Pentaho Business Analytics Reviews

Name: Pentaho Business Analytics
Brand: Hitachi Vantara
Rating: 4.0 (45 reviews)

4.0 out of 5

45 reviews
87% willing to recommend

What is Pentaho Business Analytics?

Pentaho is an open source business intelligence company that provides a wide range of tools to help their customers better manage their businesses. These tools include data integration software, mining tools, dashboard applications, online analytical processing options, and more.

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Pentaho Business Analytics is the #5 ranked solution in top Cloud Operations Analytics solutions, #12 ranked solution in top Reporting Tools, and #19 ranked solution in top Business Intelligence Tools. PeerSpot users give Pentaho Business Analytics an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. Pentaho Business Analytics is most commonly compared to Microsoft Power BI: Pentaho Business Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI. Pentaho Business Analytics is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 48% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 15% of all views.

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Business Analytics

July 2025

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Helped 864,155 peers since 2012

Featured Pentaho Business Analytics reviews

Mir Gulzar Ahmed

IT Manager at Synergy Computers

Pentaho can help organizations by providing them an insight of their unstructured data using one platform(Pentaho Business Analytics). The features are almost identical to other BIS platforms but to me, customers can benefit as it has a community version with most of its Enterprise features. It also has a free limited-period trial version. The other feature that I would like to share here is, that users have access to a complete spectrum of data from different sources with the system’s adaptive big data layer, which takes the source of the data into account. The software is built on an open architecture and can be integrated with multiple systems. However, Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has been acquired by HDS which offers an Enterprise edition for organizations that also need to meet product compliance.

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Sayan König

Senior Manager, Financial Services at KPMG

The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.

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Azhagarasan Annadorai

Founder at Unknown.University

The fuzzy logic match component came in handy to identify AML suspects (anti-money laundering). The SHA key generation component helped in generating a unique identifier for our customers, without revealing personal data; especially when we send data to the AWS cloud. Regularly, we had to send the new policy data files to medical centers over email. Using Pentaho, we were able to compress the files in zip format with a password and email them to unlimited partners. We could confidently use Pentaho for sharing data with internal and external customers in mediums such as FTP servers, LAN folders (Local Area Network), email, etc. Connectivity to platforms such as snowflake is great.

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Pentaho Business Analytics mindshare

Product category:

As of August 2025, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category stands at 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

PeerResearch reports based on Pentaho Business Analytics reviews

Type	Title	Date
Category	BI (Business Intelligence) Tools	Aug 1, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Aug 1, 2025	Download
Comparison	Pentaho Business Analytics vs Microsoft Power BI	Aug 1, 2025	Download
Comparison	Pentaho Business Analytics vs Tableau	Aug 1, 2025	Download
Comparison	Pentaho Business Analytics vs SAP Analytics Cloud	Aug 1, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Microsoft Power BI	4.0	20.4%	93%	326 interviews Add to research
Tableau	4.2	15.4%	89%	307 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

Pentaho Business Analytics offers exceptional data integration with Pentaho Data Integration, facilitating seamless ETL processes. Users appreciate its intuitive interface, powerful transformation capabilities, and community-driven open-source model. The platform excels in dashboard creation, database connectivity, including Big Data, and customizable reporting. With a flexible architecture, it supports expandable plugins and mobile-responsive dashboards, ensuring efficient data analysis. Organizations benefit from its user-friendly setup and ability to handle complex data with minimal coding effort.

"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."

Room for Improvement

Pentaho Business Analytics requires improvements in UI and dashboard maintenance. The Community and Enterprise Editions differ significantly, complicating transitions. Visual data exploration and reporting tools need enhancements. Users find debugging, version control, and role management challenging. The platform's reliance on Java and limited metadata management are concerns. The need for technical expertise limits accessibility. It lacks flexibility in data integration and requires additional features for better user experience and cost-effectiveness.

"Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."

ROI

Some users found ROI from Pentaho Business Analytics to be challenging to quantify, noting difficulties in determining precise returns. Others appreciated its efficiency, citing a reduction in development time of around 60%, as well as improvements in business efficiency. Although Pentaho is capable of generating new and saved revenue, many institutions did not specifically measure ROI, while some saw favorable outcomes, highlighting the tool's ability to quickly produce returns, despite not being as competitive as QlikView or Tableau.

Pricing

Pentaho Business Analytics offers both a Community Edition, which is open-source and has no licensing costs, and an Enterprise Edition that requires substantial investment, possibly around $250,000 annually. While the Community Edition provides ample features for zero maintenance costs, the Enterprise version offers full service and additional support. Pricing varies with the extent of features and support requirements, making it comparable in cost to other industry competitors like Tableau and QlikView.

"Pentaho is expensive ."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Free and commercial versions are available."

Popular Use Cases

Pentaho Business Analytics is primarily used for managing data flows, tracking activities, and integrating data from various sources. Users employ it for ETL processes, data warehousing, financial reporting, subscriber analytics, and KPI tracking. It supports big data analytics, visualizations, dashboards, and predictive analytics, and is valuable for organizations with diverse data storage systems. It's widely utilized in telecom, insurance, finance, marketing, and automotive industries for decision-making and improving business intelligence outcomes.

Service and Support

Pentaho Business Analytics offers satisfactory customer service and technical assistance through community forums and online platforms. Community edition users rely on these forums due to mixed experiences with formal support channels. Enterprise clients appreciate timely assistance, although documentation gaps persist. Strong endorsements come from international consultants, with Brazilian representatives praised for their dedication. Community interaction is pivotal, with some opting for self-help due to abundant online resources. Users mostly find technical guidance useful, but some note limitations.

Deployment

Users found Pentaho Business Analytics' initial setup largely straightforward, noting its ease of use and availability of comprehensive documentation. Installation complexity varied, with some mentioning challenges when incorporating LDAP authentication or specific technologies like Hadoop. New users appreciated the binary installation package and installation wizard, while others highlighted difficulties when tuning properties for advanced configurations. Small issues such as stability and user management were mentioned, but many users successfully configured the system with minimal expertise.

Scalability

Organizations report that Pentaho Business Analytics offers seamless scalability, particularly with its clustering capabilities and integration of large data environments. While some experienced minor issues related to data mismatch and processing limits, many found it reliable and efficient for growing operations. Advantages like parallel processing and load balancing enhance its capacity for expansion. Complex deployments may require professional support for optimal server scaling, reflecting positive user sentiment about its infrastructure adaptability.

Stability

Pentaho Business Analytics is generally stable, yet users have occasionally faced issues. Some experience no problems, while others note minor bugs resolved by regular patches. RAM limitations can affect performance in data-intensive applications. Java caching occasionally introduces instability, and large, complex databases may cause challenges. Several mention the need for manual cache refreshing. Users suggest stability varies based on infrastructure and deployment, with some viewing newer versions as promising improvements for stability.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Pentaho Business Analytics Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Review data by company size

By reviewers

By visitors reading reviews

Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

University

Government

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Performing Arts

Transportation Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Non Profit

Hospitality Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Healthcare Company

Outsourcing Company

Logistics Company

Legal Firm

Media Company

Consumer Goods Company

Aerospace/Defense Firm

Wholesaler/Distributor

Marketing Services Firm

Renewables & Environment Company

Agriculture

Compare Pentaho Business Analytics with alternative products

Learn more about Pentaho Business Analytics

Pentaho has two product categories: There is the standard enterprise version. This is the product that comes directly from Pentaho itself with all of the benefits, features, and programs that come along with a paid application such us analysis services, dashboard design, and interactive reporting.

The alternative is an open source version, which the public is permitted to add to and tweak the product. This solution has its advantages, aside from the fact that it is free, in that there are many more people working on the project to improve its quality and breadth of functionality.

Pentaho Business Analytics was previously known as Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics.