10 Top Advanced Data Visualization Platforms to Watch

As organizations deal with increasingly massive data sets from a plethora of sources, it becomes increasingly difficult for business users to make sense of the bewildering array of information, let alone act on insight gained from it. Business Intelligence (BI) vendors are seeking to help organizations solve this problem with new advanced data visualization capabilities. Here are 10 advanced data visualization solutions to watch based on research by Forrester and Gartner.

Big Blue has one of the most comprehensive Business Intelligence (BI) offerings, which combines software, hardware and services. Earlier this year it added desktop-based advanced data visualization to its portfolio with Cognos Insight, based on its in-memory OLAP TM1 engine. While it lacks some of the advanced data exploration and discovery features of its more costly competitors, it’s an excellent choice for what-if scenario modeling and planning use cases dependent on write-back capabilities. It also has the capability to consume and analyze predictive analytics output from IBM’s SPSS Modeler.

Information Builders, best known for its large-scale BI deployments, offers advanced data analytics for business users through its WebFOCUS platform, which offers capabilities like the InfoAssist query builder and Active Reports. It also includes the Visual Discovery product, which adds in-memory data exploration and discovery. WebFOCUS is based on the FOCUS fourth-generation programming language (4GL), which means that some advanced visualization routines may need to be optimized using FOCUS programming.

Microsoft is an up-and-comer in the advanced data visualization market, building on the BI functionality in Excel, SharePoint and SQLServer with the PowerPivot and Power View in-memory data analysis and discovery engine. Forrester calls it “Excel on steroids.” It currently offers only about 80 percent of the advanced BI functionality of other leading vendors, but is an excellent entry point for organizations with a Microsoft- centric information infrastructure. Business users may also have an increased level of comfort with it as they are familiar with the Excel UI.

MicroStrategy, which specializes in enterprise BI deployments running on large enterprise data warehouses, offers the capability to visually explore data and generate insights using its Visual Insight tool. MicroStategy’s BI platform is an especially good fit for organizations that need to visualize data across multiple heterogeneous data sources due to its ROLAP engine. Forrester notes that many Forrester clients that use the ROLAP engine cite lower long-term cost of BI ownership because it allows them to build fewer cubes or reports. However, leveraging the ROLAP engine can be very complex and time consuming, and MicroStrategy’s platform has a steep learning curve.

While it may not boast as many complex workloads as its competitors, Oracle’s solutions are broadly deployed. The Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) features an enterprise-grade ROLAP engine with heterogeneous data sourcing capabilities, and the company added the Exalytics In-Memory Machine in October 2011 to leverage assets across its stack for traditional BI, dynamic planning, what-if and scenario analysis, along with interactive visualization and data discovery capabilities. However, Gartner says its references rate it second only to SAS in terms of difficulty of implementation.

QlikTech’s QliKView is not a direct competitor to broad BI offerings. Instead, it specializes in discovery and exploration capabilities, making it an excellent complementary technology to advanced data visualization platforms like SAP and IBM. Forrester’s clients particularly cite its memory-compression and speed-of-analysis, and Gartner’s clients rate its ease of use higher than any other vendor. However, data integration requires IT scripting, which contributes to a slow turn-around time when building large, complex reports from various data sources.

SAP is seeking to take the lead when it comes to performance on big data advanced data visualization, using a combination of SAP BusinessObjects Eplorer, Visual Intelligence and the SAP HANA in-memory appliance. Whereas most other in-memory DBMS engines have practical limitations that allow you to analyze no more than a few hundred GBs at a time, SAP has a production in-memory model that can analyze 7 to 8 TBs compressed to about 1 TB. In the lab, SAP says it has tested it to scale up to about 80 to 100 TBs compressed to about 16 to 20 TBs. However, Gartner notes that many SAP customers report confusion about SAP’s product roadmaps.

SAS Enterprise Business Intelligence is already a common choice for many organizations seeking to solve complex business problems, especially ones that require advanced analytics on large, unstructured data sources. SAS JMP and Visual Analytics add powerful advanced data visualization capabilities, including visual self-service for big data exploration techniques. Because of its solution-oriented analytic application approach, it offers an array of cross-functional and vertically specific analytic applications out of the box. Gartner notes that its clients consider SAS’s product the most difficult to use for business users compared with offerings from other vendors.

While not a full-fledged broad BI platform, and despite growing competition, Tableau sets the standards when it comes to advanced data visualization. Gartner says its clients give Tableau top or near top marks for ease of use, functionality, product quality, product performance, support, customer relationship, success, achievement of business benefits and view of its future even as it achieved 94 percent revenue growth in 2011. Like QlikTech, it makes an excellent complementary technology. It features strong mobile capabilities and also excels at handling large unstructured data sets.

Like QlikTech and Tableau, Tibco Spotfire Analytics is a complementary technology to broader BI platforms from other vendors that lack leading-edge advanced data visualization-based discovery and exploration capabilities. It is often chosen for its ease of use for end users. It features a highly graphical associative in-memory engine for self-service discovery, authoring analytic apps and publishing interactive visual dashboards. Gartner notes that although Spotfire has among the highest complexity of user analysis scores of any vendor it surveyed, they also rate it above average for ease of use.