Spotfire 14.5 has arrived as the latest innovation release, bringing transformative features that redefine how organizations access, analyze, and act on their data. This comprehensive release introduces significant product packaging changes, enhanced visualization capabilities, and industry-specific tools that are generating considerable excitement across the analytics community.
Revolutionary Product Packaging: A New Era for Spotfire Users
One of the most significant changes in Spotfire 14.5 is the introduction of a streamlined product packaging structure that makes it easier for organizations to choose the right analytics solution for their specific needs. The new packaging structure includes:
Spotfire® Data Science and Spotfire® Enterprise Offerings
The release introduces two flagship offerings: Spotfire® Data Science and Spotfire® Enterprise, each designed to address distinct organizational requirements. Spotfire® Data Science empowers users with advanced analytics capabilities, including predictive modeling, machine learning, and industry-specific tools tailored for sectors like energy and manufacturing. Meanwhile, Spotfire® Enterprise provides large-scale organizations with centralized, automated analytics and robust governance features essential for enterprise-wide deployments.
Five Comprehensive Product Licenses
The platform is now packaged as five separate product licenses, providing unprecedented flexibility in deployment and usage:
- Spotfire Analytics – Core visualization and analysis capabilities
- Spotfire Data Science – Advanced analytics with industry-specific add-ons
- Spotfire Enterprise – Enterprise-grade management and governance
- Spotfire Enterprise Advanced Data Services – Data virtualization capabilities
- Spotfire Enterprise Data Streams – Real-time streaming data analysis
This new structure replaces multiple legacy licenses, consolidating and streamlining the Spotfire landscape while reducing operational complexity.
Enhanced Visualization Authoring Experience
Unified Visualization Authoring Panel
Spotfire 14.5 introduces a revolutionary unified visualization authoring panel that simplifies and standardizes how users create visualizations across all clients. This enhancement addresses long-standing user experience challenges by providing a consistent interface whether working in the desktop client or web browser.
The new authoring panel enables users to:
- Configure visualizations more intuitively with streamlined controls
- Access visualization types through improved navigation
- Maintain consistency across different Spotfire clients
- Reduce the learning curve for new users while maintaining power-user functionality
Custom Marker Shapes for Industry-Specific Symbols
A highly requested feature, custom marker shapes, is now available in Spotfire 14.5. This capability allows organizations to use company or industry-specific symbols in map visualizations and scatter plots, enhancing data visualization with meaningful iconography.
Users can now:
- Upload custom marker symbols such as service vehicles, drilling rigs, or manufacturing equipment icons
- Apply industry-specific markers in map charts and scatter plots
- Enhance visual storytelling with contextually relevant symbols
- Improve data interpretation through familiar visual cues
Expanded Web Client Capabilities
The web client receives significant enhancements with additional visualization types now available for authoring, including box plots, heat maps, and summary tables. This expansion brings the web client closer to feature parity with the desktop application, enabling more comprehensive analysis workflows in browser-based environments.
Advanced Action Mods Framework
Enhanced Action Mods Capabilities
Spotfire 14.5 delivers significant updates to the Action Mods framework, unlocking more diverse and complex use cases. The enhanced framework enables users to:
- Run data functions directly from actions, allowing automatic creation of visualizations to display outputs
- Create, configure, and access visualization mods through the API
- Add embedded resources such as image files or data files for use in scripts
- Utilize new input types including data column, data view, and enum inputs
Improved Action Management
The release introduces individual icons for each action within action mods, making it easier to identify and manage actions in the Actions flyout and on visualization triggers. Additionally, the search functionality now includes individual actions within action mods, significantly improving discoverability and workflow efficiency.
Expanded Data Access and Connectivity
Modern Data Connectivity
Spotfire 14.5 enhances data access capabilities with expanded connectivity options and modern authentication methods. Key improvements include:
- OAuth support for secure authentication
- Modern web UI connectors for Oracle, Cloudera Impala, and Google BigQuery
- Support for Parquet file formats, enabling analysis of modern data lake architectures
- Enhanced Essbase 21 connectivity
- OAuth-secured WMS layers for secure map data access
More Visualization Types in Web Client
The web client now supports additional visualization types for authoring, including box plots, heat maps, and summary tables. This expansion enables users to create more comprehensive analyses directly within the web browser, reducing dependency on the desktop client for common visualization tasks.
Industry-Specific Analytics Capabilities
Energy Sector Enhancements
Spotfire 14.5 includes specialized tools for the energy industry, building on Spotfire’s strong presence with the top 10 global energy companies. The release features:
- Well log analysis capabilities through specialized visualization mods
- 3D surface and line chart visualizations for geological data
- Well spacing and well bore diagram tools for exploration and production activities
- Enhanced drilling data analysis capabilities
Manufacturing Industry Support
The release extends industry-specific capabilities to manufacturing, including:
- Wafer mapping visualizations for semiconductor manufacturing
- Process optimization tools for quality control
- Real-time monitoring capabilities for production environments
- Statistical process control (SPC) enhancements
Enterprise Management and Governance
Simplified License Management
Spotfire 14.5 introduces simplified license management through an improved UI that makes it easy to assign product licenses to user groups. The new system provides:
- Clear product license selection without complex feature configurations
- User count tracking by product license for compliance monitoring
- Streamlined license assignment processes for administrators
Enhanced Deployment Reporting
The release includes an expanded deployment report feature that helps administrators monitor and optimize their Spotfire environment. The enhanced reporting provides:
- Assigned product licenses over time for compliance verification
- Usage analytics for product licenses and features
- System information including library usage and service instances
- Trend analysis for planning and optimization
Add-ons Browser Integration
Spotfire Community Integration
A notable new feature is the Add-ons browser, which provides direct access to the Spotfire Community site from within the application. This integration enables users to:
- Browse visualizations, actions, and demo analyses directly from Spotfire
- Download industry-specific add-ons with proper licensing
- Access data science add-ons exclusive to Spotfire Data Science license holders
- Discover community-contributed content without leaving the application
The Data Science add-ons include industry-specific visualizations and actions for energy and manufacturing sectors, as well as cross-industry capabilities such as time series analysis and missing data handling.
Spotfire 14.5 represents a transformational leap in visual data science capabilities, offering organizations unprecedented flexibility in how they deploy and utilize analytics tools. Whether you’re looking to enhance visualization capabilities, implement industry-specific analytics, or streamline enterprise deployment, this release provides the tools and features necessary to drive meaningful insights and accelerate decision-making.
Ready to experience the power of Spotfire 14.5? Contact our analytics experts today to explore how these innovative features can transform your data analysis workflows and unlock new insights across your organization.
