features in Qlikview.Next will be released later, but at least we know now when Qlikview 12 (sorry, Qlikview.Next that is) will be available. Some features actually unveiled in generic terms::

• 
  

  Unified, Browser-Based HTML5 Client, which will automatically optimize itself for user' device;

  
  


• 
  

  Automatic and Intelligent re-sizing of objects to fit user's screen;

  
  


• 
  

  Server-side Analysis and Development, Web-based creation and delivery of content, Browser-based Development;

  
  


• 
  

  Data Storytelling, narrative and social with Data Dialogs;

  
  


• 
  

  Library and Repository for UI objects;

  
  


• 
  

  Multi-source Data Integration and new web-based scripting;

  
  


• 
  

  QlikView Expressor for advanced graphical Data Integration and Metadata Management;

  
  


• 
  

  Improved Data Discovery with associative experience across all the data, both in memory and on disks;

  
  


• 
  

  Open API: JSON, .NET SDK and as JavaScript API;

  
  


• 
  

  All UI Objects can be treated as extension Objects, customizable with their source files available to developers;

  
  


• 
  

  New Managment Console with Qlikview on Qlikview Monitor;

  
  


• 
  

  New visualization capabilities, based on advanced data visualization suite from NComVA (bought by Qliktech a few months ago), potential samples see here: http://www.ncomva.se/guide/?chapter=Visualizations

  
  

In addition Qliktech is launching the "Qlik Customer Success Framework" , which includes:

• 
  

  Qonnect Partner Program: An extensive global network of 1500+ partners, including resellers, (OEMs), technology companies, and system integrators.

  
  


• 
  

  Qlik Community: An online community with nearly 100,000 members comprised of customers, partners, developers and enthusiasts.

  
  


• 
  

  Qlik Market: An online showcase of applications, extensions and connectors.

  
  


• 
  

  Qoncierge: A single point of contact service offering for customers to help them access the resources they need.

  
  


• 
  

  Comprehensive Services: A wide range of consulting services, training and support.

  
  

Also see Ted Cuzzillo blogpost about it here: http://datadoodle.com/2013/10/09/next-for-qlik/# and Cindi Howson's old post here: http://biscorecard.typepad.com/biscorecard/2012/05/qliktech-shares-future-product-plans-for-qlikview.html and new article here: http://www.informationweek.com/software/business-intelligence/qliktech-aims-to-disrupt-bi-again/240162403#!

Tableau 8.1 announced, 8.2 to follow

Today Tableau Customer Conference 2013 started with 3200+ attendees from 40+ countries and 100+ industries, with 700 employees of Tableau, 240 sessions. Tableau 8.1 pre-announced today for release in fall of 2013, also version 8.2 planned for winter 2014, and Tableau 9.0 for later in 2014.

Update 9/10/13: keynote now is available recorded and online:  http://www.tableausoftware.com/keynote
(Recorded Monday Sept 9, 2013 Christian Chabot, Chris Stolte and the developers LIVE)

New in 8.1: 64-bit, Integration with R, support for SAML, IPV6 and External Load Balancers, Copy/Paste Dashboards and worksheets between workbooks, new Calendar Control, own visual style, including customizing even filters, Tukey's Box-and-Whisker Box-plot, prediction bands, ranking, visual analytics for everyone and everywhere (in the cloud now)

Planned and new for 8.2: Tableau for MAC, Story Points (new type of worksheet/dashboard with mini-slides as story-points), seamless access to data via data connection interface to visually build a data schema, including inner/left/right/outer visual joins, beautifying columns names, easier metadata etc, Web authoring enhancements (it may get into 8.1: moving quick filters, improvement for Tablets, color encoding.) etc.

8.1:  Francois Ajenstat announced: 64-bit finally (I asked for that for many years) for server processes and for Desktop, support for SAML (single-sign-ON on Server and Desktop), IPV6, External Load Balancers:



8.1: Dave Lion announced R integration with Tableau:



8.1: Mike Arvold announced "Visual Analytics for everyone", including implemention of famous Tukey's Box-and-Whisker Box-plot (Spotfire has it for a while, see it here: http://stn.spotfire.com/stn/UserDoc.aspx?UserDoc=spotfire_client_help%2fbox%2fbox_what_is_a_box_plot.htm&Article=%2fstn%2fConfigure%2fVisualizationTypes.aspx ),

better forecasting, prediction bands, ranking, better heatmaps:

8.1: Melinda Minch announced "fast, easy, beautiful", most importantly copy/paste dashboards and worksheets between workbooks, customizing everything, including quick filters, new calendar control, own visual style, folders in Data Window etc...

