SPOTFIRE
Cloud Software Group’ s Spotfire is transforming data analysis for the energy and manufacturing sectors, offering unique visual data science capabilities
In today’ s data-driven world, industries are constantly searching for more effective ways to analyse and interpret vast amounts of information. At the forefront of this market is Spotfire, a visual data science platform that“ makes smart people smarter”.
Spotfire offers unique capabilities that set it apart from traditional data analysis tools in that it combines visual analytics, data science and data wrangling to allow experts to analyse data – at-rest, in-motion and at-scale – so augmenting human creativity and the power of modern computing to solve problems.
Spotfire is part of the Cloud Software Group, an enterprise software organisation. Brad Hopper, VP of Vertical Markets at Cloud Software Group, explains the genesis of Spotfire and its evolution into a powerful tool for various industries.
“ Spotfire was founded as part of human computer interaction research at Chalmers University and the University of Maryland,” he says.
Spotfire was initially focused on the pharmaceutical research sector. It quickly gained traction among biologists and chemists, until the majority of pharmaceutical companies globally were using it for their research processes.
Brad has spent his career at the forefront of data analytics in manufacturing and energy. He has a background in manufacturing, including degrees from UC Berkeley, and worked at AMD as a process and yield engineer. His journey with Spotfire began in the early days of the company.
“ I joined just a few years after the company started. I was employee number 65,” he recalls.
His engineering pedigree and prior experience gave him unique insights into the potential applications of Spotfire’ s technology and he has helped shape Spotfire’ s visual analytics technology into a powerful tool for industries ranging from semiconductors to oil and gas.
“ The moment I saw Spotfire, I said,‘ this is something that really needs to be in the semiconductor business’,” Brad explains.
Just 18 months later, seven of the top ten semiconductor companies in the world were using the solution. The company’ s success in these and other industries was down to its ability to address a significant gap in the market.
“ Semiconductors was underserved from a data analytics perspective,” Brad says.“ They had these super-advanced, super high-powered and very complex vertical applications. Each company
72 April 2025