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

DV footprints on Disk and in Memory, Part 2

My previous blogpost, comparing footprints of DV Leaders (Tableau 8.1, Qlikview 11.2, Spotfire 6) on disk (in terms of size of application file with embedded dataset with 1 million rows) and in Memory (calculated as RAM-difference between freshly-loaded (without data) application and  the same application when it will load appropriate application file (XLSX or DXP or QVW or TWBX) got a lot of feedback from DV Blog visitors. It even got mentioning/reference/quote from Tableau Weekly #9 here:

http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f3dd94f15b41de877be6b0d4b&id=26fd537d2d&e=5943cb836b and the full list of Tableau Weekly issues is here: http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/home/?u=f3dd94f15b41de877be6b0d4b&id=d23712a896

The majority of feedback asked to do a similar Benchmark - the footprint comparison for larger dataset, say with 10 millions of rows. I did that but it required more time and work,  because the footprint in memory for all 3 DV Leaders depends on the number of visualized Datapoints (Spotfire for years used the term Marks for Visible Datapoints and Tableau adopted these terminology too, so I used it from time to time as well, but I think that the correct term here will be "Visible Datapoints").

Basically I used the same dataset as in previous blogpost with main difference that I took subset with 10 millions of rows as a opposed to 1 Million rows in previous Benchmarks. The Diversity of used Dataset with 10 Million rows is here (each row has 15 fields as in previous benchmark):
[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdGFyUUl6VmdSWWVubk5sbjZ3Z256Znc&single=true&gid=3&output=html&widget=true" width="250" height="350" /]

I removed from benchmarks for 10 million rows the usage of Excel 2013 (Excel cannot handle more the 1,048,576 rows per worksheet) and PowerPivot 2013 (it is less relevant for given Benchmark). Here are the DV Footprints on disk and in Memory for Dataset with 10 Million rows and different number of Datapoints (or Marks: <16, 1000, around 10000, around 100000, around 800000):
[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdGFyUUl6VmdSWWVubk5sbjZ3Z256Znc&single=true&gid=4&output=html&widget=true" width="480" height=400" /]

Main observations and notes from benchmarking of footprints with 10 millions of rows as following:

• 
  

  Tableau 8.1 requires less (almost twice less) disk space for its application file .TWBX then Qlikview 11.2 (.QVW) for its application file (.QVW) or/and Spotfire 6 for its application file (.DXP).

  
  


• 
  

  Tableau 8.1 is much smarter when it uses RAM then Qlikview 11.2 and Spofire 6, because it takes advantage of number of Marks. For example for 10000 Visible Datapoints Tableau uses 13 times less RAM than Qlikview and Spotfire and for 100000 Visible Datapoints Tableau uses 8 times less RAM than Qlikview and Spotfire!

  
  


• 
  

  THe Usage of more than say 5000 Visible Datapoints (even say more than a few hundreds Marks) in particular Chart or Dashboard often the sign of bad design or poor understanding of the task at hand; the human eye (of end user) cannot comprehend too many Marks anyway, so what Tableau does (in terms of reducing the footprint in Memory when less Marks are used) is a good design.

  
  


• 
  

  For Tableau in results above I reported the total RAM used by 2 Tableau processes in memory TABLEAU.EXE itself and supplemental process TDSERVER64.EXE (this 2nd 64-bit process almost always uses about 21MB of RAM). Note: Russell Christopher also suggested to monitor TABPROTOSRV.EXE but I cannot find its traces and its usage of RAM during benchmarks.

  
  


• 
  

  Qlikview 11.2 and Spotfire 6 have similar footprints in Memory and on Disk.

  
  

DV footprints on Disk and in Memory, Part 1

More than 2 years ago I estimated the footprints for the sample dataset (428999 rows and 135 columns) when it encapsulated in text file, in compressed ZIP format, in Excel 2010, in PowerPivot 2010, Qlikview 10, Spofire 3.3 and Tableau 6. Since then everything upgraded to the "latest versions" and everything 64-bit now, including Tableau 8.1, Spotfire 5.5 (and 6), Qlikview 11.2, Excel 2013 and PowerPivot 2013.

I decided to use the new dataset with exactly 1000000 rows (1 million rows) and 15 columns with the following diversity of values (Distinct Counts for every Column below):

[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="hl=en&hl=en&key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdGFyUUl6VmdSWWVubk5sbjZ3Z256Znc&single=true&gid=1&output=html&widget=true" width="240" height="360" /]

Then I put this dataset in every application and format mentioned above - both on disk and in memory. All results presented below for review of DV blog visitors:

[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="hl=en&hl=en&key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdGFyUUl6VmdSWWVubk5sbjZ3Z256Znc&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true" width="420" height="260" /]

Some comments about application specifics:

• 
  

  Excel and PowerPivot XLSX files are ZIP-compressed archives of bunch of XML files

  
  


• 
  

  Spotfire DXP is a ZIP archive of proprietary Spotfire text format

  
  


• 
  

  QVW  is Qlikview's proprietary Datastore-RAM-optimized format

  
  


• 
  

  TWBX is Tableau-specific ZIP archive containing its TDE (Tableau Data Extract) and TWB (XML format) data-less workbook

  
  


• 
  

  Footprint in memory I calculated as RAM-difference between freshly-loaded (without data) application and  the same application when it will load appropriate application file (XLSX or DXP or QVW or TWBX)

  
  

Datawatch has 3 Vs, does Visualization now!

Datawatch published today its 2013 (ending 9/30/13) yearly and quarterly results and its YoY growth is impressive 16% (2013-over-2012), which is better then TIBCO (less then 13%) ! See Earnings Call Transcript here: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1849661-datawatch-corporations-ceo-discusses-q4-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single and webcast available here: http://www.investorcalendar.com/IC/CEPage.asp?ID=171788

Since Datawatch bought recently well-known swedish Data Visualization vendor Panopticon (which had 112% YoY in 2012!) for $31M in stock, Panopticon's sales for a first time added to Datawatch sales (at least $1.5M revenue per quarter), total Datawatch quarterly revenue (as expected) grew to almost $9M per quarter and to $30.3M per fiscal 2013 (ending 9/30/13).

