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Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SAP Data Services comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.9
Pentaho offers cost-effective integration, reducing ETL time, lowering expenses, and enhancing competitiveness with open-source flexibility and efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.7
SAP Data Services offers high ROI, time and cost savings, enhanced data quality, and aligns with industry standards.
SAP is indeed good at all this now, with so many components such as SAP Signavio, SAP EINS, SAP Work Zone, SAP ALM, Cloud ALM, SAP public cloud, SAP private cloud, and BTP, all of which are essential to meet the latest cutting-edge technologies.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.2
Users rely on community support over customer service due to mixed experiences, despite responsive technical support and Hitachi's involvement.
Sentiment score
6.7
SAP Data Services' support is skilled but inconsistent, needing improvements in responsiveness, process simplicity, and language options.
Communication with the vendor is challenging
If you keep a high priority issue, such as a production impact, they certainly come and address it in no time.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Pentaho excels in scalability and efficient data handling but faces challenges with exceptionally large data and complex growth scenarios.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Data Services offers scalable solutions, supporting high user loads and flexible deployment for medium to large enterprises.
Pentaho Data Integration handles larger datasets better.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Pentaho Data Integration offers reliability for small to midsize operations but may lag and freeze with complex uses.
Sentiment score
7.6
SAP Data Services is stable, reliable, and mature but requires familiarity, with crashes often linked to hardware issues.
It's pretty stable, however, it struggles when dealing with smaller amounts of data.
 

Room For Improvement

Pentaho needs improvements in big data performance, error handling, UI, scheduling, backward compatibility, cloud integration, and Python support.
SAP Data Services faces challenges with usability, integration, pricing, and support, requiring enhancements in automation, user-friendliness, and diagnostics.
Pentaho Data Integration is very friendly, it is not very useful when there isn't a lot of data to handle.
Now, they are coming up with many pricing options, which is tricky; they offer one thing for free, but charge for nine others.
 

Setup Cost

Pentaho offers a cost-effective solution with its free Community Edition and affordable subscription-based Enterprise Edition for varying needs.
SAP Data Services is costly but competitive, offering varied pricing models that may benefit those with lower processing needs.
 

Valuable Features

Pentaho provides an intuitive, open-source platform for efficient ETL development and data integration with minimal coding and broad compatibility.
SAP Data Services provides powerful data migration, integration, and quality transforms, with user-friendly interface and robust ETL capabilities.
It's easy to use and friendly, especially for larger data sets.
SAP is indeed good at all this now, with so many components such as SAP Signavio, SAP EINS, SAP Work Zone, SAP ALM, Cloud ALM, SAP public cloud, SAP private cloud, and BTP, all of which are essential to meet the latest cutting-edge technologies.
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAP Data Services
Ranking in Data Integration
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Data Quality (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Data Services is 2.4%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Ryan Ferdon - PeerSpot reviewer
Low-code makes development faster than with Python, but there were caching issues
If you're working with a larger data set, I'm not so sure it would be the best solution. The larger things got the slower it was. It was kind of buggy sometimes. And when we ran the flow, it didn't go from a perceived start to end, node by node. Everything kicked off at once. That meant there were times when it would get ahead of itself and a job would fail. That was not because the job was wrong, but because Pentaho decided to go at everything at once, and something would process before it was supposed to. There were nodes you could add to make sure that, before this node kicks off, all these others have processed, but it was a bit tedious. There were also caching issues, and we had to write code to clear the cache every time we opened the program, because the cache would fill up and it wouldn't run. I don't know how hard that would be for them to fix, or if it was fixed in version 10. Also, the UI is a bit outdated, but I'm more of a fan of function over how something looks. One other thing that would have helped with Pentaho was documentation and support on the internet: how to do things, how to set up. I think there are some sites on how to install it, and Pentaho does have a help repository, but it wasn't always the most useful.
RambabuMandala - PeerSpot reviewer
Responsive support, scalable, and beneficial integration
The BA reporting tools, such as Data Services, and ETL tool in SAP Data Services are the most valuable. When we had in-memory requirements, we used HANA. HANA is most preferably for most the customers for in-memory. SAP is the first company that created the in-memory concept. There are a lot of SAP applications and they have good integration with SAP packages. In the next release, they should be more advanced cloud functionalities and web services. More integration with other applications including SAPs and other applications. They should not switch to a complete solution but provide better integration with other applications.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which ETL tool would you recommend to populate data from OLTP to OLAP?
Hi Rajneesh, yes here is the feature comparison between the community and enterprise edition : https://www.hitachivantara.com/en-us/pdf/brochure/leverage-open-source-benefits-with-assurance-of-hita...
What do you think can be improved with Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations?
In my opinion, the reporting side of this tool needs serious improvements. In my previous company, we worked with Hitachi Lumada Data Integration and while it does a good job for what it’s worth, ...
What do you use Hitachi Lumada Data Integrations for most frequently?
My company has used this product to transform data from databases, CSV files, and flat files. It really does a good job. We were most satisfied with the results in terms of how many people could us...
How do you evaluate the ratio of price to quality for SAP Data Services?
I believe the license for the product is fair, even though some competitors offer similar services at lower prices. The difference between the Edge edition and the next one up is significant in pr...
Would you recommend SAP Data Services to complete beginners?
I think after some preparation, a beginner will be able to use SAP Data Services, however, if you are completely unprepared, you may have some issues. I think that in particular you will need a mo...
How has SAP Data Services helped your organization?
SAP Data Services has helped our whole staff understand the data across various sources and systems within the company. Not everyone who works at my organization is an IT expert - most just have av...
 

Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
SAP BusinessObjects Data Services, SAP BusinessObjects Data Integrator, BusinessObjects Data Integrator
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
EMC Corporation, LivePerson, Eldorado, Mozzart, The VELUX Group, AOK Bundesverband, Hilti Group, Nissha Printing Company Ltd., Asian Paints, Aareal Bank Group, Migros Group
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAP Data Services and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.