Plotly is a technical computing company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, that develops online data analytics and visualization tools. Plotly provides online graphing, analytics, and statistics tools for individuals and collaboration, as well as scientific graphing libraries for

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pr ...

, R,

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementatio ...

, Perl,

Julia Julia is usually a feminine given name. It is a Latinate feminine form of the name Julio and Julius. (For further details on etymology, see the Wiktionary entry "Julius".) The given name ''Julia'' had been in use throughout Late Antiquity (e. ...

Arduino Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed under ...

, and

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

History

Plotly was founded by Alex Johnson, Jack Parmer, Chris Parmer, and Matthew Sundquist. The founders' backgrounds are in science, energy, and data analysis and visualization. Early employees include Christophe Viau, a Canadian software engineer and Ben Postlethwaite, a Canadian geophysicist. Plotly was named one of the Top 20 Hottest Innovative Companies in Canada by the Canadian Innovation Exchange. Plotly was featured in "startup row" at

PyCon The Python Conference (also called PyCon) is the largestpage 10 annual convention for the discussion and promotion of the Python programming language. It originated in the United States but is also held in more than 40 other countries. It was one ...

2013, and sponsored the SciPy 2018 conference. Plotly raised $5.5 million during its Series A funding, led by MHS Capital, Siemens Venture Capital,

Rho Ventures Rho Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that actively invests in companies related to technology, new media, cleaning technology and healthcare. Rho Fund Investors, a division of Rho Capital Partners, is a fund of funds (FoF), or fund th ...

, Real Ventures, and

Silicon Valley Bank Silicon Valley Bank is an American commercial bank. SVB is on the list of largest banks in the United States, and is the biggest bank in Silicon Valley based on local deposits. It is a subsidiary of SVB Financial Group. History Silicon Valley B ...

. The Boston Globe and Washington Post newsrooms have produced data journalism using Plotly. In 2020, Plotly was named a Best Place to Work by the Canadian SME National Business Awards, and nominated as Business of the Year.

Products

Plotly offers open-source and enterprise products. *Dash is an open-source

, R, and

framework for building web-based

analytic applications Analytic applications are a type of business application software, used to measure and improve the performance of business operations. More specifically, analytic applications are a type of business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) compri ...

. Many specialized open-source Dash libraries exist that are tailored for building domain-specific Dash components and applications. Some examples are Dash DAQ, for building data acquisition GUIs to use with scientific instruments, and Dash Bio, which enables users to build custom chart types, sequence analysis tools, and 3D rendering tools for bioinformatics applications. *Dash Enterprise is Plotly’s paid product for building, testing, deploying, managing and scaling Dash applications organization-wide. *Chart Studio Cloud is a free, online tool for creating interactive graphs. It has a point-and-click graphical user interface for importing and analyzing data into a grid and using stats tools. Graphs can be embedded or downloaded. *Chart Studio Enterprise is a paid product that allows teams to create, style, and share interactive graphs on a single platform. It offers expanded authentication and file export options, and does not limit sharing and viewing. *Data visualization libraries Plotly.js is an open-source JavaScript library for creating graphs and powers Plotly.py for

, as well as Plotly.R for R,

Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript cod ...

, and

and a

API. Plotly can also be used to style interactive graphs with

Jupyter notebook Project Jupyter () is a project with goals to develop open-source software, open standards, and services for interactive computing across multiple programming languages. It was spun off from IPython in 2014 by Fernando Pérez and Brian Granger ...

. *Figure Converters which convert matplotlib,

ggplot2 ggplot2 is an open-source data visualization package for the statistical programming language R. Created by Hadley Wickham in 2005, ggplot2 is an implementation of Leland Wilkinson's ''Grammar of Graphics''—a general scheme for data visua ...

, and IGOR Pro graphs into interactive, online graphs.

Data visualization libraries

Plotly provides a collection of supported chart types across several programming languages:

Dash

Dash is a Python framework built on top of React, a JavaScript library. But Dash also works for R, and most recently supports Julia, and while still described a Python framework, Python isn't used for the other languages, "describing Dash as a Python framework misses a key feature of its design: the Python side (the back end/server) of Dash was built to be lightweight and stateless llowingmultiple back-end languages to coexist on an equal footing". It is possible to integrate D3.js charts as Dash components. Dash provides the default CSS (and HTML and JavaScript, and you can add your own), but for custom styling Dash applications CSS can be added, or Dash Enterprise used.

Dash Enterprise

Dash Enterprise is Plotly’s paid product for building, testing, deploying, managing and scaling Dash applications organization-wide. The product integrates with enterprise IT systems to enable organizations to build, deploy and scale low-code Dash applications. With open-source Dash, analytic applications can be run from a local machine, but cannot be easily accessed by others in the organization.

Enterprise IT integration

Dash Enterprise installs on cloud environments and on-premises. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure are supported, as are multiple Linux on-premises servers. Authentication integrations include LDAP, AD, PKI, Okta, SAML, OAuth2, SSO, and email authentication, and Dash application access is managed through a GUI rather than code. Dash Enterprise connects to major big data backends, including Salesforce, PostgreSQL, Databricks via PySpark, Snowflake, Dask, Datashader, and Vaex. In 2020, Plotly partnered with NVIDIA to integrate Dash with RAPIDS, and NVIDIA participated in Plotly’s Series C funding round.

Low-code capabilities

Dash Enterprise enables low-code development of Dash applications, which is not possible with open-source Dash. Enterprise users can write applications in multiple development environments, including Jupyter Notebook. Dash Enterprise ships with several “development engines” for drag-and-drop application editing, application design, and automated reporting, as well as dozens of artificial intelligence and machine learning application templates.

Deployment and scaling

Dash application code is deployed to Dash Enterprise using the

git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data inte ...

-push command. Dash application deployments are

containerized Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers (also called shipping containers and ISO containers). Containerization is also referred as "Container Stuffing" or "Container Loading", which is the pr ...

to avoid dependency conflicts, and can be embedded in existing web platforms without iframes. Deployed applications can be managed and accessed in a single portal called App Manager, where administrators can control user authentication and view usage analytics. Dash Enterprise scales horizontally with

Kubernetes Kubernetes (, commonly stylized as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintai ...

. Jobs queuing, GPU acceleration, and CPU parallelization support

high performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into a multid ...

requirements. Plotly also offers professional services for application development and workshop training.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://plot.ly/ Business intelligence companies Business software Business software companies Companies based in Montreal JavaScript Data management software Data visualization software Free data visualization software Plotting Plotting Plotting JavaScript libraries JavaScript visualization toolkits Productivity software Plotting software Time series software Visualization API