You can compare "moving" Datawatch YoY index for last 6 quarters vs 2 Top DV Performers (Tableau above 70% YoY, Qlikview above 20%), vs similar (YoY-wise) DV Vendor (Spotfire about 12%) and finally vs 2 Traditional BI Vendors (Microstrategy and Actuate). The thickness of lines reflects Vendor's ttm (the revenue for Trailing Twelve Months) - click on Image to Enlarge:

[caption id="attachment_4647" align="aligncenter" width="510"] Year-over-Year Growth for Trailing Twelve Month (YoY4ttm)[/caption]

Datawatch founded in 1985(!), public (traded on NASDAQ as DWCH) since 1992; it has 44000+ customers (including 99 of Fortune 100) and 500000+ end users. Datawatch management team is experienced in BI space and includes veterans from IBM, Applix, Cognos etc. In last 3 years (since 10/1/10) DWCH shares increased in value more then 10 times:

2nd V for BigData: Data Variety.

The first version of main Datawatch software, called Monarch Professional was released in 1991 and developed by Math Strategies. Overtime Datawatch added a lot of features to this ETL software, including the support for the broadest variety of data types and data sources simultaneously—including traditional structured relational databases, semi-structured sources like reports, PDF files, EDI streams, print spools and documents stored in files systems or enterprise content management systems, with a  new mix of unstructured data such as machine data and social media stored in Big Data solutions or streaming directly from a host of real-time applications.

Datawatch Desktop does ETL from all above Data Sources and then extracts those data into Variety of Standard Formats: Excel spreadsheets, Access Databases, PDF reports, into Panopticon Workbooks etc. Simple example of how Monarch 11 does it you can see here:

or more professional and free video training you can find here: http://www.datawatch.com/information-optimization/item/196-guided-tour-monarch

The latest release of Monarch Professional is in version 12 and it has the new name as Datawatch Modeler; it also integrated and bundled together with Panopticon Desktop Designer under new name Datawatch Desktop and that bundle is available for $1895. As a result Datawatch created for itself an excellent up-sell opportunity: current customers on maintenance can trade-up to Datawatch Desktop for $366 (it also includes first year maintenance) - this is 5 times cheaper than Tableau Desktop professional. My understanding that maintenance of Datawatch Desktop is 22% per year of its price but you may get a better deal.

Datawatch Modeler v.12 has new Core engine with 16 External Lookups (was 9 in version 11), 512 Columns In Table (was 254), 100 Multi-Column Regions (was 40), Optimized for modelling large inputs Data Preview (work with first 100 records), has new PDF Engine, 10GB Internal Database size (was 2GB), Utilized 4 Cores for DB operations (was 2).

1st V for Big Data: Data Volume.

Math Strategies developed for Datawatch another tool - Monarch DataPump (recently renamed as Datawatch Automator or Datawatch Server - Automation Edition, currently in version 12). On 3/30/12 Datawatch acquired intellectual property for its underlying Monarch Report Analytics platform from Raymond Huger, d/b/a Math Strategies (Greensboro, NC).

Datawatch developed other editions of Datawatch Server:

• Formerly Enterprise Server has new name now as Datawatch Server - Content Edition, version 12. Datawatch Server supports all Monarch functionality on server-side, integrates with web server(s) and related infrastructure, manages all users, their credentials, access rights, roles, privileges, user groups, manages and aggregates all content, data, data extracts etc.

• Datawatch Server - Automation Edition (Data Pump) - automatically collects and refreshes all content, data and data extracts, both on-demand and on-schedule, manages all schedules etc.

• Datawatch Server - Complete Edition includes Formerly Panopticon Server (manages all Data Visualizations and its users, converts Visualizations to web applications so they can be accessed through web browsers and HTML5 clients), Datawatch Enterprise Server and Data Pump.

Theoretically Datawatch Server (with help from Datawatch Automator) can support up to 524 Petabytes (10¹⁵ bytes) of Data which I consider a very Big Data for 2013.

3rd V for Big Data: High Velocity

Datawatch/Panopticon in-memory data engine supports data visualization for real-time business dashboards and it has low-latency display of analytics that are based on streaming data as it arrives. This enables Datawatch to handle the demanding continuous-intelligence applications, where quick responses are required. This is a big differentiator. An in-memory, OLAP-based StreamCube is associated with each graphical display object. The system processes new data as it arrives, selects the subset of important data, recalculates the relevant sections of the model and refreshes the associated parts of the display immediately. The parts of the model and the display that are not affected by the new data are not touched. This is faster and more efficient than conventional data visualization tools that operate on batch-loaded snapshots of data, run less frequently, and then recalculate the model and rebuild the display for each iteration.

Somebody I know was able to refresh and REPAINT 25000+ datapoints per second per one Datawatch/Panopticon Chart and this is much faster then any competitor.

Datawatch platform integrated with message-oriented middleware, including ActiveMQ, Qpid, Sonic MQ and Tibco EMS. It has connectors to Complex Event-Processing platforms (CEP), such as kx kdb+tick, OneTick CEP, Oracle CEP, StreamBase Systems' Event Processing Platform and Sybase Event Stream Processor. Datawatch also has interfaces for retrieving data from time series databases, conventional relational and columnar databases, files, Open Data Protocol (OData) sources and in-memory DBMSs. It can be customized for proprietary data sources (recent example is a Visualization Accelerator for Splunk) and even embedded within other applications. Like other leading data visualization tools, it  supports a wide range of charts. It has a development studio (Desktop Designer) for designing and implementing dashboards, and HTML5-based clients/support for mobile applications.

4th and most desirable V: Data Visualization

Datawatch is trying to get into Data Visualization (DV) field and it has potentials to be a 4th major Vendor here: it has a competitive DV Desktop, a competitive DV Server, an excellent HTML5 Client for it and set of differentiators like ready-to-use 3V triplet of features (see above) for Big Data and real-time DV. Datawatch Designer supports rich set of Graphs, Charts, Plots, Maps, Marks and other types of Visualizations, for example:

• TIME SERIES Graphs: Candlestick, Horizon, Line, Needle, OHLC, Spread, Stack Area, Stacked / Grouped Needle, Table with Micro Charts, Sub Totals & Grand Totals, Timeseries Combo Charts, Timeseries Scatter Plot.

