Somewhat in response to a recent article from Gartner that put the BI space firmly in the hands of Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM, some users started a poll over at LinkedIn (See it here, account required).  The results are interesting, with Spotfire coming out way in front.

Now, a few things to note first:

  • It’s a self-selected sample.. Voters already had LinkedIn accounts and were part of a Data Visualization group
  • There were only 5 options (the 4 shown and “Other”), so of course people will gravitate to those 4.

It’s interesting to see the difference in opinion.  I think Gartner is probably right, simply because of the old adage  “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”.  Smaller companies have more flexible and agile tools, but big business likes buying from big business, so IBM & Microsoft rule those markets.

There are also some interesting demographics to note:

  • Younger people seemed to gravitate to Tableau.  I would bet that’s due to Tableau’s recent success in creating a powerful and easy web-embed friendly visualization system that keeps cropping up all over the internet.  Exposure is great advertising.
  • Most of the people picking “Other” were older “Managers”, somewhat reinforcing my point above.  The folks with the money are going elsewhere.
  • Spotfire, the clear out-and-out winner of the poll had 3/4th of their votes from “all other” people, meaning their job description didn’t fit into the usual suspects.  This could indicate a large freelancer base. (I originally thought students, but the age is a bit high)

If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, I’ve included the entire fully-expanded chart after the break (Showing demographic breakdowns for all 5 choices).

LinkedIn: Polls.

Click for Fullsize