UK Financial Services Leader Chooses Pentaho Open BI Suite

Orlando, FL – Mar 11, 2008 – Pentaho, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI) today announced that Close Premium Finance has selected Pentaho Open BI Suite to improve their analytical and information display capabilities, allowing them to identify business growth opportunities for Close and its brokers.

Close Premium Finance is the premium finance division of the Close Brothers Group, the UK's largest quoted independent merchant bank. Close Premium Finance introduced the concept of insurance premium finance to the UK in 1977 and today remains market leader, currently lending approx £1.5 billion of premiums through over 2,500 brokers in the UK and Ireland.

The primary users of the application will be Senior Management, the Finance and Information Technology departments, and the Account Management team. The system will provide integrated reporting and analytics driven by a data warehouse that integrates customer information, market data, and internal operational data. For example, Account Managers will have easy access to information to help their brokers maximize their financial performance, providing market information that informs brokers of their levels of premium finance penetration and identifies related growth opportunities within their businesses. Furthermore, the Pentaho Open BI Suite deployment will provide up-to-the-minute reports to management at Close Premium Finance, providing the capabilities needed to manage in a dynamic environment and react quickly to issues and opportunities.

The application will be deployed on HP Proliant servers running 64-bit SUSE Linux. Primary data sources for the application include a combination of MySQL and Oracle databases, as well as Excel spreadsheet information.

Close Premium Finance considered other alternatives including Oracle Discoverer, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, as well as in-house development. Pentaho was selected for its dramatically lower initial and ongoing costs, the flexibility provided by Pentaho's commercial open source model, and the value-added services Pentaho is able to provide for subscription services, training, and consulting.

"Pentaho provided a full spectrum of BI capabilities to address our needs," said Jason Oakley, infrastructure director at Close Premium Finance. "Pentaho's subscription, training, and consulting services and their commercial open source model made them an easy choice for Close Premium Finance."

To contact Pentaho Sales, please visit www.pentaho.com/contact/.

About Pentaho Corporation

Pentaho Corporation is the commercial open source alternative for Business Intelligence (BI). Pentaho Open BI Suite provides comprehensive reporting, OLAP analysis, dashboards, data integration, data mining and a BI platform that have made it the world's leading and most widely deployed open source BI suite. Pentaho's commercial open source business model eliminates software license fees, providing support, services, and product enhancements via an annual subscription. In the years since Pentaho's inception as the pioneer in commercial open source BI, Pentaho's products have been downloaded more than three million times, with production deployments at companies ranging from small organizations to The Global 2000. For more information, visit www.pentaho.com.

About Close Premium Finance

Close Premium Finance is the pioneering provider of premium finance products and services in the UK and Ireland. With over 2,500 brokers currently choosing to work with Close Premium Finance, they fund more than £1.5 billion / €3 billion of premiums every year, covering both commercial and personal lines insurance. They're also a part of Close Brothers Group plc, the largest and most successful independent merchant banking group in the UK, founded in the City of London over 125 years ago.

Press Contact:
Tony Keller PR Contact for Pentaho Corporation S&S Public Relations 719-634-8279 tkeller@sspr.com		Mark Houlding PR Contact for Close Premium Finance Rostrum Communications 0044 7773 782 520 mark@rostrumpr.com
Company Contact:
Wes Brown Pentaho Corporation 407-812-OPEN (6736) media@pentaho.com		Bela Allen Close Premium Finance 0044 20 8786 2500 ballen@closepf.com