Data without context is generally useless, and when it comes to providing that context, location is usually everything.
At its TUCON 2013 conference this week, TIBCO Software moved to provide that context by releasing an upgrade to its TIBCO Spotfire analytics software that adds support for geospatial analytics based on technology that TIBCO gained when it acquired Maparama Solutions earlier this year.
According to TIBCO Senior Vice President Peter Lee, 80 percent of all data can be associated with geospatial analytics. Lee says adding those capabilities to version 6.0 of TIBCO Spotfire will make it a lot easier for users to discover the relationship between different data sets via multilayer maps and geo-coding of data.
In this release, TIBCO is also adding support for TIBCO SpotfireEvent Analytics, which leverages TIBCO event processing technology to automate the tracking and identification of new trends as they occur. This real-time monitoring essentially triggers the automatic creation of analytic applications every time an exception occurs within a specific business process.
As part of an effort to make TIBCO Spotfire more accessible, the company also announced that it will make an instance of TIBCO Spotfire available as a cloud service. The end goal, says Lee, is to give customers multiple delivery options when it comes to invoking the analytics product.
Finally, TIBCO is also making available TIBCO Spotfire Consumer, web-based client software that allows users of mobile computing devices to more easily keep track of specific key performance indicators.
While the line between business intelligence and analytics applications is continuing to blur, TIBCO is focusing on providing operational intelligence around specific business processes. Ultimately, delivering that level of intelligence in a way that is tied to business processes may do more to help drive the adoption of analytics. Business users usually only appreciate having an analytics capability in the moment an actual event actually occurs, versus other approaches to analytics that focus on identifying trends long after anybody can actually change the outcome of the event.
