Pentaho Announces Finalists in "What is Agile" Contest

Incorporates Community Feedback into Product Roadmap of World's First Agile BI Development Platform

Orlando, FL – May 12, 2010 – Pentaho Corporation, the open source business intelligence (BI) leader, today announced the five finalist of the Pentaho "What is Agile" contest. Hundreds of people from around the world submitted their answers to the question, "When thinking about Business Intelligence, what does the word, Agile mean to you?" A panel of four judges narrowed down the answer based on clarity, creativity and completeness. The five finalists will receive The Flip Ultra(r) camcorder. The contest was created as a way to encourage discussion and debate in the industry about what is really necessary for a business intelligence offering to be agile, beyond hype and messaging. The feedback that Pentaho received from the entries will be considered as enhanced functionality in the next release of the company's leading development environment, Pentaho Data Integration.

"Over the years, many companies have thrown the term Agile BI around, but none of them embraced the concept and created a truly condensed, easier to use development environment to make building and deploying BI solutions faster and easier ­ until now," states Doug Moran, Pentaho Founder and VP of Community. "Pentaho broke ground last month when we delivered on our Agile BI initiative, launching PDI 4.0 as one of the initiative's major milestones. The feedback was outstanding making it the most successful product launch in company history. To build on that momentum, this contest has allowed us to better understand what our community expects with regard to Agile Business Intelligence in the future. Being an innovative Open Source company we plan to adjust our roadmap accordingly, to meet our users¹ needs."

Finalists in the contest, in alphabetical order, include:

Mark Edwards, North Carolina, USA:
High performance Agile Business Intelligence is the equivalent of a Garmin GPS for business strategy. When you are on a trip using a Garmin GPS, you always run into detours or wish to immediately re-direct your route by inputting a new waypoint. When you need to investigate a new business strategy, you should be able to input new business waypoints and immediately see the route you will be taking, seeing the new details in your path.

Ralf Herking, Koeln, Germany:
A - Accelerate development to short cycles
G - Gather feedback after each cycle
I - Involve users early and often
L - Listen to your customers' needs
E - Early reaction on changing requirements

Cristian Orellana, Concepción, Chile:
Agile for BI means the satisfaction you feel when you see your user's amazed face when he realizes you can provide him like-magic fast results and also when he realizes that all the fear about slow and costly BI deployments is a thing of the past

Curtis Pullen, California, USA:
Agile is about speeding up the design/create/ship/observe cycle. The more you ship and observe, the better you learn to design and do. Whether you're headed in the wrong direction or the right one, it's imperative that you find that out as soon as possible.

John Wells, North Carolina, USA:
Agile is reality to traditional software engineering's theory. It is recognizing that software (and BI) development doesn't take place in a silo. Rather, it takes place amidst chaos. Agile attempts to adequately outfit you to battle that chaos.

The winner of the contest will be chosen based on your votes. The public is invited to vote for the finalist they think has the best definition of Agile BI. The answer that receives the most votes will receive the Grand Prize of a 16GB iPad. To read the finalist answers and vote on the grand prize winner please visit http://www.pentaho.com/what_is_agile/. Last day to vote is May 19, 2010.

Multimedia Content

• To read the finalist answers and vote on the grand prize winner go to http://www.pentaho.com/what_is_agile/
• Read thoughts on contest by judge and VP of Community, Doug Moran on the Pentaho Business Intelligence from the Swamp Blog http://blog.pentaho.com/
• Learn more about the Pentaho Agile BI initiative http://www.pentaho.com/agile_bi/
• Visit the Pentaho digital newsroom to find out what¹s new at Pentaho and join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn http://www.pentaho.com/news/

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