No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics vs SAS Viya Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Viya Platform
Ranking in Data Integration
46th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Quality (21st), Data Governance (28th), Data Management Platforms (DMP) (8th)
 

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.
KK
Assistant Manager Data Analytics (WFM) at Johari Digital Healthcare Limited
Modern analytics has transformed large data into faster insights and streamlined reporting
There are some areas of improvement I would mention regarding SAS Viya Platform. New users may find it complex initially, as its learning curve can be steep. Understanding CAS and different components is very challenging for a new user. The cost is also quite high; SAS Viya Platform via SaaS can be expensive compared to some open-source or other cloud alternatives. There are also some limitations in Visual Analytics. While it is easy to use, it could be more flexible compared to Power BI or Tableau. These are the main improvement areas where SAS Viya Platform should focus. I would add some additional pointers about needed improvements in SAS Viya Platform. Regarding customer support, it is good, but the response time for complex issues can sometimes be slower than expected. The documentation and learning resources are not very beginner-friendly, making it challenging for beginners to navigate. Regarding integration, it could be smoother with Databricks, Snowflake, and Power BI, but it is more complex than it should be. Since updates are automatic, users are sometimes not fully aware of changes or new features that are being updated, as compared to Power BI, which publishes updates on its website. SAS Viya Platform should work on these aspects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you are looking to integrate unstructured or semi-structured datasets with some parallelization, choose this tool."
"If we didn't have this solution, we wouldn't be able to manage our workload or generate the volume of reporting that we currently do."
"Easy to use, support for all databases (jdbc and odbc connection), xls, csv, files, txt, SAS, R."
"Developed ETL processes to load a data warehouse has improved our data integration capabilities."
"Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics positively impacted my organization by organizing data that was scattered across many different databases and APIs, reducing a lot of manual work and centralizing it into one data warehouse."
"I find the drag and drop feature in Pentaho Data Integration very useful for integration."
"We have not come across anything that we have not been able to do with Pentaho, and it has proved to be a very flexible way of getting data from anywhere."
"I love the fact that we haven't come up with a problem yet that we haven't been able to address with this tool."
"Eliminating the need for separate visualization tools has greatly affected my team's workflow because it is just one integrated tool, one integrated platform."
"Using SAS Viya Platform, I saw approximately a thirty to forty percent reduction in data processing time due to CAS in-memory computing, and I also reduced manual reporting efforts by approximately forty to fifty percent through automation and self-service dashboards, which definitely saved resources for my organization."
 

Cons

"One thing that I don't like, just a little, is the backward compatibility."
"In the Community edition, it would be nice to have more modules that allow you to code directly within the application. It could have R or Python completely integrated into it, but this could also be because I'm using an older version."
"I would like to have more languages/scripts supported in user-defined classes."
"If you develop it on MacBook, it'll be quite a hassle."
"I would like to see improvements made for real-time data processing."
"It could be better integrated with programming languages, like Python and R. Right now, if I want to run a Python code on one of my ETLs, it is a bit difficult to do."
"I'm still in the very recent stage concerning Pentaho Data Integration, but it can't really handle what I describe as "extreme data processing" i.e. when there is a huge amount of data to process. That is one area where Pentaho is still lacking."
"In the community version the scheduling tool is not good, and we had to build it ourselves."
"The cost is also quite high; SAS Viya Platform via SaaS can be expensive compared to some open-source or other cloud alternatives."
"I would advise others looking into using SAS Viya Platform to go ahead if their budget allows."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we first started with it, it was much cheaper. It has gone up drastically, especially since Hitachi bought out Pentaho."
"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."
"The price of the regular version is not reasonable and it should be lower."
"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."
"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"
"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."
"The solution reduced our ETL development time by a lot because a whole project used to take about a month to get done previously. After having Lumada, it took just a week. For a big company in Brazil, it saves a team at least $10,000 a month."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Integration solutions are best for your needs.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
39%
Healthcare Company
11%
Transportation Company
6%
Insurance Company
5%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAS Viya Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SAS Viya Platform was smooth. I did not have any hiccups, and I do not have a say on the pricing.
What needs improvement with SAS Viya Platform?
I cannot think of any improvements for SAS Viya Platform from the top of my head, although users might have suggestions. I would add that some users need more training in SAS and SAS Viya Platform....
What is your primary use case for SAS Viya Platform?
My main use case for SAS Viya Platform is analytics on risk adjustment in the healthcare field. One of the specific examples of how I use SAS Viya Platform for risk adjustment analytics in healthca...
 

Also Known As

Hitachi Lumada Data Integration, Kettle, Pentaho Data Integration
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

66Controls, Providential Revenue Agency of Ro Negro, NOAA Information Systems, Swiss Real Estate Institute
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Informatica, Qlik and others in Data Integration. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.