JMP Pro vs. Salford-- High level comparison?

Question

We (OVR) has a client (currently a Minitab shop) that is about to make a purchasing decision for Salford Systems (Basic) instead of JMP Pro.  We're trying a last-minute push to get them to reconsider.

Does anyone know anything about Salford?  Right now we're looking for a very high level (a few bullet points) comparing Salford to JMP Pro (specifically).  Below is some of the feedback we are receiving from the customer.

Thanks in advance!

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(from client assessment)

Salford has four versions of their product.  We are purchasing basic which at least for Partitioning models has all the same features as JMP Pro.  The quote I received for basic was in line with your pricing for Pro, very similar.  My perception is that Minitab bought them to be competitive with companies like yours.  As we know Minitab is good for general analysis, but comes up short in certain areas.  For me at least, being able play with data (play is an understatement as I built some complex models) using boosted trees and random forests was an advantage, especially since we didn't have an easy way to email 200Mb files.

The clincher with my IT corporate group, and I'm being totally transparent here, is leveraging Minitab.  We will have 3 Minitab products, including Minitab, Companion for project management, and now this Predictive modeling tool.

JerryFish · Answer

Peter and Don, thank you both very much for your replies.  I'll forward this info along, and see if we can get the client to change his mind.  Much appreciated!

Peter_Hersh · Answer

Hey Jerry,

I found this .pdf that goes through the capabilities of Salford.  Quick look the basic product does not have multicore capability, no ability to export to SAS, Python, Java like formula depot in basic.  You have to get the pro version of Salford Systems to utilize LASSO/Ridge/Elastic net varibale reduction techniques.  You might be able to win with multiple response optimization over the basic product.  On top of what Don said.  Also looks like there is no model comparison feature in the basic.

http://media.salford-systems.com/SPM/SPM8brochure.pdf

DonMcCormack · Answer

Jerry,

JMP Pro could be used to replace two of the three Minitab products (basic and predictive). In addition, it has many other features that aren't in either of those two products  - reliability block diagram and system simulation, formula depot (i.e., the ability to export models to a number of different lanugages, an interactive SQL query builder, and an interactive graph builder, to name a few. Not sure what's in the basic system, but I'd suspect it doens't have the range of modeling techniques that are found in Pro, an interactive bootstrapping feature, or the ability to incorporate model building, tuning, and testing in one pass (i.e, by using the validation column). In short, he'll be spending more time and money on a products with less features.

I'd also mention the level of available support with the user community and recorded WebExs.

Don