• STATIC & TIME SLICE Graphs: Bullet, Heat Map, Heat Matrix, Horizontal/Vertical Bar, Horizontal/Vertical Dot Plot, Multi-Level Pie Chart, Numeric Line, Numeric Needle, Numeric Stacked Needles, Scatter Plot, Shapes / Choropleth, Surface Plot, Surface Plot 3D, Table with Micro Charts, Sub Totals & Grand Totals, Treemap.

• many Visualization Demos still available here: http://www.panopticon.com/Advanced-Data-Visualization and here: http://www.panopticon.com/demos

In my humble opinion in order to compete with leading DV vendor like Tableau I think that Datawatch needs a few gradual changes, some of them I listed below:

• Gradually on as-needed basis add features which other 3 DV Vendors have and Datawatch does not (it needs serious R&D)

• Create free Datawatch Public (cloud service) to make people to learn and compare it (similar to Tableau Public) and to win mindshare

• Create Fee-based Datawatch Online cloud service (similar to Tableau Online and Spotfire Cloud services)

• Add more DV-oriented Partners (similar to Qlikview Partner Program, which has now 1500+ partners)

• Create fee-based Data Visualization Practice in order to help large clients to implement DV Projects with Datawatch Desktop and Server.

• Add support for Visual Analytics and Data Science, including integration with R Library (similar to Spotfire's S-Plus and TERR or at least the integration with R like Tableau 8.1 did today)

• Add support for Storytelling, similar to what next versions of Tableau and Qlikview will have (soon) and communication abilities (similar to what Spotfire 6 has with TIBBR)

• I may expand this list later as I see the fit, but Datawatch really has an unique opportunity here and large potential market!

Feedback 11/22/13 from multiple visitors of this blog:

I Quote the email from one of frequent visitors to my blog: "The fastest growing sales are in DV field (e.g. Panopticon revenue was 112% YoY in 2012). For example in 2006, when Qliktech's Sales were $44M, its YoY was 81%; 4 years later, in 2010, when Tableau had $40M revenue, YoY was 106%, see it here: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tableau-software-doubles-revenue-with-2010-landmark-year-114913924.html and 4 years later, in 2014 history can repeat itself again if Datawatch will allow to unbundle its DV Products and sell them separately. Instead, currently Datawatch prevents its own salesforce to sell separately own DV products like Panopticon Desktop Designer (you may call it now as Datawatch Visualization Studio) and Panopticon Server (you can call it now as Datawatch Visualization Server). That artificial limitation has to be removed!" visitor said to me over email... All I can say: it is not my call... Additional links: 

• http://seekingalpha.com/article/1872591-datawatch-quarterly-review-rapid-growth-finally-materializing
• http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?filingid=9666380&tabindex=2&type=html

Data Vikings from Sweden, DV Motherland

In past Vikings discovered America, conquested or colonized parts of England, Russia, Ireland, Scotland, even Southern Italy and Iceland... But in 21st century (as far as this blog is concerned) Sweden became a Motherland of Data Visualization:

Let's start with most famous Data Viking and most known Storyteller in Data Visualization field - prof. Hans Rosling from Karolinska Institutet and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation (in Stockholm). Gapminder's team invented the popular and useful 6-dimensional Motion Chart and developed Trendalizer which was bought by Google in 2007, see it here: https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/motionchart . The recent example of Prof. Rosling Storytelling you can see  here:

[youtube ="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grZSxoLPqXI#!"]

In Stockholm you can find another Data Visualization Innovator - Panopticon is a leader in Complex Even Processing and real-time Visual Analytics. Among other innovation here is the example of Panopticon's invention (by its senior developer Hannes Reijner) of Horizon Chart, see sample here:

and short video about it here:

[youtube="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M53dYUcQbCs"]

In 2012 Panopticon posted 112% Year-Over-Year revenue growth (comparable with Tableau). In 2013 (the all stock deal closed by the end of September, 2013.) Datawatch bought Panopticon for $31.4M and I assume it will try to move some R&D from Sweden to Chelmsford, MA.

In  Göteborg/Gothenburg you can find R&D office of another DV Leader - Spotfire with 60+ Data Vikings. In 2007 TIBCO bought Spotfire for $195M but even now in 2013 unable to move R&D into USA. So now Spotfire actually has 3+ main offices: TIBCO Corporate Headquarters in California, Spotfire Headquarters in Somerville, MA (estimate is 15% of Spotfire workforce) and main R&D office in Sweden. In addition, lately TIBCO choose the strategy to buy rather then build new features, for example, just in 2013 they added to Spotfire portfolio the following new companies and as result they have even more distributed R&D team now:

• Extended Results (PushBI) in Redmond, WA


• MAPORAMA in Paris, France


• StreamBase Systems, Inc. in Waltham, MA

As a result, despite the fact that Spotfire 6 is the most mature Data Visualization platform on market, people in TIBCO Corporate Headquarters running into risk of do not have enough knowledge of their own major Intellectual Properties.

In southern Sweden - Lund, we can find Swedish Headquarters of the major DV Leader - Qliktech, who occupied almost half of Data Visualization market in terms of sales. At least 140 Data Vikings located in Lund and may be another 200 elsewhere in Sweden. Qliktech's Data Vikings are major innovators with features like the fastest in-memory Data Engine, most natural Visual Drill-down, Associative Query Language to name a few. This also presents a major problem for Qliktech, because they have Headquarter in Radnor, PA (where only 150+ employees work (estimate), which is less then 10% of Qliktech's workforce!), Main marketing, sales and support office in Newton, MA (estimate: less then 5% of workforce) and most R&D in Lund (estimate: at least 10% of workforce).

This means that almost 500 technically advanced Data Visualization experts (engineers, developers, architects etc., which is at least 23% of total Qliktech+Spotfire workforce) are still in Sweden. The simple observation of Tableau's TCC13 conference in September 2013 shows that Tableau's top managers and officers know their product deeper and more intimately then their counterparts in Qliktech and Spotfire. That is very easy to explain: because 650+ Tableau's employees (almost 65% of their workforce and most developers, managers and officers) work in the same Main HQ office in Seattle, WA and they obviously talking to each other in-person and often!

