Open Source Business Intelligence solutions are rapidly gaining the attention of companies throughout the world.
Let’s face it, Business Intelligence solutions tend to be enterprise based, and as such, come with an appropriate price tag. Several teams of developers, often ex-employees from some of the large software houses, have got together to develop Open Source Business Intelligence (OSBI) solutions.
It should be noted at this stage that ‘open source software’ does not mean the same thing as ‘free software’. While the source code is freely available for scrutiny, tweaking, etc. there is normally a price to pay for IP indemnification and support. However, this is normally a small fraction of the commercial enterprise level BI software cost.
Several notable developments in the OSBI space are currently available. Two of the largest players are Pentaho and JasperSoft.
Pentaho
The Pentaho open source Business Intelligence suite is freely available as a download. Downloaded over three million times, the suite encompasses all of the major application areas such as Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards, Data Mining and a BI Platform
To see how important OSBI is, consider the following organizations listed on the Pentaho website as users of their software:
MySQL, Motorola, Terra Industries, DivX and more.
While the software can be downloaded and compiled for free, Pentaho offer a subscription service where you pay a fee for technical support, IP indemnification and management services. Pentaho’s commercial open source business model eliminates software license fees, providing support, services, and product enhancements via an annual subscription.
Jaspersoft
The Jaspersoft offering includes a reporting server, graphical and ad hoc report design interfaces, OLAP analysis and an ETL tool.
It also makes the following claims on it’s website:
“With more than 3 million downloads worldwide and more than 8,000 commercial customers in 96 countries, JasperSoft offers the most widely used open source business intelligence software in the world.”
While JasperSoft is open source, there is a fee payable to use it’s software.