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Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SAS Data Integration Server 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Pentaho Data Integration an...
Ranking in Data Integration
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SAS Data Integration Server
Ranking in Data Integration
40th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Data Integration category, the mindshare of Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is 1.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAS Data Integration Server is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Integration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics1.6%
SAS Data Integration Server0.8%
Other97.6%
Data Integration
 

Featured Reviews

Michelle Lawson - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Streamlines complex data workflows and has supported automated customer payment notifications
I haven't used Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics in a couple of years, so I don't know how it can be improved. I was pretty pleased with it and was self-taught on it, working a lot with their team at various times, but they were surprised that I was able to learn it all by myself. The documentation is not bad, and documentation is the main thing that any product can do to make themselves better because the easier it is to find examples of what you're trying to do improves the learning curve. I think it took me the longest to learn how to do the asynchronous processing and have things wait for other things to finish processing before continuing on in the workflow. I choose 8 out of 10 because the one reason that it's been rejected at T-Mobile is that everything has to go through a provisioning process and has to get approved, meaning the actual code base has to be investigated by T-Mobile before they'll allow us to use tools of that nature. For whatever reason, we just haven't been able to get that approval; I don't know if it's on Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics' side or if it's on our side. The more you can make it easier for companies to feel comfortable that your product is secure, robustly tested and bug-free, and free of any other kind of negative hacks, the more quickly it will get accepted.
NN
Works at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Offloads processes on the server side but needs better installation syntax
One area for improvement is the installation process. Another point could be the syntax, as it sometimes involves using syntax names that are not intuitive. For example, to calculate the difference between two dates, the general syntax in SAS is called the data difference or data net function. However, another name is used, such as NF and INK. Without knowledge of SAS programming, it becomes unclear what these functions mean. It is not good to define function names this way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has positively impacted my organization because it meant we didn't have to write a lot of custom API back-end processing logic; it did the majority of that heavy lifting for us."
"Using the solution we were able to reduce our ETL deployment time by between 10 and 20 percent, and when it comes to personnel costs, we have gained 10 percent."
"Lumada Data Integration definitely helps with decision-making for our deans and upper executives, and the fact that we're able to reuse some of the ETLs with the metadata injection saves us time and costs while making it a pretty quick process for our developers to learn and pick up ETLs from each other."
"Using Lumada compared to using SQL manually, ETL development time is half the time it took using a basic manual transformation."
"Data transformation within Pentaho is a nice feature that they have and that I value."
"Sometimes, it took a whole team about two weeks to get all the data to prepare and present it. After the optimization of the data, it took about one to two hours to do the whole process. Therefore, it has helped a lot when you talk about money, because it doesn't take a whole team to do it, just one person to do one project at a time and run it when you want to run it. So, it has helped a lot on that side."
"If you are looking to integrate unstructured or semi-structured datasets with some parallelization, choose this tool."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to use PL/SQL statements inside the data transformations and jobs."
"The solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its amazing capabilities in regard to data handling."
"A key feature allows us to enhance job performance by offloading processing to the server side, rather than processing on the server itself."
"The solution is very stable."
"A key feature allows us to enhance job performance by offloading processing to the server side, rather than processing on the server itself."
"A key feature allows us to enhance job performance by offloading processing to the server side, rather than processing on the server itself."
"The solution offers very good data manipulation and loading."
"The solution offers very good data manipulation and loading."
 

Cons

"Pentaho Dashboard Designer - needs an improvement on the various features of the Dashboards, since there are CTools available and which help to fulfil the gaps, but it needs developers involvement."
"One thing I wish was better about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics is its performance, as it sometimes gets intensive on the CPU standpoint, taking a lot of memory in some cases, especially when dealing with big data sets."
"I would like to see improvements made for real-time data processing."
"Some of the scheduling features about Lumada drive me buggy. The one issue that always drives me up the wall is when Daylight Savings Time changes. It doesn't take that into account elegantly. Every time it changes, I have to do something. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying."
"The product needs more plugins."
"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."
"They could improve the logging generator. Sometimes the error description is so generic that it is not possible to detect the problem."
"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."
"The initial setup had issues, and even after using it for about one year, it was still not fixed."
"So I would like to see improved integration with other software."
"The initial setup had issues, and even after using it for about one year, it was still not fixed."
"The initial setup of SAS Data Integration Server was complex."
"The transform tool has limited access. They should make it more flexible."
"Something that could improve is writing SQL to integration studio because it is not that straightforward. There should be better integration with other software."
"One area for improvement is the installation process."
"The transform tool has limited access. They should make it more flexible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There was a cost analysis done and Pentaho did favorably in terms of cost."
"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."
"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."
"If a company is looking for an ETL solution and wants to integrate it with their tech stack but doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, Pentaho is a good solution"
"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."
"We are using the Community Edition. We have been trying to use and sell the Enterprise version, but that hasn't been possible due to the budget required for it."
"I mostly used the open-source version. I didn't work with a license."
"It is an expensive program."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise31
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...
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...
What needs improvement with SAS Data Integration Server?
One area for improvement is the installation process. Another point could be the syntax, as it sometimes involves using syntax names that are not intuitive. For example, to calculate the difference...
What is your primary use case for SAS Data Integration Server?
I am involved in the ETR job. My role is focused on executing the ETR job.
What advice do you have for others considering SAS Data Integration Server?
I use it without further details. For example, if I use SAS to connect to a NetEazt database or purchase a shared asset to ODBC, I can connect to any database with ODBC connection support. The over...
 

Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
SAS Enterprise Data Integration Server, Enterprise Data Integration Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Credit Guarantee Corporation, Cr_dito y Cauci‹n, Delaware State Police, Deutsche Lufthansa, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, DSM, Livzon Pharmaceutical Group, Los Angeles County, Miami Herald Media Company, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, New Zealand Ministry of Health, Nippon Paper, West Midlands Police, XS Inc., Zenith Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs. SAS Data Integration Server and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.