Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SAS Access comparison

Hitachi Vantara and SAS are both solutions in the Data Integration category. Hitachi Vantara is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.7, while SAS is ranked #63. Hitachi Vantara holds a 1.7% mindshare in DI, compared to SAS’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hitachi Vantara users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SAS users who would recommend it.

Pentaho Data Integration an...

Read 53 Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics reviews

2,447 Views
1,884 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SAS Access

Read 3 SAS Access reviews

508 Views
366 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Pentaho Data Integration an...

SAS Access

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics and SAS Access compete in the data management and analytics space. Pentaho often has the upper hand in pricing and support, being more cost-effective and flexible, while SAS Access is preferred for its robust analytics justifying its higher price.

Features: Pentaho offers a comprehensive suite of data integration tools, ease of use, and open-source flexibility, supporting various data sources efficiently. SAS Access is known for its powerful statistical analysis features, and its seamless integration with other SAS products, providing a closed, comprehensive analytics environment. Pentaho's open-source nature allows for customization, making it adaptable to diverse enterprise needs. SAS Access's advanced analytics cater to businesses requiring detailed insights and precise data interpretation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pentaho allows quicker deployment thanks to its extensive documentation and community-driven support, fostering a collaborative development environment. In contrast, SAS Access has a more rigid deployment process but offers premium customer support services, ensuring a smooth implementation. While Pentaho focuses on community support, SAS Access provides direct customer service, enhancing user experience.

Pricing and ROI: Pentaho's lower setup costs are attractive for organizations seeking high ROI without significant upfront investments. SAS Access, with higher initial costs, offers strong returns through its broad analytics capabilities and quality support, making it appealing to companies investing in extensive analytical power.

To learn more, read our detailed Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAS Access Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAS Access

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Data Integration an...

Ranking in Data Integration

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SAS Access

Ranking in Data Integration

63rd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.7%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Access is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Integration Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics	1.7%
SAS Access	0.4%
Other	97.9%

Data Integration

Featured Reviews

Aqeel UR Rehman

BI Analyst at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Transform data efficiently with rich features but there's challenges with large datasets

Currently, I am using Pentaho Data Integration for transforming data and then loading it into different platforms. Sometimes, I use it in conjunction with AWS, particularly S3 and Redshift, to execute the copy command for data processing Pentaho Data Integration is easy to use, especially when…

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Robert Heck

Co Owner at Hecht und Heck GmbH

The solution is stable, scalable, and flexible

I rate the solution eight out of ten. The number of people required to maintain the solution is dependent on the other applications running. The solution in itself does not require a lot of maintenance. The solution is flexible and I recommend it when you have more complex applications with special requirements.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The abstraction is quite good."

"I can use Python, which is open-source, and I can run other scripts, including Linux scripts. It's user-friendly for running any object-based language. That's a very important feature because we live in a world of open-source."

"The fact that it enables us to leverage metadata to automate data pipeline templates and reuse them is definitely one of the features that we like the best. The metadata injection is helpful because it reduces the need to create and maintain additional ETLs. If we didn't have that feature, we would have lots of duplicated ETLs that we would have to create and maintain. The data pipeline templates have definitely been helpful when looking at productivity and costs."

"The graphical nature of the development interface is most useful because we've got people with quite mixed skills in the team. We've got some very junior, apprentice-level people, and we've got support analysts who don't have an IT background. It allows us to have quite complicated data flows and embed logic in them. Rather than having to troll through lines and lines of code and try and work out what it's doing, you get a visual representation, which makes it quite easy for people with mixed skills to support and maintain the product. That's one side of it."

"I find the drag and drop feature in Pentaho Data Integration very useful for integration."

"One of the valuable features is the ability to use PL/SQL statements inside the data transformations and jobs."

"It has a really friendly user interface, which is its main feature. The process of automating or combining SQL code with some databases and doing the automation is great and really convenient."

"I can create faster instructions than writing with SQL or code. Also, I am able to do some background control of the data process with this tool. Therefore, I use it as an ELT tool. I have a station area where I can work with all the information that I have in my production databases, then I can work with the data that I created."

More Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics pros

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the ease of access to the data in those databases."

"The most valuable feature is you have native access to the external databases."

"The most valuable part of SAS/ACCESS is what it is made for: connecting to remote systems that are not part of your physical SAS environment."

Cons

"I have been facing some difficulties when working with large datasets. It seems that when there is a large amount of data, I experience memory errors."

"If you develop it on MacBook, it'll be quite a hassle."

