Pentaho

Kashif Asrar
Sep 24, 2016
2 min read

Pentaho is a complete BI solution distributed under GPL license for organizations where revenue is critical aspect. We have analyzed several dominating open source BI solutions that have distinct platform that allows us to manage, transform, and explore our data. Intuitive GUI tools can be easily setup for existing data.

But for all the benefits of Pentaho, making it work for any business require tweaking but at the edges, any off-the-shelf solution often can’t do exactly what you need. The Pentaho provides the infrastructure for authentication, a rules engine and web services. It includes a solution engine that facilitates the integration of reporting, analysis, dashboards and data mining. Pentaho BI server supports web based report management, application integration and workflow.

Salient features can be:

Data Visualization.
Reporting, Data Analysis & Processing.
For Dynamic Data Sources & ETL Tasks.
Rich reporting set with formats like HTML, PDF, XML and RTF etc.
J2EE Application with Web Based user Interface.
Data Mining and Integration Tool.
Report Designer with Report Wizard.

Why SMB’s:

Pentaho is an excellent choice for reports that are of simple to moderate complexity and don’t require crosstabs or charts. In SMB’s cost reduction is one of the elementary aspects of business process objectives, for that matter Pentaho is far more superior in functionality, aesthetically as compared to BIRT or JASPERSOFT or any other open source competitor’s.

Main Functionality:

Powerful tools for data exploration and data mining.
Browser-based interface & customizable report outputs.
Core functionality is dependent on several components.
Extensible modeling.
Customizable Charts, Graphs and Reports.
ETL Jobs.

Functionality Pitfalls:

Pentaho relies on report query for grouping, filtering, sorting and aggregations.
Pentaho does not support Column layout with vertical text.
Cross tab feature is still in beta.
Proficiency level of IT skills and support required.

Intended Industries:

Accounting , Agriculture, Automotive Industries, Banking, Healthcare, Hospitality and Tourism, Education, Engineering, Food & Beverages, Government Organizations, Human Resource, Insurance and Legal, Maintenance and Field Services, Manufacturing and Marketing, Pharmaceuticals, Public Sector and Welfare, IT & Telecom, Transportation and Logistics.

Lacking Industries:

Size and Volume of the Business: