Deciding on one of the Business Intelligence suites isn't easy not only because the number of vendors, but also because of the diversification of suite models. Besides traditionally commercial ones, there also are commercial open source ones, which Pentaho BI is one of.

Today's organizations don't have an easy choice to make. The number and diversity of Business Intelligence solutions accessible in the market make it even more difficult. They have to decide what's more important to them - an unrestrained chance to modify the source of the solution or to be provided with a rightful support. Thereupon, they need to choose whether they prefer traditional BI solutions or the open source ones. However, the difference between them is getting less and less noticeable. The prove is Pentaho Open Source BI which is a rightful alternative to all the solutions which vendors don't allow to influence on the source. Called often a commercial open source Business Intelligence, Pentaho BI Suite includes everything what's needed to satisfy more and more sophisticated business needs, including powerful and comprehensive reporting, fast OLAP analysis, multiple dashboards, and complex data integration and data mining tools.

The main difference between Pentaho commercial open source suite and traditional commercial suites is the fact that Pentaho isn't provided with support from the vendor. What it means in practice is the fact that there is no software license fees required to pay (that's what open source means), while support, additional services, and the enhancements are spread via yearly subscriptions (commercial). Let four million times, which Pentaho Open Source BI has already been downloaded, prove that such a model works. What's very important, these aren't downloads from the tiniest companies only, even the ones from the Top 2000 reach for Pentaho Open Source BI, too.

The elements of Pentaho Open Source BI suite

The difference between Pentaho and other commercial solutions applies to support an a bunch of other collateral aspects. However, their functionalities may be called - at least - comparable, if not competitive. To ensure that its customers don't begin from worse positions, Pentaho includes all the indispensable elements in the suite.

Pentaho Reporting

The Reporting solution included in Pentaho Open Source BI suite is praised for multiple formats support. Thereupon, it allows to reach for data originating from different sources, including RDBMS, XML, and many others. Then, the report findings can be saved in a few another formats - as HTML documents, MS Office Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, or as a plain text. In its depth, there is an interactive, powerful reporting based on Web provided and operable from within a graphical interface so that the non-technical users could use it without difficulties. Once the reports are finished and saved, Pentaho Reporting allows to spread them among end users through Web or e-mails, ensuring the fastest delivery times.

Pentaho Analysis

Pentaho Open Source BI suite contains a powerful analytics solution, allowing users to view their data - as they call it - dimensionally. What it means in practice is a chance to sort views by regions, channels, periods, so on and so forth to ensure that users can focus on the point that's most important to them. Once seeing data from a proper dimension, multiple navigation and exploration capabilities get enabled so that one could quickly perform ad hoc analysis, dive deep into data to discover the aspects invisible from the general view, and pivot the dimensions. Additionally, what one can is to choose members for selected analysis.

What's important, whole analytical environment is based on an optimized technology which ensures truly a high performance. It allows to accelerate the time to value significantly.

Pentaho Dashboards

Dashboards within the Pentaho Open Source BI suite are easy to use and help in the most common tasks like monitoring the organization performance. It's possible thank to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which are presented from the most comprehensive perspective. Additionally, users - basing on Web - may quickly create dashboards and use them for - for instance - searching for the details which condition the situation. It's easier than ever before to dive deep into the supporting reports. Last but not the least, Pentaho provides users with alerts which - based on predetermined business rules - help in tracking the exceptions (management by exceptions).

Pentaho Data Integration

Pentaho Data Integration is a module which addresses the sophisticated requirements of the largest organizations, but not only those ones. In point of fact, data integration (on different levels of advancement, though) is indispensable at every organization which use data from different databases and applications. The role of Pentaho Data Integration is to let business users benefit from multiple sources like they were one. Thereupon, it allows to obtain data from a wide set of Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relations Management applications as well as from legacy systems and databases. With powerful caching, clustering, and enhanced SQL, Pentaho product scales up enough to meet eve the largest data requirements. Thank to the fact that Data Integration bases on metadata, its administration productivity can be as high as possible. Additionally, users are provided with a graphic interface and remote monitoring and execution capabilities.

Pentaho Data Mining

No matter how long a human is looking at data, there always is a probability he omits something. In case of computer, there's not. Pentaho Data Mining is a powerful solution responsible for discovering what's hidden from people's eye. All the patterns and correlations which data is sometimes full of, can quickly be highlighted. Thereupon, users - informed about the probability of determined accident happening - may react faster. If the organization serves thousands of customers every day, it truly is difficult and effort-consuming to trace manually who doesn't pay on time. Pentaho Data Mining may do that faster and more accurately, informing user with an alert about the correlation so that he could - for instance - refuse to sell products to each customer (to avoid payment delays). In the shortest, the idea might be boiled down to predicting future basing on the past.

Pentaho BI Platform

Even though all the products which Pentaho Open Source BI suite consists of play the specific role in practice, the Business Intelligence Platform is what keeps the whole together. It quickly integrates with business processes across the organization and orchestrates the operations inside as well as outside the platform. It allows additionally to manage the reports (including scheduling them), keep an eye on the security aspect, and integrate to portals and applications.

Pentaho Open Source BI resources:

http://www.pentaho.com/download/asset_container.php?durl=pentaho_overview_brochure.pdf - the shortest often is the best. Even though this data sheet consist of two pages only, it includes all the basic information which may be needed. Everything there is clearly explained and easy to understand, thereupon it can be considered an interesting introduction to the general idea of Pentaho Open Source BI suite. The general form of the material makes it understandable even for the very beginning users, though.

http://etl-tools.info/pentaho-tutorial.html - pentaho open source bi tutorial, overview of the tools and configuration and installation instructions with examples.

https://www.hitachivantara.com/go/pentaho.html - here is the section of the Pentaho official website, devoted strictly to Open Source BI suite. There is an introduction included with a list of suite's separate products. In the lower part of the website, there is a list of solution's benefits followed with appropriate explanations. Additionally, there is quite a lot of links leading to more or less interesting content, all connected somehow with Pentaho Business Intelligence, after all.

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/intelligence/collateral/pentaho_technical_whitepaper.pdf - there is some more detailed content behind the link. The data sheet, full of technical details though, is devoted to a part of Open Source BI Suite, Open Source BI Platform. There is quite a comprehensive explanation of how it works, why, what the architecture is like, and a few other aspects mentioned, nonetheless the beginners could have difficulties with understanding the point, in fact.