Pentaho Business Analytics Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

it_user6912

Owner with 51-200 employees

Aug 26, 2013

Pentaho BI Suite Review: Pentaho Reporting – Part 3 of 6

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user6912

Owner with 51-200 employees

Jun 24, 2013

Pentaho BI Suite Review: Pentaho BI Server – Part 2 of 6

Introduction

This is the second of a six-part review of the Pentaho BI suite. In each part of the review, we will take a look at the components that make up the BI suite, according to how they would be used in the real world.

In this second part, we'll be discussing the Pentaho BI Server from which all of the reports, dashboards, and analytic tools are served to the users. A BI suite usually has a central place where users log in using their assigned credentials. In this case, the server is a standalone web server (an Apache Tomcat instance) that is augmented by various tools that provides the functionalities – most of these tools are written by Webdetails (webdetails.pt). We'll visit these tools in subsequent review parts, for now, let's focus on the server itself.

In the case of Pentaho BI Server, it has two components:

The Pentaho User Console (a.k.a PUC) – this is what we usually associate with the main BI Server in the Pentaho world; where users would spend the majority of their time generating reports (both real-time or scheduled), using the analytic tools, build and publish dashboards, etc. This is also where administrator users can manage who can access which reports either by User or by Role – obviously, Role-based ACL is cleaner and easier to maintain.
The Administration Console (a.k.a PAC) – this is where admin users go to create new Users, Roles, and schedule jobs. It is another standalone web server that can be started and stopped when needed, it is totally independent of the main PUC server.

Is it Corporate-Ready?

BI servers are considered ready for corporate “demands” based on the number of users they can support, and the facilities to manage them. The Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition is without a doubt ready for corporate use because it comes with the support that will make sure that is the case.

The Community Edition is more interesting, it is definitely corporate ready, but the personnels who set it up needs to be intimately familiar with the ins and outs of the server itself. Having installed three of these, I am confident that the BI Server, due to its built in ACL management is ready for prime time in the corporate world.

Although the Pentaho BI server includes a scheduler, another “corporate” feature, I find myself using cron (or Windows Task Scheduler) for the most part. The built-in scheduler is based on the Quartz library for Java. It is a good facility with decent UI to schedule reports or ETL from within the PUC.

Is it Easy to Use?

The PAC is very easy to use. The UI interface is simple enough due to the minimum numbers of menus and options. In a sense, it's a simple facility to manage user/role and scheduling – not ACL, just users and roles.

The PUC is more involved, but adopting the familiar file folder look and feel on the left panel, it is quite easy to get into and start using. Administrators would love the way they can set who can Execute, Edit, Schedule each reports, saved analytic views, and dashboards – by the way, Pentaho calls these: Solutions.

Setting up the BI server is better left to the consultants who are used to doing it. Or if there are in-house personnels who would be doing this, it is worth the time to participate in the training webinars that Pentaho held periodically. The steps to setup a BI server far from being simple, but that is the case for all BI servers, regardless the brand.

The collapsible left panel serves as the directory of the solutions, with the top part shows the folders, and the bottom part shows the individual solution. The bigger panel on the right is where you actually see the content of the solutions. And in some cases, that's where you'd create a Dashboard using the CDE tool (we'll revisit this in later review part).

Is it Easy to Create Solutions?

Remember that the concept “solution” here refer to the different types of reports, dashboards, analytic views. Pentaho BI server employs a “glue” scripting facility called the xactions. These are XML documents that contain some sequence of actions that can do various things like:

Asking users for input parameters
Issuing a SQL query based on user input
Trigger an ETL that produce reports

Once you are familiar with this facility, it is not that hard to start producing solutions, but it pays to install the included examples and study them to find out how to do certain things with xaction and/or to copy snippets into your own scripts.

On the PUC, we can build these solutions:

Dashboards using CDE
Ad-hoc reports and data model using the built in Model generator (very handy for accessing those BI tables that are populated by ETL runs)
Analytic Views using tools like Saiku or its equivalent for the Professional and Enterprise edition. NOTE: This requires a pre-published schema which is built using another tool called the schema-workbench (we will see this in the latter parts of this review series)

Is it Customizable?

Being the user-facing tool, one of the requirement would be the ability to customize the appearance via themes, at the very least, a BI server need to allow companies to change the logo into their own.

The good news is, you can do all that with Pentaho BI Server. If you opt for the Professional and Enterprise editions, you can rely on the support that you already paid for. For those using the Community Edition, customizing the appearance requires knowledge on how a typical Java Web Server is structured. Again, any good BI consultant should be able to tackle this without too much difficulties.

Here is an example of a customized PUC login page:

In case you are wondering, yes, you can customize the PUC interface also, and it even comes with a theme structure in which you can assign your graphic artists to redefine the CSS elements.