My humble advice to Qliktech, Spotfire and Datawatch is simple - gradually relocate as much Data Vikings from Sweden to appropriate headquarters in USA or find and hire local american equivalents of those Swedish geniuses...

As a background for this advice, please consider this information (updated on 11/17/13): statistics of job openings clearly showing that all 3 DV Leaders keep doing (by inertia) what they did in past with only difference that it worked recently for Tableau and does not work for Qliktech and Spotfire. Here are specific examples:

• 
  

  Tableau has 176 job openings (much more then Qlikview (only 80) and Spotfire(only 18) combined)!

  
  


• 
  

  97 (55%) of Tableau openings are in Seattle, more then half of Tableau’s openings are engineering and technical positions!

  
  


• 
  

  Qliktech has 17 (21%) positions opened in Lund, only 10 (12%) in Radnor and 4 (5%) in Newton, MA. Only 11 (14%, 9 times less then at Tableau in absolute numbers) Qliktech’s openings are engineering and technical.

  
  


• 
  

  Spotfire has only 18 openings (1 in Göteborg, 5 in CA, 4 in MA) and only 4 Spotfire’s positions (out of 18, 22% that is) are engineering or technical.

  
  

This statistics clearly showing that neither Qliktech no TIBCO see the wrong pattern and huge problem here and that can be a reason for disruption in the future and the gradual  relocation of Data Vikings is only way to prevent the danger… And of course, if you can afford, find and hire equal talents in USA Headquarters then by all means keep geniuses in Sweden without relocation which is a half-similar to what Tableau does (HALF is because Tableau historically does not need to maintain the significant R&D office outside of USA)!

Data Visualization Landscape changed: October 2013

Something dramatic happened during October 2013 with Data Visualization (DV) Market and I feel it everywhere. Share Prices for QLIK went down 40% from $35 to $25, for DATA went down 20% from $72 to below $60, for MSTR went up 27% from $100 to $127 and for DWCH went up  25% from $27.7 to $34.5. This blog got 30% more visitors then usual and it reached 26000 visitors per month of October 2013!
So in this blog post I revisited who are actually the DV leaders and active players in Data Visualization field, what events and factors important here and I also will form the DVIndex containing 4-6 DV Leaders and will use it for future estimate of Marketshare and Mindshare in DV market.

In terms of candidates for DV Index I need measurable players, so I will prefer public companies, but will mention private corporations if they are relevant. I did some modeling and it turned out that the best indicator for DV Leader if its YoY (Year-over-Year Revenue growth) is larger than 10% - it will separate obsolete and traditional BI vendors and me-too attempts from real DV Leaders.

Let's start with traditional BI behemoths: SAP, IBM, Oracle and SAS: according to IDC, their BI revenue total $5810M, but none of those vendors had YoY (2012-over-2011) more then 6.7% ! These 4 BI Vendors literally desperate to get in to Data Visualization market (for example SAP Lumira, IBM is getting desperate too with Project Neo (will be in beta in early 2014), Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE), SmartCloud Analytics-Predictive Insights, BLU Acceleration, InfoSphere Data Explorer or SAS Visual Analytics) but so far they were not competitive with 3 known DV Leaders (those 3 are part of DVIndex for sure) Qlikview, Tableau and Spotfire...
5th traditional BI Vendor - Microsoft had BI revenue in 2012 as $1044M, YoY 16% and added lately a lot of relevant features to its Data Visualization toolbox: Power Pivot 2013, Power View, Power Query, Power Map, SSAS 2012 (and soon SQL Server 2014) etc. Unfortunately Microsoft does not have Data Visualization Product but pushing everything toward Office 365, SharePoint and Excel 2013, which cannot compete in DV market...
6th Traditional BI vendor - Microstrategy made during October 2013 a desperate attempt to get into DV market by releasing 2 free Data Visualization products: Microstrategy Desktop and Microstrategy Express, which are forcing me to qualify Microstrategy for a status of DV Candidate, which I will include (at least temporary) into DVIndex.  Microstrategy BI revenue for TTM (Trailing 12 months) was $574, YoY is below 5% so while I can include it into DVIndex, I cannot say (yet?) that Microstrategy is DV Leader.

Datawatch Corporation is public (DWCH), recently bought advanced Data Visualization vendor - Panopticon for $31M. Panopticon TTM Revenue approximately $7M and YoY was phenomenal 112%  in 2012! Combining it with $27.5M TTM Revenue of Datawatch (45% YoY!) giving us approximately 55% YoY for combined company and qualifying DWCH as a new member of DVIndex!

Other potential candidates for DVIndex can be Panorama (and their Necto 3.0 Product), Visokio (they have very competitive DV Product, called Omniscope 2.8), Advizor Solution with their mature Advizor Visual Discovery 6.0 Platform), but unfortunately all 3 companies choose to be private and I have now way to measure their performance and so they will stay as DV Candidates only.

In order to monitor the progress of open source BI vendors toward DV Market, I also decided to include into DVIndex one potential DV Candidate (not a leader for sure) - Actuate with their BIRT product. Actuate TTM revenue about $138M and YoY about 3%. Here is the tabular MarketShare result with 6 members of DVIndex:

Please keep in mind that I have no way to get exact numbers for Spotfire, but I feel comfortable to estimate Spotfire approximately as 20% of TIBCO numbers. However, I feel Spotfire YoY is 16% which is higher then 11% TIBCO has. Numbers in table above are fluid and reflect the market situation by the end of October 2013. Also see my attempt to visualize the Market Share of 6 companies above in simple Bubble Chart (click on it to Enlarge; where * X-axis: Vendor's Revenue for last TTM: 12 trailing Months, * Y-axis: Number of Full-Time Employees, working for given Vendor, * Sized by Market Capitalization, in $B (Billions of Dollars), and * Colored by Year-Over-Year revenue Growth):