8.2: Jason King pre-announced the Seamless access to data via data connection interface to visually build a data schema, including inner/left/right/outer "visual" joins, beautifying columns names, default formats, new functions like DATEPARSE, appending data-set with new tables, beautifying columns names, easier metadata etc.

8.2: Robert Kosara introduced Story Points (using new type of worksheet/dashboard with mini-slides as story-points) for new Storytelling functionality:

8.2: Andrew Beers pre-announced Tableau 8.2 on MAC and he got a very warm reception from audience for that:

Chris Stolte proudly mentioned his 275-strong development team, pre-announced upcoming Tableau Releases 8.1 (this fall), 8.2 (winter 2014) and 9.0 (later in 2014) and introduced 7 "developers" who (see above Francois, Mike, Dave, Melinda, Jason, Robert and Andrew) discussed during this keynote new features (feature list is definitely longer and wider that recent "innovations" we saw from Qlikview 11.2 and even from Spotfire 5.5):

Christian Chabot opening keynote today... He said something important: current BI Platforms are not fast, nor easy, they are not beautiful and not for anyone and they are definitely not "anywhere" but only in designated places with appropriate IT personnel (compare with Tableau Public, Tableau Online, Tableau free Reader etc.) and it is only capable to produce a bunch of change requests from one Enterprise's department to another, which will take long time to implement with any SDLC framework.

Christian basically repeated what I am saying on this blog for many years, check it here http://apandre.wordpress.com/market/competitors/ : traditional BI software (from SAP, IBM, Oracle, Microstrategy and even Microsoft cannot compete with Tableau, Qlikview and Spotfire) is obsolete and dying and this is very direct challenge and threat to BI vendors (I am not sure if they understand that): your (BI that is) time is over and now it is time for Tableau (also for Qlikview and Spotfire but they are slightly behind now...).

Summer Readings from my Google+ Page

While blog preserving my observations and thoughts, it preventing me to spend enough time to read what other people thinking and saying, so I created almost 2 years ago the extension of this blog in the form of 2 Google+ pages http://tinyurl.com/VisibleData and http://tinyurl.com/VisualizationWithTableau , where I accumulated all reading pointers for myself and gradually reading those materials when I have time.

Those 2 pages magically became extremely popular (this is unintended result) with total more than 5000 Google+ followers as of today. For example here is a Chart showing monthly growth of the  number of followers for the main extension of this blog http://tinyurl.com/VisibleData :



So please see below some samples of Reading Pointers accumulated over last 3 months of summer by my Google+ pages:

Author trying to simplify BigData Definition as following: "BigData Simplified: Too much data to fit into a single server": http://yottascale.com/entry/the-colorful-secrets-of-bigdata-platforms

Recent talk from Donald Farmer: http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/06/touch-the-next-frontier-of-business-intelligence/

Dmitry pointing to implementation Disaster of Direct Discovery in Qlikview 11.2: http://bi-review.blogspot.com/2013/04/first-look-at-qlikview-direct-discovery.html

Specs for Tableau in Cloud: https://www.tableausoftware.com/products/online/specs

The DB-Engines Monthly Ranking ranks database management systems according to their popularity. Turned out that only 3 DBMSes are popular: Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL:

• http://db-engines.com/en/ranking


• http://db-engines.com/en/ranking_trend

According to Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO and head of FICO Labs, three main skills of data scientist are the same 3 skills I tried to find when hiring programmers for my teams 5, 10, 20 and more years ago: 1. Problem-Solving Skills. 2. Communications Skills. 3. Open-Mindedness. This makes all my hires for last 20+ years Data Scientists, right? See it here: http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/3-key-skills-of-successful-data-scientis/240159803

A study finds the odds of rising to another income level are notably low in certain cities, like Atlanta and Charlotte, and much higher in New York and Boston: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html