Summary

The Pentaho BI server, is the central place where users are going to interact with Pentaho BI Suite. It brings together solutions (what Pentaho call contents) produced by the other tools in the suite, and expose it to the user while being protected by a robust ACL.

On the balance between ease-of-use and the ability to customize, the Pentaho BI Server scores well provided that the personnel in charge is familiar with the Java Enterprise environment. To illustrate this, in one project, I managed to tweak the security framework to make the PUC part of a single-sign-on Liferay portal, along with other applications such as Opentaps and Alfresco.

Next in part-three, we will discuss the wide array of Pentaho Reporting tools.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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it_user409920

Product Analyst at a recruiting/HR firm with 51-200 employees

Mar 23, 2016

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It enabled seamless data movement from one system to another. Debugging and logging needs to improve.

What is most valuable?

Transformations. The wide range of transformations that are available in product suite, enable me to do data cleaning, transformation and mapping. I have used Pentaho mostly for ETL purposes.

How has it helped my organization?

Pentaho was used for data massaging in a system integration project. It enabled seamless data movement from one system to another. The biggest advantage of using this tool was that it support a wide range of input and output formats

What needs improvement?

Debugging and logging needs to improve. Not all the time debugging gives the accurate picture of what is going wrong with the jobs or transformations.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using it for one year.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We've had no issues deploying it.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's been stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Data type mismatch issues causes a lot of error in the transformations, which I believe at times make it difficult to scale. For example in many transformations you have to mention the data type of the data and if the input file changes the data type, these transformation also needs to be updated. Hence one data type change in the input file have cascading effects

How are customer service and technical support?

I've never had to use it, but they do have a strong online community.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

There was no previous solution in place.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward, as there was not much of configuration was involved.

What about the implementation team?

I was the vendor team who implemented this solution for the client.

What was our ROI?

It's difficult to predict the ROI as it was just a component of the system.

What other advice do I have?

The tool is easy to implement, but it needs technical acumen to do so. In other words although it look like a simple drag and drop kind of tool, it can be fairly complex.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user505383

Director at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Feb 23, 2017

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Helps us build decision supported systems.

What is most valuable?

Here are the valuable features:

Open source solution
Fully integrated
Customizable
Extensible with a large community behind it
Has a powerful ETL process (Pentaho Data Integration)

How has it helped my organization?

It helps us build decision supported systems. The use of MicroStrategy improved the decision-making process through enterprise report automation and corporate information management.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see self-service analysis and front-end tools.

The "self-service" feature of all BI tools deals with let final user (normally not tech one) do his/her work navigating data in a freely and not organized way.

Is exactly the opposite as create and manage a DW where data, metadata, are known and processed before.

Normally, traditional BI tools are more complex and complete managing traditional DW and in recent years other BI tools (like Qlik and Tableau for example) appears to fulfill this features.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used this solution for five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been no stability issues. There were some minor bugs that were fixed by the manufacturer in their regular patches.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There have been no scalability issues. Pentaho is based on industry standards to build scalable solutions. It’s very simple to scale up, horizontally, and vertically.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is good.

How was the initial setup?

The installation had medium complexity. There is good documentation, but you have to follow certain procedures before using it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This solution has an open source philosophy. There is a community edition without license costs, although it takes some more time to develop.

There is also an enterprise option that allows you to perform certain tasks easily and includes support.

What other advice do I have?

Have a global and corporate design in mind. However, start with a particular area, small and well-defined.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Ricardo Díaz

COO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Aug 10, 2015

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Fast Development (Agile BI), Good Charts and Visualization, Good Security, Good User Interface

What is most valuable?

Pentaho Analyzer (EE)

Saiku (CE)

Marketplace (CE)

R (EE and CE)

Community Dashboard Framework (CE)

Dashboard Editor (EE)

How has it helped my organization?

Powerful Analytics, Fast KPI Analysis

For how long have I used the solution?

4 Years

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Integration with GeoServer (Specially ShapeFiles Layers on Maps)

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

None

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Migrate old version of Reports (.prpt) to a new version

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

5/10

Technical Support:

9/10

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, QlikView.

How was the initial setup?

Difficulty: medium

What was our ROI?

45%

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

QlikView

Tableau, SpagoBI

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user736950

Director Tecnologia

Sep 17, 2017

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Increases productivity and lowers costs, though should improve the construction of its dashboards

Pros and Cons

"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."

"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."

What is most valuable?

I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced.

How has it helped my organization?