For that date I also have an estimate of Mindshare of all 6 members of DVIndex by using the mentioning of those 6 companies by LinkedIn members, LinkedIn groups, posted on LinkedIn job openings and companies with Linkedin profile:

Again, please see below my attempt to represent Mindshare of those 6 companies above with simple Bubble Chart ((click on it to Enlarge; here 6 DV vendors, positioned relatively to their MINDSHARE on LinkedIn and where * X-axis: Number of LinkedIn members, mentioned Vendor in LinkedIn profile, * Y-axis: Number of LinkedIn Job Postings, with request of Vendor-related skills, * Sized by number of companies mentioned them on LinkedIn and * Colored by Year-Over-Year revenue Growth):

Among other potential DV candidates I can mention some recent me-too attempts like Yellowfin, Domo, RoamBI, Zoomdata and similar companies (mostly private startups) and hardly commercial but very interesting toolkits like D3. None of them have impact on DV Market yet.
Now, let's review some of October events (may add more October events later):
2. Tableau Software Files Registration Statement for Proposed Secondary Offering. Also Tableau's Revenue in the three months ended in September rose to $61 million, 10 millions more then expected - Revenue jumped 90%! Tableau CEO Christian Chabot said the results were boosted by one customer that increased its contract with the company. "Our third quarter results were bolstered by a large multimillion-dollar deal with a leading technology company," he said. "Use of our products in this account started within one business unit and over the last two years have expanded to over 15 groups across the company. "Recently, this customer set our to establish an enterprise standard for self-service business intelligence, which led to the multimillion-dollar transaction. This deal demonstrates the power and value of Tableau to the enterprise." However DATA prices went down anyway in anticipation of a significant portion of these Shares Premium prices should quickly evaporate as the STOCK Options lock-up will expire in November 2013.

3. TIBCO TUCON 2013 conference somehow did not help TIBCO stock but in my mind brought attention to Datawatch and to the meteoric rise of DWCH stock (on Chart below compare it with QLIK and TIBX prices, which basically did not change during period of March-October of 2013) which is more then tripled in a matter of just 8 months (Datawatch bought and integrated Panopticon during exactly that period):
1. For the fourth quarter, Qliktech predicts earnings of 28 cents to 31 cents a share on revenue between $156 million and $161 million. The forecast came in significantly lower than analysts' expectations of 45 cents a share on $165.78 million in revenue. For the full year, the company projects revenue between $465 million and $470 million, and earnings between 23 and 26 cents a share. Analysts had expectations of 38 cents a share on $478.45 million. As far as I concern it is not a big deal, but traders/speculants on Wall Street drove QLIK prices down almost 40%
4. Datawatch now has potentially better software stack then 3 DV Leaders, because of Datawatch Desktop is integrated with Panopticon Desktop Designer and Datawatch Server is integrated with Panopticon Data Visualization Server; it means that in addition to "traditional" BI + ETL + Big Data 3V features (Volume, Velocity, Variety) Datawatch has 4th V feature, which is relevant to DV Market: the advanced Data Visualization. Most visualization tools are unable to cope with the "Three V's of Big Data" – volume, velocity and variety. However, Datawatch's technology handles:

• Data sources of any size (it has to be tested and compared with Qlikview, Spotfire and Tableau)
• Data that is changing in real time (Spotfire has similar, but Qlikview and Tableau do not have it yet)
• Data stored in multiple types of systems and formats

We have to wait and see how it will play out but competition from Datawatch will make Data Visualization market more interesting in 2014... I feel now I need to review Datawatch products in my next blog post...

Qlikview.Next has a gift for Tableau and Datawatch

Yesterday I got invited by Qliktech for their semi-annual New England QlikView Boston User Group meeting. It was so many participants, so Qliktech was forced to hold the Keynote (of course the presentation and the demo of Qlikview.Next) and 4 cool presentations by Customers and Partners (Ocean State Job Lot, Analog Devices, Cybex and Attivio) outside of its own office but in the same building  on the 1st floor @Riverside Offices in Newton, MA @Rebecca's Cafe.
It was plenty of very excited people in a very large room and very promising demo and presentation of Qlikview.Next, which actually will not be generally available until 2014. Entire presentation was done using new and capable HTML5 client, based on functionality Qliktech got when it bought NComVA 6 months ago.
I was alarmed when presenter never mentioned my beloved Qlikview Desktop and I when I asked directly about it, the answer shocked and surprised me. One of the most useful piece of software I ever used will not be part of Qlikview.Next anymore. As part of Qlikview 11.2, it will be supported for 3 years and then it will be out of the picture! I did not believe it and asked one more time during demo and 2 more times after presentation in-person during Networking and Cocktail Hour inside Qliktech offices. While food and drink were excellent, the answer on my question was the same - NO!


I have the utmost respect for very smart software developers, architects and product managers of Qlikview, but in this particular case I have to invoke 20+ years of my own advanced and very extensive experience as the Software Architect, Coder and Software Director and nothing in my past can support such a decision. I do not see why Qlikview.Next can not have both (and we as Qlikview users need and love both) Qlikview Desktop Client and Qlikview HTML5 client?

I personally urge Qliktech (and I am sure the majority of 100000+ (according to Qliktech) Qlikview community will agree with me) to keep Qlikview Desktop client as long as Qlikview exist. And not just keep it but 1st,  keep it as the best Data Visualization Desktop Client on market and 2nd, keep it in sync (or better ahead) with HTML5 client.

In case if Qlikview Desktop will disappear from Qlikview.Next, it will be a huge gift to Tableau and Datawatch (and may be even Spotfire will benefit from it).

Tableau recently invested heavily into progress of all variations of Tableau Desktop (Professional, Personal, Public, Online, Free Reader) including (finally) migration to 64-bit and even porting Desktop to MAC, so it will instantly get the huge advantage over Qlikview in desktop, workstation, development, design, debugging, testing, QA  and offline environments.

It will also almost immediately propel the Datawatch as a very attractive contender in Data Visualization market, because Datawatch got (when they bought Panopticon this year) the extremely capable Panopticon Desktop Designer

in addition to its own very relevant line of products.
Again, I hope I misunderstood answer I got 4 times during 4-hour meeting and during follow-up networking/cocktail hour or if understood it correctly, Qliktech will reconsider, but I will respect their decision if they don't...