"Its basic functionality doesn't need a whole lot of change. There could be some improvement in the consistency of the behavior of different transformation steps. The software did start as open-source and a lot of the fundamental, everyday transformation steps that you use when building ETL jobs were developed by different people. It is not a seamless paradigm. A table input step has a different way of thinking than a data merge step."

"The reporting definitely needs improvement. There are a lot of general, basic features that it doesn't have. A simple feature you would expect a reporting tool to have is the ability to search the repository for a report. It doesn't even have that capability. That's been a feature that we've been asking for since the beginning and it hasn't been implemented yet."

"A big problem after deploying something that we do in Lumada is with Git. You get a binary file to do a code review. So, if you need to do a review, you have to take pictures of the screen to show each step. That is the biggest bug if you are using Git."

"As far as I remember, not all connectors worked very well. They can add more connectors and more drivers to the process to integrate with more flows."

"The support for the Enterprise Edition is okay, but what they have done in the last three or four years is move more and more things to that edition. The result is that they are breaking the Community Edition. That's what our impression is."

"I would like to see support for some additional cloud sources. It doesn't support Azure, for example. I was trying to do a PoC with Azure the other day but it seems they don't support it."

More Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics cons

"The pricing model needs to be reconsidered and adjusted."

"The solution can provide access to the newer databases that come out sooner."

"I can't really recall any missing feature or general improvement that is needed. We don't really add too many new kinds of databases and therefore our needs are already met."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of these types of solutions are expensive. So, we really appreciate what we get for our money. Though, we don't think of the solution as a top-of-the-line solution or anything like that."

"I think Lumada's price is fair compared to some of the others, like BusinessObjects, which is was the other thing that I used at my previous job. BusinessObject's price was more reasonable before SAP acquired it. They jacked the price up significantly. Oracle's OBIEE tool was also prohibitively expensive."

"Sometimes we provide the licenses or the customer can procure their own licenses. Previously, we had an enterprise license. Currently, we are on a community license as this is adequate for our needs."

"The pricing has been pretty good. I'm used to using everything open-source or freeware-based. I understand that organizations need to make sure that the solutions are secure, and that's basically where I hit a roadblock in my current organization. They needed to ensure that we had a license and we had a secure way of accessing it so that no outside parties could get access to our data, but in terms of pricing, considering how much other teams are spending on cloud solutions or even their existing solutions, its price point is pretty good. At this time, there are no additional costs. We just have the licensing fees."

"We did a two or three-year deal the last time we did it. As compared to other solutions, at least so far in our experience, it has been very affordable. The licensing is by component. So, you need to make sure you only license the components that you really intend to use. I am not sure if we have relicensed after the Hitachi acquisition, but previously, multi-year renewals resulted in a good discount. I'm not sure if this is still the case. We've had the full suite for a lot of years, and there is just the initial cost. I am not aware of any additional costs."

"I primarily work on the Community Version, which is available to use free of charge."

"There was a cost analysis done and Pentaho did favorably in terms of cost."

"I mostly used the open-source version. I didn't work with a license."

More Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics pricing and cost advice

"The pricing model is complex and is based on modular packages as well as the size of the applicable environment."

"The solution's pricing and licensing are expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	25

No data available

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...

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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, ...

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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...

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Compared 52% of the time

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Compared 48% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics

September 2025

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics report

Download Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics product report

Buyer's Guide

Data Integration

September 2025

Download SAS Access product report

Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration

SAS/Access

Overview

Pentaho Data Integration stands as a versatile platform designed to cater to the data integration and analytics needs of organizations, regardless of their size. This powerful solution is the go-to choice for businesses seeking to seamlessly integrate data from diverse sources, including databases, files, and applications. Pentaho Data Integration facilitates the essential tasks of cleaning and transforming data, ensuring it's primed for meaningful analysis. With a wide array of tools for data mining, machine learning, and statistical analysis, Pentaho Data Integration empowers organizations to glean valuable insights from their data. What sets Pentaho Data Integration apart is its maturity and a vibrant community of users and developers, making it a reliable and cost-effective option. Pentaho Data Integration offers a range of features, including a comprehensive ETL toolkit, data cleaning and transformation capabilities, robust data analysis tools, and seamless deployment options for data integration and analytics solutions, making it a go-to solution for organizations seeking to harness the power of their data.

Hitachi Vantara

SAS/ACCESS is an out-of-the-box solution for integrating SAS and third-party databases. You can read, write and update data regardless of the database or platform. Because the data appears native to SAS, there is no need to learn Structured Query Language (SQL) or any other database-specific query languages.

SAS

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute

Los Angeles County, West Midlands Police, Credit Guarantee Corporation, Canada Post, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty

Buyer's Guide

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAS Access

September 2025

Free Report: Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAS Access

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