Pentaho Business Analytics vs SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Pentaho Business Analytics and SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report.""Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud.""Easy to use components to create the job.""I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced.""The initial setup is pretty straightforward.""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.""We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."

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"​It is a very good product, stable, and has good technical capabilities.​""BusinessObject's most useful feature is the semantic layer, which offers us the flexibility to go for ad hoc reporting.""The most valuable feature we have found to be the SAP BW, which is a warehouse tool. Additionally, it is an easy tool to use.""The features which the solution has been awesome. The way the data is fetched from the database, and the queries are executed, is unique using the Universe of Business Objects. That makes it unique and we could not find another solution that functions in a similar way. It's has a great way of receiving and executing queries.""The scheduling and publication features are very useful.""It allows the analysis of business data and enables decisions based on the analysis.""This reporting and broadcasting solution has a lot of flexibilities and can connect to multiple source systems.""Has features that can be leveraged to scale out and scale up."

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Cons
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated.""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.""Version control would be a good addition.""Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention.""Logging capability is needed.""Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive.""We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost.""The repository should be improved."

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"The solution could be less expensive. It's a bit pricey now.""The calculation engine requires some improvement.""It would be good if they could integrate the possibility for end users to create end models for themselves that they can use, especially for site operators, and if they could provide the end user not only the self-service BI, but also the self-service analytics, based on a predefined model, the same way that Oracle did.""We're an Epic shop, and Epic is moving away from Crystal. It would be nice if it had tighter integration with products like Epic. It would be awesome to have better integration with third-party products.""The integration could be improved. The SAP suite has some integration problems and it has some huge development needs. For example, when you use Power BI, if you publish a dataset to the web, there is no issue in seeing the data with the report. The data and report are integrated automatically. Or when you use QlikView, when you publish the QVD file, the report is integrated with QVD. Also, with Tableau, when you publish the data, it's in the hyper database, in the memory, and the dashboard with data is integrated seamlessly. In the SAP side, it's not easy. There are lots of business layers. There are also some performance issues in the SAP BusinessObjects suite. They should focus on the technologies. We are partners and every step of the way, SAP asks us for money. If you want to see the products, the PDFs, if you want to learn the product, online training, etc., everything has a cost on the SAP site. Because of this, partners try to get to know the products on their own. SAP only focuses on the sales side—only money is important for SAP, not the quality. In that way, the operation is not easy on the SAP side. As a suggestion, they should focus on customers first instead of money.""Technical support may not always be timely or effective.""SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is an outdated solution that is missing many features.""The platform should be a bit more user-friendly."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Free and commercial versions are available."
  • "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."
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  • "Just work with SAP to make sure you have enough licenses but don't go overboard."
  • "​It is not an expensive platform. The licensing is for a package of users starting at 10 users."
  • "It has an option of a Cloud Platform (SAP Analytics Cloud) which has a lower price than the on-premise platform, and you can buy individual licences per user.​"
  • "Depending on your size, try to stick with SAP BusinessObjects BI Edge. Most people tend to overthink the licensing. Remember that one concurrent user means that one person can be performing a task at a given time. That does not mean that only one user can be on the system at a time, it means that only one person can be refreshing a report or designing a dashboard. There are tons of ways you can access your data or reports without consuming a license. I've seen cases where five concurrent licenses support thousands of users."
  • "There's no additional charge for a Development environment license, so build an additional development server."
  • "Its price is fair."
  • "It is not cost-effective. It is expensive."
  • "I have always found SAP BI to be expensive. It is expensive even when you compare SAP BI Cloud with Microsoft Power BI. Power BI is probably around $9.99 per month, and the cheapest SAP BI is around $20, which is double. In terms of price, Power BI is definitely a lot better. If you have budget issues, you may want to go for Power BI."
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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same companies are caught up in an imbrogilo as to which tool to use, what are the technology/and end business user wise differences/ do i actually need to purchase commercial edition, is there any work around etc. Differences :- In the below mentioned points, I have tried to cover functionality wise the differences a. Reports :- Jaspersoft is known for its picture pixel perfect reporting. Jasper uses ireport for designing the reports. Hence, for having reports, Jaspersoft is the most ideal candidate. Pentaho uses Pentaho Report Designer. b. Dashboards :- Pentaho provides much more capabililties, interactivity in terms of dashboards. Dashboards designed in Pentaho are far more superior in functionality, aesthetically as compared to Jaspersoft. Pentaho CE uses CDE/CDF, Pentaho EE uses PDD . Dashboard functionality is present only in the Enterprise edition of Jaspersoft. c. Pentaho is having an intermediate layer known as Xactions & hence providing much more flexibility in terms of plugin designing, integration with applications, having out of box experience etc. Xactions supports scripting and scheduling of scripts execution. Jaspersoft dosent provide that much of flexibility in terms of… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows:  1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle  - look for SAP… more »
    Top Answer:The organization has both options based on their needs and budget constraints. The Enterprise Edition is expensive with references to an added number of features.
    Top Answer:The product to me is not as user-friendly as other players in the market. It also still needs improvement in the reporting module. You will need to search for deployment examples or need to have a… more »
    Top Answer:Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it… more »
    Top Answer:What I like the most about SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform is that it has significantly improved our decision-making process.
    Top Answer:The licensing cost for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform can be significant due to its complexity. It is crucial for customers to carefully assess the value they expect to derive from the… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    1,256
    Comparisons
    918
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    526
    Rating
    7.0
    Views
    9,228
    Comparisons
    7,136
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    552
    Rating
    7.8
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
    SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform, SAP BusinessObjects, Business Objects
    Learn More
    Overview