So I have to disagree with Cindi Howson (as usual): even if "QlikTech Aims To Disrupt BI, Again", it actually will disrupt itself first, unless it will listen me begging them to keep Qlikview Desktop alive, well and ahead of competition.

You can find in Ted Cuzzillo's article here: http://datadoodle.com/2013/10/09/next-for-qlik/ the actual quote from Qliktech's CEO Lars Björk: "“We can disrupt the industry again”. My problem with this quote that Qliktech considers itself as the insider and reinventor of the dead and slow BI industry, while Tableau with its new motto "DATA to the people" is actually trying to be out of this grave and be inside own/new/fast growing Data Visualization space/field/market, see also blogpost from Tony Cosentino, VP of Ventana Research, here:
http://tonycosentino.ventanaresearch.com/2013/09/21/tableau-continues-its-visual-analytics-revolution/#!
You can see below interview with Time Beyers, who has own doubts about Qlikview.Next from investor's point of view:


Basically, Qlikview.Next is late for 2 years, it will not have Qlikview Desktop (big mistake), it still does not promise any Qlikview Cloud services similar to Tableau Online and Tableau Public and it still does not have server-less distribution of visualizations because it does not have free Qlikview Desktop Viewer/Readers similar to free Tableau Reader. So far it looks to me that QLIK may have a trouble in the future...

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;

  
  


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  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.

  
  


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  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#!

Data to the People: tb8.1 vs qv11.2 vs sf5.5

After announcement of Tableau 8.1 ( and completion of TCC13) this week people asked me to refresh my comparison of leading Data Visualization tools and I felt it is the good time to do it, because finally Tableau can claim it has 64-bit platform and it is able now to do more advanced Analytics, thanks to Integration with R (both new features needs to be benchmarked and tested, but until my benchmarks are completed I tend to believe to Tableau's claims).  I actually felt that Tableau may be leapfrogged the competition and now Qlikview and Spotfire have to do something about it (of course if they care).

I enjoyed this week Tableau's pun/wordplay/slogan "Data to the People" it reminds, of course, other slogan "Power to the People" but also indirectly refers to NYSE Symbol "DATA" which is the SYMBOL of Tableau Software Inc. and it means (indirectly): "Tableau to the People":

In fact the "keynote propaganda" from Christian Chabot and Chris Stolte was so close to what I am saying for years on this blog, that I used their slogan FEBA4A ("Fast, Easy, Beautiful, Anywhere for Anyone") as the filter to include or remove from comparison any runner-ups, traditional, me-too and losing tools and vendors.

For example despite the huge recent progress Microsoft did with its BI Stack (updates in Office 2013, 365 and SQL 2012/14 of Power Pivot/View/Map/Query, SSAS, Data Explorer, Polybase, Azure Services, StreamInsight, in-Memory OLTP, Columnstore Indexing etc.) did not prevent me from removal of Microsoft's BI Stack from comparison (MSFT still trying to sell Data Visualization as a set of add-ins to Excel and SQL Server as oppose to separate product), because it it is not FEBA4A.

For similar reasons I did not include runner-ups like Omniscope, Advizor, Panopticon (it is part of Datawatch now), Panorama, traditional BI vendors, like IBM, Oracle, SAP, SAS, Microstrategy and many me-too vendors like Actuate, Pentaho, Information Builders, Jaspersoft, Jedox, Yellowfin, Bime and dozens of others. I even was able finally to rule out wonderful toolkits like D3 (because they are not for "anyone" and they require brilliant people like Mike Bostock to shine).

I was glad to see similar thinking from Tableau's CEO in his yesterday's interview here: http://news.investors.com/091213-670803-tableau-takes-on-big-rivals-oracle-sap-ibm-microsoft.htm?p=full and I quote:

"The current generation of technology that companies and governments use to try to see and understand the data they store in their databases and spreadsheets is without exception complicated, development-intensive, staff-intensive, inflexible, slow-moving and expensive. And every one of those adjectives is true for each of the market-share leaders in our industry."

Here is my brief and extremely personal (yes, opinionated but not bias) comparison of 3 leading Data Visualization (DV Comparison) platforms (if you cannot see in your browser, see screenshot below of Google Doc:

[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdDhKaDhZQklnY1FWZEg1Rk1lREd6NkE&output=html&widget=true" width="508" height="528" /]

I did not add pricing to comparison, because I cannot find enough public info about it. This is all I have:

• 
  

  https://tableau.secure.force.com/webstore

  
  


• 
  

  http://www.qlikview.com/us/explore/pricing

  
  


• 
  

  https://silverspotfire.tibco.com/us/get-spotfire/silver-spotfire-feature-matrix

  
  


• 
  

  additional pricing info for Tableau Server Core Licensing: “8 core server (enough to support 1,000 users, or 100 concurrent) for Tableau is $180k first year, about $34k every year after year 1 for maintenance”. With 8 core licensing I actually witnessed support for more then 1000 users: 1300+ active interactors, 250+ Publishers, 3000+ Viewers. I also witnessed (2+ years ago, since then price grew!) more than once that negotiation with Tableau Sales can get you down to $160K for 8 Core license with 20% every year after year 1 for maintenance (so in 2010-2011 total price was about $192K with 1 year maintenance)

  
  


• 
  

  Also one of visitors indicated to me that current pricing for 8 core Tableau 8.0 license for 1st year is $240K  now plus (mandatory?) 20-25% maintenance for 1st year... However negotiations are very possible and can save you up to 20-25% of "discount". I am aware of recent cases where 8-core license was sold (after discount) for around $195K with maintenance for 1st year for about $45K so total sale was $240K with 1st year maintenance (25% growth in price for last 3 years).