Tableau is a prototyping tool: http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-once-and-future-prototyping-tool-of.html

Why More Data and Simple Algorithms Beat Complex Analytics Models: http://data-informed.com/why-more-data-and-simple-algorithms-beat-complex-analytics-models/

New Census Bureau Interactive Map Shows Languages Spoken in America: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/education/cb13-143.html

Google silently open sourced a tool called word2vec, prepackaged deep-learning software designed to understand the relationships between words with no human guidance. It actually similar to known for a decade methods called PLSI and PLSA:

• http://gigaom.com/2013/08/16/were-on-the-cusp-of-deep-learning-for-the-masses-you-can-thank-google-later/


• https://code.google.com/p/word2vec/

“Money is not the only reward of education, yet it is surely the primary selling point used to market data science programs, and the primary motivator for students. But there’s no clear definition of data science and no clear understanding of what knowledge employers are willing to pay for, or how much they will pay, now or in the future. Already I know many competent, diligent data analysts who are unemployed or underemployed. So, I am highly skeptical that the students who will invest their time and money in data science programs will reap the rewards they have been led to expect.”: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/08/19/data-science-whats-the-half-life-of-a-buzzword/

Some good blog-posts from InterWorks:

• https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mfowler/2013/08/16/aggregating-extracts-%E2%80%93-why-and-how-would-i-do-such-thing


• http://www.interworks.com/blogs/tspaulding/2013/08/07/understanding-layout-containers-tableau

Technique for using Tableau data blending to create a dynamic, data-driven “parameter”: http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org/creating-a-dynamic-parameter-with-a-tableau-data-blend/

More about Colors:

• http://blog.visual.ly/subtleties-of-color/


• http://blog.visual.ly/subtleties-of-color-connecting-color-to-meaning/


• http://blog.visual.ly/subtleties-of-color-different-types-of-data-require-different-color-schemes/


• http://interworks.co.uk/tableau/using-custom-colour-palettes/


• http://community.qlikview.com/blogs/qlikviewdesignblog/2013/08/16/color-codes

Russian Postcodes are collected and partially visualized:

• http://tableaumapping.bi/2013/08/23/russia-postcodes/


• http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/RussiaPolygons/RussiaPostcodes?:embed=y&:display_count=no

http://acuitybusiness.com/blog/bid/175066/Three-Reasons-Why-Companies-Should-Outlaw-Excel

EXASolution claims to be up to 1000 times faster than traditional databases and the fastest database in the world - based on in memory computing.
http://www.exasol.com/en/exasolution/technical-details.html

web interest to Tableau and Qlikview:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=qlikview%2C+tableau%2C+spotfire%2C+microstrategy#q=tableau%2C%20microstrategy%2C%20qlikview%2C%20spotfire&geo=US&date=9%2F2008%2061m&cmpt=q

Job openings as the KPI for DV vendors, take 2

20 months ago I checked how many job openings leading DV Vendors have. On 12/5/11 Tableau had 56, Qliktech had 46 and Spotfire had 21 openings. Today morning I checked their career sites again and noticed that both Tableau and Qliktech almost double their thirst for new talents, while Spotfire basically staying on the same level of hiring needs:

• 
  

  Tableau has 102(!) openings, 43 of them are engineering positions (I counted their R&D positions and openings in Operation department too) - that is huge! Update as of 9/18/13 has exactly 1000 employees. 1000th employee can be found on this picture

  
  


• 
  

  Qliktech has 87 openings, 29 of them are engineering positions (I included R&D, IT, Tech Support and Consulting).

  
  


• 
  

  TIBCO/Spotfire has 24 openings, 16 of them are engineering positions (R&D, IT, Tech.Support).