    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.

    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.

    SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is a versatile and flexible solution for reporting and dashboards, focusing on analytics and ad hoc reporting. It can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The solution includes tools such as Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, SAP Lumira, and Analytical Cloud and is primarily used for comprehensive business intelligence reporting.

    The most valuable features include excellent reporting features, good technical support, scalability, and the ability to translate database data into business language. The solution has helped organizations by providing analytics, monitoring KPIs, and making important decisions as a financial business.

    SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Key Features

    • Central management: Access all your BI from a single, central launchpad that can be customized to meet user-specific needs. The launchpad provides business users with access to all their BI tools, reports, notifications, and applications in a single place. This includes the ability to launch SAP Analytics Cloud.

    • Data visualization and analytics: Create powerful visualizations, dashboards, and applications to assess risk, improve efficiency, identify opportunities, and enable users to analyze developments and data. Business insights can be shared with colleagues across enterprises.

    • Integration with Microsoft Office: Integrate with SAP Business Warehouse and SAP HANA to power real-time analytics. For large-scale data analysis, you can integrate with Microsoft Excel to discover in-depth business insights and forecasts. Data analytics information can also be embedded into Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

    • Cloud support: Extend and expand your BI on the cloud. SAP Analytics Cloud connects your BI to the cloud and offers enterprise planning and advanced analytics from a single online solution.

    Reviews from Real Users

    SAP BusinessObjects BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its user-friendly dashboard, its impressive reporting and analytic features, and its ability to integrate with multiple solutions.

    A managing partner at a tech services company writes, "One of the most valuable features of SAP BusinessObjects is that it's not a dashboarding solution. It's a real product. You can create operational reports and publish it to anyone. You can create schedules. You can create a Universe, semantic layers. There's also a security configuration. It's a huge product, so if there is a business need, SAP BusinessObjects can cover it."

    An associate manager at a consultancy notes, "It provides flexibility for creating reports. It is very good for creating highly complex reports. I like this solution because when I buy BusinessObjects, it comes with many components, such as reporting, dashboard, and data visualization tools. Its performance is good. It is running on top of SAP BW and SAP HANA."

    A manager of data analytics and interfaces at a healthcare company says, "It has got great flexibility. As a reporting tool, it has a great deal of flexibility for numerous data resources that you can bring into it. It allows you to write your SQL query directly within the product. It has great visualization. 

    Sample Customers
    Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
    SRAM, Kennametal, Fairfax Water, British American Tobacco, Velux, and FedEx.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    University13%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Consumer Goods Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Government12%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Educational Organization9%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Healthcare Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise33%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise60%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise55%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise71%
    Buyer's Guide
    Pentaho Business Analytics vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Business Analytics vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Pentaho Business Analytics is ranked 20th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 42 reviews while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is ranked 6th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 102 reviews. Pentaho Business Analytics is rated 8.0, while SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Pentaho Business Analytics writes "Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform writes "Web intelligence will work with any amount of data even if you have 10 million rows". Pentaho Business Analytics is most compared with Microsoft Power BI, Databricks, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, Tableau and SAP Crystal Reports, whereas SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform is most compared with SAP Analytics Cloud, Microsoft Power BI, Oracle OBIEE, IBM Cognos and MicroStrategy. See our Pentaho Business Analytics vs. SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform report.

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    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.