  
  

Below is a screenshot of above comparison, because some browsers (e.g. Safari or Firefox before version 24) cannot see either Google Doc embedded into WordPress or Google Doc itself:

Please note that I did not quantify above which of 3 tools are better, it is not possible until I will repeat all benchmarks and tests (I did many of those in the past; if I will have time in the future, I can do it again) when actual Tableau 8.1 will be released (see latest here: https://licensing.tableausoftware.com/esdalt/ ). However I used above the green color for good and red color for bad (light-colored backgrounds in 3 middle columns indicated good/bad). Also keep in mind that Qliktech and TIBCO may release something new soon enough (say Qlikview 12 or they called it now Qlikview.Next and Spotfire 6), so leapfrogging game may continue.

Update 10/11/13: interesting article about Tableau (in context with Qlikview and Spotfire) by Akram Annous from SeekeingAlpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1738252-tableau-a-perfect-short-with-a-catalyst-to-boot . Akram is very active visitor to my blog, especially to this article above. This article only 1 month old but already needs updates due recent pre-announcements about Qlikview.Next (Qlikview 12) and Spotfire 6, which as I predicted showing that leapfrogging game continue at full speed. Akram is brave enough by "targeting" pricing for DATA shares as $55 IN 30 DAYS, $35 IN 6 MONTHS. I am not convinced yet.

if you will see the AD below, it is not me, it is wordpress.com...

Happy New 2013!

My best wishes for 2013!

2012 was extraordinary for Data Visualization community and I expect 2013 will be even more interesting than 2012. For Data Visualization vendors 2012 was unusual YEAR and surprised many people.

We can start with Qliktech, which grew only about 18% in 2012 (while in 2011 it was 42% and in 2010 it was 44%) and QLIK stock lost a lot... Spotfire on other hand grew faster then that and Tableau grew even faster than Spotfire. Tableau doubled its workforce and its sales now more than $100M per year. Together the sales of Qlikview, Spotfire and Tableau totaled to almost $600M in 2012 and I expect it may reach even $800M in  2013. All other vendors becoming less and less visible on market. While it is still possible to have a breakthrough from companies like Microsoft, Microstrategy, Visokio and Pagos, it is highly unlikely.

If you will search in web for wishes or wishlists for Qlikview or Tableau or Spotfire, you can find plenty of wishes, including even very technical. I will partially repeat myself, because some of my best wishes are still wishes and may be some of them will be never implemented. I will restrict myself to 3 best wishes per vendor.

Let me start with Spotfire, as the most mature product. I will use analogy: EMC did spin-off VMWare and (today) market capitalization of VMWare is close $40B, about 75% (!) of Market Capitalization of its parent company EMC! I wish that TIBCO will do the same to Spotfire as EMC did to VMWare. Compare with this wish all other wishes look minimal, like making Free Spotfire Desktop Reader (similar to what Tableau has) and make part of Spotfire Silver is completely Public and Free similar to ... Tableau Public.

For Qliktech I really wish them to stop bleeding capitalization-wise (did they lost $1B of MktCap during last 9 months?) and sales-wise (growing only 18% in 2012 compare with 42% in 2011). May be 2013 is good time for IBM to buy Qliktech? And yes, I wish Qlikview Server on Linux (I do not like new licensing terms of Windows 2012 Server) and I wish (for many years!) free Qlikview Desktop Viewer/Reader (similar ... to Tableau Reader) in 2013 to enable  server-less distribution of Qlikview-based Data Visualizations!

For Tableau I wish a very successful IPO in 2013 and I wish them to grow in 2013 as fast as they did in 2012! I really wish Tableau (and all its processes like VizQL, Application Server, Backgrounder etc.) to became 64-bit in 2013 and of course I wish Tableau Server on Linux (see my wish for Qlikview above).

Since I still have my best wishes for Microsoft (I guess they will never listen me anyway), I wish them to stop in 2013 using the dead product (Silverlight) with Power View (just complete the switch to HTML5 already), to make it completely separate from SharePoint and make it equal part of Office (integrated with PowerPivot on Desktop) the same way as Visio and Access are parts of Office and as a result I wish Microsoft to have a Power View (Data Visualization) Server (integrated with SQL Server 2012 of course) as well.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/29587286" iframe="true" /]

Also here are Flags of 21 countries from where this blog got most visitors in 2012:

Qlikview can go outside RAM, finally

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 but "instead" we are getting Qlikview 11.2 with Direct Discovery in December 2012, which supposedly provides a "hybrid approach so business users can get the QlikView associative experience even with data that is not stored in memory"

This feature demanded by users (me included) for a long time, but I think noise around so called Big Data and competition forced Qliktech to do it. Spotfire has it for a longtime (as well as 64-bit implementation) and Tableau has something like that for a while (unfortunately Tableau still 32-bit) . You can test Beta of it, if you have time: http://community.qlikview.com/blogs/technicalbulletin/2012/10/22/qlikview-direct-discovery-beta-registration-is-open

Just 8 months ago Qliktech estimated its sales for 2012 as $410M and suddenly 3 months ago it changed its estimates down to $381M, just 19% over 2011, which is in huge contrast with Qliktech's previous speed of growth and way behind the current speed of growth of Tableau and even less then current speed of growth of Spotfire. During last 2 years QLIK stock unable to grow significantly:

and all of the above forcing Qliktech to do something outside of gradual improvements - new and exciting functionality needed and Direct Discovery may help!

QlikView Direct Discovery enables users to perform visual analysis against "any amount of data, regardless of size". With the introduction of this unique hybrid approach, users can associate data stored within big data sources directly alongside additional data sources stored within the QlikView in-memory model. QlikView can "seamlessly connect to multiple data sources together within the same interface", e.g. Teradata to SAP to Facebook allowing the business user to associate data across the data silos. Data outside of RAM can be joined with the in-memory data with the common field names. This allows the user associatively navigate both on the direct discovery and in memory data sets.

QlikView developer should setup the Direct Discovery table on the QlikView application load script to allow the business users to query the desired big data source. Within the script editor a new syntax is introduced to connect to data in direct discovery form. Traditionally the following syntax is required to load data from a database table:

To invoke the direct discovery method, the keyword “SQL” is replaced with “DIRECT”.