  
  

All 3 companies are Public now, so I decided to include their Market Capitalization as well. Since Spofire is hidden inside its corporate parent TIBCO, I used my estimate that Spotfire's Capitalization is about 20% of TIBCO's capitalization (which is $3.81B as of 8/23/13, see https://www.google.com/finance?q=TIBX ). As a result I have this Market Capitalization numbers for 8/23/13 as closing day:

• 
  

  Tableau - $4B (see https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ADATA&sq=DATA )

  
  


• 
  

  Qliktech - $3.05B (see https://www.google.com/finance?q=QLIK )

  
  


• 
  

  Spotfire - $0.76B (my rough estimate as 20% of TIBCO's capitalization; I wish it will be more for such a mature and excellent product and team, but TIBCO does not want to capitalize on Data Visualization market. I think that the best way for TIBCO to take advantage of Spotfire is to spin it off the same way EMC ($55B Market Cap) did with VMWare (currently $37.7B)). Update on 9/10/13: Akram Annous validated my 3+ years old idea of Spotfire's spinoff in this article @SeekingAlpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1684032-is-tibco-dan-loebs-next-pet-project

  
  

Those 3 DV Vendors above together have almost $8B market capitalization as of evening of 8/23/13 !

Market Capitalization update as of 8/31/13: Tableau: $4.3B, Qliktech $2.9B, Spotfire (as 20% of TIBCO) - $0.72B

Market Capitalization update as of 9/4/13 11pm: Tableau: $4.39B, Qliktech $3B, Spotfire (as 20% of TIBCO) - $0.75B . Also as of today Qliktech employed 1500+ (approx. $300K revenue per year per employee), Tableau about 1000 (approx. $200K revenue per year per employee) and Spotfire about 500+ (very rough estimate, also approx. $350K revenue per year per employee)

Free rows from Market Capitalization DV Leader

Google+

Last week Tableau increased by 10-fold the capacity of Data Visualizations published with Tableau Public to a cool 1 Million rows of Data, basically to the same amount of rows, which Excel 2007, 2010 and 2013 (often used as data sources for Tableau Public) can handle these days and increased by 20-fold the storage capacity (to 1GB of free storage) of each free Tableau Public Account, see it here:

http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/08/one-million-rows-2072

It means that free Tableau Public Account will have the storage twice larger than Spotfire Silver's the most expensive Analyst Account (that one will cost you $4500/year). Tableau said: "Consider it a gift from us to you.". I have to admit that even kids in this country know that there is nothing free here, so please kid me not - we are all witnessing of some kind of investment here - this type of investment worked brilliantly in the past... And all users of Tableau Public are investing too - with their time and learning efforts.

And this is not all: "For customers of Tableau Public Premium, which allows users to save locally and disable download of their workbooks, the limits have been increased to 10 million rows of data at 10GB of storage space" see it here:

http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/press-releases/2013/tableau-software-extends-tableau-public-1-million-rows-data without changing the price of service (of course in Tableau Public Premium price is not fixed and depends on the number of impressions).

Out of 100+ millions of Tableau users only 40000 qualified to be called Tableau Authors, see it here  http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/press-releases/2013/tableau-software-launches-tableau-public-author-profiles so they are consuming Tableau Public's Storage more actively then others. As an example you can see my Tableau's Author Profile here: http://public.tableausoftware.com/profile/andrei5435#/ .

I will assume those Authors will consume 40000GB of online storage, which will cost to Tableau Software less then (my guess, I am open to correction from blog visitors) $20K/year just for the storage part of Tableau Public Service.

During the last week the other important announcement on 8/8/13 - Quarterly Revenue - came from Tableau: it reported the Q2 revenue of $49.9 million, up 71% year-over-year: http://investors.tableausoftware.com/investor-news/investor-news-details/2013/Tableau-Announces-Second-Quarter-2013-Financial-Results/default.aspx .

Please note that 71% is extremely good YoY growth compare with the entire anemic "BI industry", but less then 100% YoY which Tableau grew in its private past.

All these announcements above happened simultaneously with some magical (I have no theory why this happened; one weak theory is the investors madness and over-excitement about Q2 revenue of $49.9M announced on 8/8/13?) and sudden increase of the nominal price of Tableau Stock (under the DATA name on NYSE) from $56 (which is already high) on August 1st 2013 (announcement of 1 millions of rows/1GB storage for Tableau public Accounts) to $72+ today:

It means that the Market Capitalization of Tableau Software may be approaching $4B and sales may be $200M/year. For comparison, Tableau's direct and more mature competitor Qliktech has now the Capitalization below $3B while its sales approaching almost $500M/year. From Market Capitalization point of view in 3 moths Tableau went from a private company to the largest Data Visualization publicly-traded software company on market!