The first eight years, I used this tool in one company. Now, I have some customers who hire me to give them advice. I have a couple of great customers in my country and they are very satisfied because they have increased productivity and lowered costs.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

For 12 years. I have been using Pentaho CE 6.0 and 7.0. Last year, I implemented Pentaho CE 5.0.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I am actually trying to use Pentaho 7.0 CE and determine if it has some issues. In Pentaho EE, I have several years using it without having issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No, it is a highly experienced tool. It can do anything.

How is customer service and technical support?

Really, I don't know about the support of Pentaho EE. As for the support of Pentaho CE, it is bad. Fortunately, I am highly experienced and use it very little.

How was the initial setup?

To start, the first configurations were very difficult. I started with the CE version and without good documentation or support. I spent years learning for myself.

What other advice do I have?

Hire specialized support for Pentaho. If customers want a professional tool and have the money, they should invest in the enterprise version of Pentaho or hire a company from your country specializing in Pentaho with high experience.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user394440

Data Scientist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 25, 2016

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It became a lot easier for our developers to switch between or join the different development projects.

What is most valuable?

I found Pentaho Data Integration the most valuable component since it is the most mature open-source ETL tool available. Compared to other proprietary products it has a less steep learning curve due to it's very intuitive user interface. Besides that it has a pluggable architecture which makes it quite easy to extend with custom functionality and features.

Another thing worth mentioning is the very active user community around the products which provide some great resources for community support.

How has it helped my organization?

As for the data integration part each development team were writing their own integration scripts, parsers and interfaces from scratch on each different project over and over again. With Pentaho Data Integration which offers all these common tasks out-of-the-box we reduced development time significantly. Also by using such a universal tool and introducing a uniform architecture it became a lot easier for our developers to switch and/or join between the different development projects.

Also on the business intelligence part we moved from developing custom solutions on each track to the usage of standard functionality of the BI server and thus cutting down both complexity and development time.

What needs improvement?

Since most of our projects start off as a proof-of-concept with the Community Edition version of the products we found that the differences between the Community- and the Enterprise Editions are too big on certain levels. It would be a big gain if the Community Edition version would be a full representation of the Enterprise Editions making it easier to move on to the Enterprise Edition and support.

For how long have I used the solution?

I started using Pentaho Data Integration around seven years ago and moved on to the full stack about five years ago.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I have seen many different (custom build) deployment solutions for Pentaho throughout the years each having their own pros and cons.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We've had no issues with its stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Since Pentaho supports running as a single process to a clustered architecture and has a big focus on big data (distributed) environments, scalability hasn't been an issue for us.

How are customer service and technical support?

The open source strategy of Pentaho has resulted in a very active community which provided us all the support we need. Compared to other big vendors my personal experience is that response times are a lot shorter.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Most of our previously used solutions were custom built. We have evaluated both open-source and proprietary competitive products but found that Pentaho was the easiest to adopt.

How was the initial setup?

Depending upon the solutions nature, the initial setup for a basic data warehouse architecture is quite straightforward. But as with all solutions as the landscape grows and user requirements evolve, the complexity increases. I think that Pentaho suits well in today's demand for a continuous integration approach. With this in mind the initial setup is crucial in a way not to find yourself spending a lot of time and effort in refactoring the complete solution over-and-over again.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented it in-house. Keep your development and implementation cycles short and small if possible. Users demand fast implementation of requirements so the continuous integration approach becomes more crucial as well as self-service functionality. From which the latter is not yet the strongest use-case for using Pentaho yet.

What was our ROI?

Decrease of development time compared to our traditional development cycles in pure Enterprise JAVA solutions should be estimated around 60%.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Unfortunately I can't provide any exact figures about this. But using the Community edition for the development and test cycles drops down the licensing costs for the complete OTAP street.

What other advice do I have?

As mentioned before, there is a great community of users, developers and other enthusiasts which I recommend to consult for your particular use-case. Check the latest Gartner report (2016) about BI vendors and ultimately visit one of the Pentaho Community Meetups to get more insight.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user384369

Programmer Analyst at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 21, 2016

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Big Data plugins and connectors are available by default.

Valuable Features:

We use both DataStage and Pentaho, but I don't see any special features in Pentaho that is not available in DataStage, except Big Data plugins and connectors. These are default in Pentaho, and for those who have expertise in Java and Java script can write their custom code or enhance and call from Pentaho's code.

Improvements to My Organization:

When we wanted pursue this tool, the major factor was the amount of money we could save. Other than that, there is no special use cases for using this product as it was not that matured when we started using it in 2012 when compared to other ETL tools.

Room for Improvement:

It's still not user friendly or robust enough for our needs.

Deployment Issues:

There were issues with the deployment.

Stability Issues:

There have been stability issues.

Scalability Issues:

We've had issues scaling it for what we need.

Other Advice:

Since there are very few skilled people available on the market, we had to risk the project.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.