In the example above only column CarrierTrackingNumber and ProductID are loaded into QlikView in the traditional manner, other columns exist in the data table within the Database including columns OrderQty and Price. OrderQty and Price fields are referred as “IMPLICIT” fields. An implicit field is a field that QlikView is aware of on a “meta level”. The actual data of an implicit field resides only in the database but the field may be used in QlikView expressions. Looking at the table view and data model of the direct discovery columns are not within the model (on the OrderFact table):

Once the direct discovery structure is established, the direct discovery data can be joined with the in-memory data with the common field names (Figure 3). In this example, “ProductDescription” table is loaded in-memory and joined to direct discovery data with the ProductID field. This allows the user to associatively navigate both on the "direct discovery" and in memory data sets.

Direct Discovery will be much slow then in-memory processing and this is is expected, but it will take away from Qlikview its usual claim that is is faster then competitors. QlikView Direct Discovery can only be used against SQL compliant data sources. The following data sources are supported;

• ODBC/OLEDB data sources - All ODBC/OLEDB sources are supported, including SQL Server, Teradata and Oracle.
• Custom connectors which support SQL – Salesforce.com, SAP SQL Connector, Custom QVX connectors for SQL compliant data stores.

Due to the interactive and SQL syntax specific nature of the Direct Discovery approaches a number of limitations exist. The following chart types are not supported;
• Pivot tables
• Mini charts
And the following QlikView features are not supported:
• Advanced aggregation
• Calculated dimensions
• Comparative Analysis (Alternate State) on the QlikView objects that use Direct
Discovery fields
• Direct Discovery fields are not supported on Global Search
• Binary load from a QlikView application with Direct Discovery table

Here is a some preliminary video about Direct Discovery, published by Qliktech:

It was interesting to me that just 2 days after Qliktech pre-anounced Direct Discovery it also partners with Teradata. Tableau partners with Teradata for a while and Spotfire did it a month ago, so I guess Qliktech trying to catchup in this regard as well. I mentioned it only to underscore the point of this blog post: Qliktech realized that it behind its competitors in some areas and it has to follow ASAP.

LinkedIn Stats about Data Visualization tools

I used LinkedIn for years to measure of how many people mentioning Data Visualization tools on their profiles, of how many LinkedIn groups dedicated to those DV tools and what group membership is. Recently these statistics show dramatic changes in favor of Qlikview and Tableau as undisputed leaders in people's opinions.

Here is how many people mentioned specific tools (statistics were updated on 9/4/12 and numbers changing every day) on their profiles:

• Tableau - 18584,


• Qlikview  - 17471,


• Spotfire - 3829,


• SAS+JMP - 3443,


• PowerPivot - 2335

Sample of "People" search URL: http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?type=people&keywords=Tableau or http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?type=people&keywords=SAS+JMP

Here is how many groups dedicated to [in brackets a "pessimistic" estimate of total non-overlapping membership]:

• Qlikview - 169 [13000+],


• Tableau - 76 [6000+],


• Spotfire - 29 [2000+],


• SAS (+AND+) JMP - 23 [2000+],


• PowerPivot - 16 [2000+]

Sample of "Group" search URL: http://www.linkedin.com/search-fe/group_search?pplSearchOrigin=GLHD&keywords=Qlikview

Data Visualization tool is a Presentation Tool

(this is a repost from my other Data Visualization blog: http://tableau7.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/tableau-as-container/ )

Often I used small Tableau (or Spotfire or Qlikview) workbooks instead of PowerPoint, which are proving at least 2 concepts:

• 
  

  Good Data Visualization tool can be used as the Web or Desktop Container for Multiple Data Visualizations (it can be used to build a hierarchical Container Structures with more then 3 levels; currently 3: Container-Workbooks-Views)

  
  


• 
  

  It can be used as the replacement for PowerPoint; in example below I embedded into this Container 2 Tableau Workbooks, one Google-based Data Visualization, 3 image-based Slides and Textual Slide: http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/TableauInsteadOfPowerPoint/1-Introduction

  
  


• 
  

  Tableau (or Spotfire or Qlikview) is better then PowerPoint for Presentations and Slides

  
  


• 
  

  Tableau (or Spotfire or Qlikview) is the Desktop and the Web Container for Web Pages, Slides, Images, Texts

  
  


• 
  

  Good Visualization Tool can be a Container for other Data Visualizations

  
  


• 
  

  Sample Tableau Presentation above contains the Introductory Textual Slide

  
  


• 
  

  Sample Tableau Presentation above  contains a few Tableau Visualization:This Tableau Presentation contains a Web Page with the Google-based Motion Chart Demo

  
  
  
  
  1. 
     

     The Drill-down Demo

     
     
  
  
  2. 
     

     The Motion Chart Demo ( 6 dimensions: X,Y, Shape, Color, Size, Motion in Time)

     
     
  
  
  
  


• 
  

  This Tableau Presentation contains a few Image-based Slides:

  
  
  
  
  1. 
     

     The Quick Description of Origins and Evolution of Software and Tools used for Data Visualizations during last 30+ years

     
     
  
  
  2. 
     

     The Description of Multi-level Projection from Multidimensional Data Cloud to Datasets, Multidimensional Cubes and to Chart

     
     
  
  
  3. 
     

     The Description of 6 stages of Software Development Life Cycle for Data Visualizations

     
     
  
  
  
  

Tableau vs. Qlikview

Some people pushing me to answer on recent Donald Farmer's comments on my previous post, but I need more time to think about it.

Meanwhile today Ted Cuzzillo published an interesting comparison of Qlikview vs. Tableau here:

http://datadoodle.com/2012/04/24/tableau-qlikview/

named "The future of BI in two words" which made me feel warm and fuzzy about both products and unclear about what Ted's judgement is?

Fortunately I had a more "digitized" comparison of these 2 Data Visualization Leaders, which I did a while ago for a different reason. So I modified it a little to bring it up-to-date and you can see it for yourself below. Funny thing is that even I used 30+ criterias to measure and compare those two brilliant products, final score is almost identical for both of them, so it is still warm and fuzzy.

Basically conclusion is simple: each product is better for certain customers and for certain projects, there is no universal answer (yet?):

[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdHJ1eXZyWFJjUVoxbUl0cTlCVDlXU2c&output=html&widget=true" width="510" height="1060" /]