Tableau Server is in the Cloud

Competition in Data Visualization market is not only on features, market share and mindshare but also on pricing and lisensing. For example the Qlikview licensing and pricing is public for a while here: http://www.qlikview.com/us/explore/pricing and Spotfire Silver pricing public for a while too:  https://silverspotfire.tibco.com/us/silver-spotfire-version-comparison .

Tableau Desktop has 3 editions: Public (Free), Personal ($999) and Professional ($1999), see it here: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/comparison ; in addition you can have full Desktop (read-only) experience with free Tableau Reader (neither Qlikview nor Spotfire have free readers for server-less, unlimited distribution of Visualizations, which is making Tableau a mind-share leader right away...)

The release of Tableau Server online hosting this month:  http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/press-releases/2013/tableau-unveils-cloud-business-intelligence-product-tableau-online heated the licensing competition and may force the large changes in licencing landscape for Data Visualization vendors. Tableau Server existed in the cloud for a while with tremendous success as Tableau Public (free) and Tableau Public Premium (former Tableau Digital with its weird pricing based on "impressions").

But Tableau Online is much more disruptive for BI market: for $500/year you can get the complete Tableau Server site (administered by you!) in the cloud with (initially) 25 (it can grow) authenticated by you users and 100GB of cloud storage for your visualizations, which is 200 times more then you can get for $4500/year top-of-the line Spotfire Silver "Analyst account". This Tableau Server site will be managed in the cloud by Tableau Software own experts and require nor IT personnel from your side! You may also compare it with http://www.rosslynanalytics.com/rapid-analytics-platform/applications/qlikview-ondemand .

A hosted by Tableau Software solution is particularly useful when sharing dashboards with customers and partners because the solution is secure but outside a company’s firewall. In the case of Tableau Online users can publish interactive dashboards to the web and share them with clients or partners without granting behind-the-firewall access.

Since Tableau 8 has new Data Extract API, you can do all data refreshes behind your own firewall and republish your TDE files in the cloud anytime (even automatically, on demand or on schedule) you need. Tableau Online has no minimum number of users and can scale as a company grows. At any point, a company can migrate to Tableau Server to manage it in-house. Here is some introductionla video about Tableau Online: Get started with Tableau Online.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf5Coei_8Cc]

Tableau Server in the cloud provides at least 3 ways to update your data (more details see here: http://www.tableausoftware.com/learn/whitepapers/tableau-online-understanding-data-updates )

• republish Data Source or Workbook;


• Use Command-Line Tools to Schedule Batch Updates Locally and automatically, see more details here: http://onlinehelp.tableausoftware.com/current/pro/online/en-us/help.html#extracting_TDE.html;


• refresh the Tableau Server Data Source using your Tableau Desktop as a proxy between your on-premise Data Source and Tableau Online:

Here is another, more lengthy intro into Tableau BI in Cloud:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB0HXXst32g]

Tableau as a Service is a step in right direction, but be cautious:  in practice, the architecture of the hosted version could impact performance. Plus, the nature of the product means that Tableau isn’t really able to offer features like pay-as-you-go that have made cloud-based software popular with workers. By their nature, data visualization products require access to data. For businesses that store their data internally, they must publish their data to Tableau’s servers. That can be a problem for businesses that have large amounts of data or that are prevented from shifting their data off premises for legal or security reasons. It could also create a synchronization nightmare, as workers play with data hosted at Tableau that may not be as up-to-date as internally stored data. Depending on the location of the customer relative to Tableau’s data center, data access could be slow.

And finally, the online version requires the desktop client, which costs $2,000. Tableau may implement Tableau desktop analytical features in a browser in the future while continue to support the desktop and on-premise model to meet security and regulations facing some customers.

Tableau 8 Reading Pointers, February-May 2013

• 
  

  Stephen Few asking you a tricky question: Are You a Data Scientist?:  http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1719 . It seems to me that Stephen agrees with me that 3 Terms: Data Scientist, Data Science and Big Data are full of BS... or as our VP will say: "a Bunch of Malarkey"...

