Proprietary Business Intelligence Consolidation:
What it Means to Your Company

2007 has been a year of significant consolidation in the business intelligence (BI) market. The three largest independent BI software vendors have been acquired by larger technology vendors. In April 2007, Oracle completed its acquisition of Hyperion Solutions. In October 2007, SAP announced plans to acquire Business Objects, followed in November by IBM's announced intent to acquire Cognos. This consolidation validates the importance and value of the BI market, but also creates challenges and opportunities for organizations that are currently using or considering business intelligence software. As stated by Mark Smith, Ventana Research, "If you are in the middle of evaluating SAP or Business Objects products in analytics, BI and Performance Management products you should take heed to the rocky future." Learn more about how Bi market consolidation will affect your business now and in the future and what you can do about it.

White Paper - PDF - 253KB

Pentaho Linear Scalability

This white paper contains the description of a method used to measure the performance of a BI platform. Also included, are ways in which to use these measurements to determine the scalability of a BI system in a scale-out architecture. This method was applied to the Pentaho BI Platform and the proof of linear scalability in a scale-out architecture are presented.

White Paper - PDF - 2MB

TDWI best practices Report,
"Strategies for Managing Spreadmarts"

Does your firm struggle with spreadmarts? In organizations all over the world, business people bypass their IT groups to get data from spreadmarts. Spreadmarts are data shadow systems in which individuals collect and massage data on an ongoing basis to support their information requirements or those of their immediate workgroup.

These shadow systems, which are usually built on spreadsheets, exist outside of approved, IT-managed corporate data repositories, such as data warehouses, data marts, or ERP systems, and contain data and logic that often conflict with corporate data. Once created, these systems spread throughout an organization like pernicious vines, strangling any chance for information consistency and reliability. You'll find them in all industries, supporting all business functions. According to TDWI Research, more than 90% of all organizations have spreadmarts.

Read report - PDF 1.52MB

BI & Performance Management for the Midmarket

Traditionally, Business Intelligence was thought of as a tool reserved for large enterprises with large IT budgets. Now, midmarket companies can now take advantage of BI tools tailored to the size of their organization. These tools give them increased visibility into their operations and this information can be effectively distributed to all key stakeholders. In this panel discussion, moderator Mark Smith, CEO of Ventana Research, will be joined by Caroline Seymour, AVP, Cognos; Dick Kuiper, Sr. Business Consultant for Lawson; John Kale, LogiXML's VP of Marketing and Lance Walter, VP of Marketing, Pentaho, for an informative discussion of how BI can be a critical component of growth for any size organization.

Listen to this podcast. Length - 1:05:00 (36MB)

A Proven Prescription for Reduced Risk and BI Success

Featuring Darrin Blocker, Decision Support Services FMO,
Loma Linda University Health Care
Choosing the right Business Intelligence solution can be confusing, expensive and lead to uncertainty. Please join Loma Linda University Health Care and Pentaho to learn how to avoid the three key risks when making your BI purchasing decision: technology risks, project risks and vendor relationship risks. The live case study by Loma Linda University Health Care will show why so many firms are choosing open source Business Intelligence (BI) to solve their BI issues.

Listen to this podcast. Length - 58:00 (26MB)

ZipRealty Goes Open Source for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Learn why ZipRealty, a national real estate brokerage, chose MySQL and Pentaho Business Intelligence, to help them better measure and optimize agent performance, customer satisfaction and marketing ROI. By combining Red Hat Enterprise Linux, MySQL database and Pentaho Data Integration, ZipRealty was able to obtain an integrated, strategic view across multiple operational systems while utilizing open source to greatly reduce overall TCO.

Click here to watch streaming flash recording (52 minutes) or
download the WebEx player version (9MB).
Note: Download requires WebEx Player.
Download the slides here (3MB).

Pentaho Metadata and Ad Hoc Reporting Demo

In this 15 minute presentation Jake Cornelius, Product Manager for Pentaho, provides an overview of the new metadata layer and ad hoc reporting interface introduced in version 1.6 of the Pentaho Open BI Suite. This release delivers the first true, open source metadata layer that reduces maintenance costs and removes the technical barriers to delivering self service, ad hoc reporting to business users.
Flash Recording - 15Mb
Oct. 10, 2007

A New Business Model to Drive Business Intelligence Acceptance and Adoption

Traditionally it has been time-consuming and expensive for a given customer to evaluate, select, purchase, and maintain the right Business intelligence technology to address their needs. Customers face significant challenges relative to time, expense, and accuracy throughout BI technology investigation, vendor engagement, and final technology selection. Professional open source BI radically alters the economics of all three of these phases in a way that reduces costs and risks for prospective BI users - Learn more by downloading our new white paper
White Paper - PDF - 140KB
October 10, 2007

Database Trends and Applications: Loma Linda University Health Care Deploys Pentaho BI

Managing more than 600 physicians and more than 40,000 patient visits per month is no small task. Loma Linda University Health Care (LLUHC) found that their business had outgrown their Microsoft Excel- and Microsoft Access-based systems, and that they needed a real business intelligence solution. LLUHC evaluated various proprietary and open source BI offerings, ultimately choosing Pentaho. This case study describes their business and technology challenges, evaluation process, deployment, and the overall benefits they've achieved from their Pentaho BI Solution.
Case Study - PDF - 100KB
October 9, 2007

BI and a Bag of Tricks for Business

Moderated by Claudia Imhoff, President & Founder, Intelligent Solutions Inc., Today, enterprises are under serious scrutiny and pressure to reduce costs, simplify administration efforts and reduce the likelihood of project failures. The daunting challenge that still exists around security and the continually increasing volumes of data and numbers of users are making it extremely difficult for big business to maintain quick access to data, uphold productivity and performance, and keep up application and service response times.
Listen to this podcast. Length - 1:15:00
August 5, 2007

Demystifying Open Source Business Intelligence:
Broadly Adopted and Ready for Your Enterprise

The professional open source model for Business Intelligence (BI) is rapidly changing the BI industry, driven by customers seeking better product, service and value. Open source BI usage has grown exponentially. It's free and open access to world-class BI technology, backed-up by professional support, have reduced the costs and risks of traditional proprietary BI. This model features software at no cost, a rapid pace of innovation, and a clear focus on reducing TCO for Business Intelligence. Learn from the experts why your firm should be considering open source BI today.
Flash Recording - 1 hour
June 20, 2007

Overview of Pentaho Architecture

In this sixteen minute presentation James Dixon, Pentaho CTO and cofounder, will provide background about the Pentaho architecture. You will learn about why it's designed the way it is, a complete flow of major components in the system, how data and control flows throughout the architecture, and the many deployment and integration options available.
Flash Recording - 16 minutes
May 14, 2007

Video Interview with Marc Batchelor

Marc Batchelor is a cofounder and Chief Engineer for Pentaho. In this short video interview with Lance Walter, VP of Marketing, Marc talks about some of the new single sign-on capabilities available via subscription in the latest release of Pentaho 1.2. Marc describes the end-user and IT benefits, why and how Pentaho created this capability, and what it's like to work on a project like Pentaho.
Flash Recording - 50MB
Mar. 26, 2007

Video Interview with Matt Casters

Matt Casters is Chief Architect for Data Integration at Pentaho and Founder of the Kettle open source project. In this short video interview with Lance Walter, VP of Marketing at Pentaho, Matt talks about his impressions of Pentaho Data Integration 2.4, the origins of the project, and why so many organizations are choosing Pentaho Data Integration. He also describes the role and contribution of the community in the development and testing process for the 2.4 release, and his passion for open source ETL.
Flash Recording - 35MB
Feb. 1, 2007

Pentaho Case Study - Unionfidi

This one page case study describes how a leading Italian financial firm, Unionfidi S.C., uses Pentaho to provide an integrated data warehouse, balanced scorecard application, and supporting reports and analysis. The case study briefly describes Unionfidi S.C.'s challenges before Pentaho, their technical environment, and the results they were able to achieve in only 8 weeks with Pentaho and Pentaho Partner Two Heads I.T.
Case Study - PDF - 128 KB
Nov. 2, 2006

Entiva Group Industry Performer Report

This independent, non solicited, 8-page report characterizes Pentaho as the leader in open source BI, and analyzes Pentaho from the perspectives of strategy, functionality, and technology.
Case Study - PDF - 5.25 MB
Oct. 24, 2006

Google Maps Demo

This short, self-playing demo provides an overview and demonstration of Pentaho Dashboards' ability to integrate with Google maps to provide interactive, geographic visualization.
Flash Recording - 8 minutes
Oct. 19, 2006

ThinkEquity on Open Source BI Disruption

This report from financial analyst firm ThinkEquity discusses some of the ways in which Pentaho is disrupting the traditional, proprietary business intelligence market.
Industry Report - PDF - 318 KB
June 6, 2006

Ventana Research Open Source BI Survey Results

This free report from Ventana Research summarizes and analyzes the results of a large-scale survey on open source BI adoption done by Ventana Research in the Spring of 2006. The results show aggressive adoption of open source BI, and the analysis shows why users have chosen open source BI, perceived strengths and weaknesses compared to open source BI, and most desired features in open source BI.
White Paper - PDF - 260 KB
May 10, 2006

Click here to learn more about the Pentaho Partner Program. If you have a specific question please contact us using our online form.