  
  


• 
  

  3 very important articles by Russel Christopher about History Tables in Tableau 8:A funny "Preview" by Stephen Few of Tableau 9: Gauges?!: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1706

  
  
  
  
  • http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/51220703630/tableau-server-v8-history-tables-part-3-the-kitchen
  
  
  • http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/50645286039/tableau-server-v8-history-tables-part-2-events
  
  
  • http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/50529179435/tableau-server-v8-history-tables
  
  
  
  




• 
  

  Leverage PowerShell and Tableau to Extract Server Datasources: https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/05/28/leverage-powershell-and-tableau-extract-server-datasources

  
  


• 
  

  Tableau 7 data dictionary: http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/50438516817/better-late-than-never-tableau-7-data-dictionary

  
  


• 
  

  Collection of Good Practices, provided by Tableau: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/community/best-practices

  
  

• 
  

  Tableau Server has many built in features to promote data exploration, collaboration, and security. The Data Server is arguably the most powerful of these tools but is commonly overlooked and underutilized. Answer these questions to see how the Data Server can save you time and increase productivity.  http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/4/unleash-tableau-data-server-23038

  
  


• 
  

  Using Tableau 8 to Leverage Your 'Big-ish' Data: https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/04/08/using-tableau-8-leverage-your-big-ish-data

  
  


• 
  

  "New in 8: Word Clouds": http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/02/new-8-word-clouds-1825

  
  


• 
  

  “What Makes a Chart Boring?”: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1612

  
  


• 
  

  Emotional reactions to Tableau 8: http://www.datarevelations.com/dylans-gone-electric-emotional-reactions-to-tableau-8.html

  
  


• 
  

  Leverage Multiple Tableau Data Extracts for Big Data in Tableau 8: : https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/04/25/leverage-multiple-tableau-data-extracts-big-data-tableau-8

  
  


• 
  

  Leverage the Tableau 8 Tableau Data Extract Command-Line Utility Without Tabcmd : https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/04/15/leverage-tableau-8-tableau-data-extract-command-line-utility-without-tabcm

  
  

• 
  

  Very popular article from Stephen Few about Tableau losing the clear vision of its youth collected 49 comments from known experts : http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1532 and most interesting, 50th comment came from Stephen fimself: "I recently learned that when my review of Tableau 8 was published, Tableau employees were forbidden from responding publicly".

  
  


• 
  

  UK Boundary Polygon Data from Information Lab: http://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2013/03/25/uk-area-polygon-mapping-in-tableau/

  
  


• 
  

  Sample of how to use DataExtract API with C#/.NET: http://community.tableausoftware.com/message/203714#203714

  
  


• 
  

  Tableau Data Blending, Sparse Data, Multiple Levels of Granularity, and Improvements in Version 8: http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org/tableau-data-blending-sparse-data-multiple-levels-of-granularity-and-improvements-in-version-8/

  
  

• 
  

  Tableau Custom SQL connections through the JET driver: https://www.interworks.com/blogs/jwright/2013/02/22/musings-tableau-custom-sql-connections-through-jet-driver

  
  


• 
  

  Software company XL Cubed has incorporated Bandlines into their product, but comments to post showing that Tableau has it fro a while too: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1485

  
  


• 
  

  Stepheb Few introduced Bandlines as Sparklines Enriched with Information about Magnitude and Distribution: http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/introducing_bandlines.pdf

  
  

Tableau Readings, January 2013

Best of the Tableau Web... December 2012:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/1/best-tableau-web-december-2012-20758
Top 100 Q4 2012 from Tableau Public:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/01/top-100-q4-2012-1765
eBay's usage of Tableau as the front-end for big data, Teradata and Hadoop with 52 petabytes of
data on everything from user behavior to online transactions to customer shipments and much more:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/big-data/big-data-visualization-big-deal-ebay-208589
Why The Information Lab recommends Tableau Software:
http://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2013/01/04/recommend-tableau-software/
Fun with #Tableau Treemap Visualizations
http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/40257187402/fun-with-tableau-treemap-visualizations
Talk slides: Tableau, SeaVis meetup & Facebook, Andy Kirk's Facebook Talk from Andy Kirk
http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2013/01/talk-slides-tableau-seavis-meetup-facebook/
Usage of RAM, Disk and Data Extracts with Tableau Data Engine:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/1/what%E2%80%99s-better-big-data-analytics-
memory-or-disk-20904
Migrating Tableau Server to a New Domain
https://www.interworks.com/blogs/bsullins/2013/01/11/migrating-tableau-server-new-domain
SAS/Tableau Integration
http://www.see-change.co/services/sastableau-integration/
IFNULL - is not "IF NULL", is "IF NOT NULL"
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2012/09/isnull-is-not-is-null-is-is-not-null.html
Worksheet and Dashboard Menu Improvements in Tableau 8:
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/01/tv8-worksheet-and-dashboard-menu.html
Jittery Charts - Why They Dance and How to Stop Them:
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/01/jittery-charts-and-how-to-fix-them.html
Tableau Forums Digest #8
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/67/
Tableau Forums Digest #9
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/tableau-forums-digest-9/
Tableau Forums Digest #10
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/tableau-forums-digest-10/
Tableau Forums Digest #11
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/tableau-forums-digest-11/
implementation of bandlines in Tableau by Jim Wahl (+ Workbook):
http://community.tableausoftware.com/message/198511

New Tableau 8 Server features

In my previous post http://apandre.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/new-tableau-8-desktop-features/ (this post is the continuation of it) , I said that Tableau 8 introduced 130+ new features, 3 times more then Tableau 7 did. Many of these new features are in Tableau 8 Server and this post about those new Server features (this is a repost from my Tableau blog: http://tableau7.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/new-tableau-8-server-features/ ).

The Admin and Server pages have been redesigned to show more info quicker. In list view the columns can be resized. In thumbnail view the grid dynamically resizes. You can hover over a thumbnail to see more info about visualization. The content search is better too:



Web authoring (even mobile) introduced by Tableau 8 Server. Change dimensions, measures, mark types, add filters, and use Show Me are all directly in a web browser and can be saved back to the server as a  new workbook or if individual permissions allow, to the original workbook:



Subscribing to a workbook or worksheet will automatically notify about the dashboard or view updates to your email inbox. Subscriptions deliver image and link.

Tableau 8 Data Engine is more scalable now, it can be distributed between 2 nodes, 2nd instance of it now can be configured as Active, Synced and Available for reading if  Tableau Router decided to use it (in addition Fail-over function as before)Tableau 8 Server now supports Local Rendering, using graphic ability of local devices, modern browsers and HTML5. No-round-trip to server while rendering using latest versions of chrome 23+, Firefox 17+, Safari , IE 9+. Tableau 8 (both Server and Desktop, computing each view in Parallel. PDF files, generated by Tableau 8 up to 90% smaller and searchable. And Performance Recorder works on both Server and Desktop.

Tableau 8 Server introducing Shared sessions allows more concurrency, more caching. Tableau 7 uses 1 session per viewer. Tableau 8 using one session per many viewers, as long as they do no change state of filters and don't do other altering interaction. If interaction happened, Tableau 8 will clone the session for appropriate Interactor and apply his/her changes to new session:Finally Tableau getting API, 1st part of it I described in previous blog post about TDesktop - TDE API (C/C++, Python, Java on both Windows AND Linux!).

For Web Development Tableau has now brand new JavaScript API to customize selection, filtering, triggers to events, custom toolbar, etc. Tableau 8 has own JavaScript API WorkBench, which can be used right from you browser:

TDE API allows to build own TDE on any machine with Python, C/C++ and Java (see 24:53 at http://www.tableausoftware.com/tcc12conf/videos/new-tableau-server-8 ). Additionally Server API (REST API) allows programmatically create/enable/suspend sites and add/remove users to sites.

In addition to Faster Uploads andPublishing Data Sources, users can Publish Filters as Set and User Filters. Data Sources can be Refreshed or Appended instead of republishing - all from Local Sources. Such Refreshes can scheduled using Windows Task Scheduler or other task scheduling software on client devices - this is a real TDE proliferation!

My wishlist for Tableau 8 Server: all Tableau Server processes needs to be 64-bit (and they still 32-bit, see it here: http://onlinehelp.tableausoftware.com/v7.0/server/en-us/processes.htm ; they are way overdue to be the 64-bit; Linux version of Tableau Server (Microsoft recently changed very unfavorably the way they charge users for each Client Access) is needed, I wish integration with R Library (Spotfire has it for years), I want Backgrounder Processes (mostly doing data extracts on server) will not consume core licenses etc…

And yes, I found in San Diego even more individuals who found the better way to spend their time compare with attending Tableau 2012 Customer Conference and I am not here to judge:

New Tableau 8 Desktop features

I left Tableau 2012 conference in San Diego (where Tableau 8 was announced) a while ago with enthusiasm which you can feel from this real-life picture of 11 excellent announcers:



Conference was attended by 2200+ people and 600+ Tableau Software employees (Tableau almost doubled the number of employees in a year) and it felt like a great effort toward IPO (see also article here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/tableau-software-plans-ipo-to-drive-sales-expansion.html ).  See some video here: TCC12 Keynote . Tableau 8 introduce 130+ new features, 3 times more then Tableau 7 did. Almost half of these new features are in Tableau 8 Desktop and this post about those new Desktop features (this is a repost from my Tableau Blog: http://tableau7.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/new-tableau-8-desktop-features/). New Tableau 8 Server features deserved a separate blog post which I will publish a little later after playing with Beta 1 and may be Beta 2.

A few days after conference the Tableau 8 Beta Program started with 2000+ participants. One of the most promising features is new rendering engine and I build special Tableau 7 visualization (and its port to Tableau 8) with 42000 datapoints: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/Zips_0/Intro?:embed=y  to compare the speed of rendering between versions 7 and 8:



Among new features are new (for Tableau) visualization types: Heatmap, "Packed" Bubble Chart and Word Cloud, and I build simple Tableau 8 Dashboard to test it (all 3 are visualizing the 3-dimensional set where 1 dimension used as list of items, 1 measure used for size and 2nd measure used for color of items):



List of new features includes improved Sets (comparing members vs. non-members, adding/removing members, combining Sets: all-in-both, shared-by-both, left-except-right, right-except-left), Custom SQL with parameters, Freeform Dashboards (I still prefer MDI UI where each Chart/View Sheet has own Child Window as oppose to Pane), ability to add multiple fields to Labels, optimized label placement, built-in statistical models for visual Forecasting, Visual Grouping based on your data selection, Redesigned Mark Card (for Color, Size, Label, Detail and Tooltip Shelves).

New Data features include data blending without mandatory linked field in a view and with ability to filter data in secondary data sources; refreshing server-based Data Extracts can be done from local data sources; Data Filters (in addition be either local or global) can be shared now among selected set of worksheets and dashboards. Refresh of Data Extract can be done using command prompt for Tableau Desktop, for example

>tableau.exe refreshremoteextract

Tableau 8 has (finally) API (C/C++, Python, Java) to directly create a Tableau Data Extract (TDE) file, see example here: http://ryrobes.com/python/building-tableau-data-extract-files-with-python-in-tableau-8-sample-usage/

Tableau 8 (both Desktop and Server) can then connect to this extract file natively! Tableau provides new native connection for Google Analytics and Saleforce.com. TDE files now much smaller (especially with text values) - up to 40% smaller compare with Tableau 7.

Tableau 8 has performance enhancements, such as the new ability to use hardware accelerators (of modern graphics cards), computing views within dashboard in parallel (in Tableau 7 it was consecutive computations) and new  performance recorder allows to estimate and tune a workload of various activities and functions and optimize the behavior of workbook.

I still have a wishlist of features which are not implemented in Tableau and I hope some them will be implemented later: all Tableau processes are 32-bit (except 64-bit version of data engine for server running on 64-bit OS) and they are way overdue to be the 64-bit; many users demand MAC version of Tableau Desktop and Linux version of Tableau Server (Microsoft recently changed very unfavorably the way they charge users for each Client Access), I wish MDI UI for Dashboards where each view of each worksheet has own Window as oppose to own pane (Qlikview does it from the beginning of the time), I wish integration with R Library (Spotfire has it for years), scripting languages and IDE (preferably Visual Studio), I want Backgrounder Processes (mostly doing data extracts on server) will not consume core licenses etc...

Despite the great success of the conference, I found somebody in San Diego who did not pay attention to it (outside was 88F, sunny and beautiful):