Apache Spark vs. Pentaho

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Spark
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Pentaho
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.N/A
Pricing
Apache SparkPentaho
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache SparkPentaho
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache SparkPentaho
Considered Both Products
Apache Spark
Chose Apache Spark
Apache Pig and Apache Hive provide most of the things spark provide but apache spark has more features like actions and transformations which are easy to code. Spark uses optimization technique as we can select driver program and manipulate DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph)
Python …
Pentaho

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache SparkPentaho
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
9.0
20 Ratings
9% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings9.818 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.618 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
8.7
19 Ratings
7% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings7.718 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.319 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings9.312 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings9.617 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
9.6
20 Ratings
14% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings9.618 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings9.719 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings9.613 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings9.917 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings9.310 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
8.2
17 Ratings
1% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings7.916 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.216 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.314 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
9.1
20 Ratings
6% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.320 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings9.519 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings9.918 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.710 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
8.3
11 Ratings
4% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings9.710 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.07 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings8.711 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Apache Spark
-
Ratings
Pentaho
8.6
10 Ratings
8% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.310 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings9.09 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings7.39 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.69 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.910 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings9.610 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache SparkPentaho
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudera Manager
Cloudera Manager
Score 9.7 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Analytics Engine
IBM Analytics Engine
Score 8.8 out of 10
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
TIBCO Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache SparkPentaho
Likelihood to Recommend
9.9
(24 ratings)
9.1
(31 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(11 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
9.3
(7 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache SparkPentaho
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Well suited: To most of the local run of datasets and non-prod systems - scalability is not a problem at all. Including data from multiple types of data sources is an added advantage. MLlib is a decently nice built-in library that can be used for most of the ML tasks. Less appropriate: We had to work on a RecSys where the music dataset that we used was around 300+Gb in size. We faced memory-based issues. Few times we also got memory errors. Also the MLlib library does not have support for advanced analytics and deep-learning frameworks support. Understanding the internals of the working of Apache Spark for beginners is highly not possible.
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Hitachi Vantara
Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.
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Pros
Apache
  • Apache Spark makes processing very large data sets possible. It handles these data sets in a fairly quick manner.
  • Apache Spark does a fairly good job implementing machine learning models for larger data sets.
  • Apache Spark seems to be a rapidly advancing software, with the new features making the software ever more straight-forward to use.
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Hitachi Vantara
  • Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
  • Import data from any sources and different databases
  • Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
  • Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
  • Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
  • Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics
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Cons
Apache
  • Memory management. Very weak on that.
  • PySpark not as robust as scala with spark.
  • spark master HA is needed. Not as HA as it should be.
  • Locality should not be a necessity, but does help improvement. But would prefer no locality
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Hitachi Vantara
  • I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
  • Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
  • Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
Capacity of computing data in cluster and fast speed.
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Hitachi Vantara
I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration
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Usability
Apache
The only thing I dislike about spark's usability is the learning curve, there are many actions and transformations, however, its wide-range of uses for ETL processing, facility to integrate and it's multi-language support make this library a powerhouse for your data science solutions. It has especially aided us with its lightning-fast processing times.
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Hitachi Vantara
The Pentaho tools are designed so you can start playing around on your own. Of course, you will need guidance at some point, but the training teams are good at guiding new users, and the online documentation is usually pretty up-to-date.
Some of the tools, such as the Pentaho Data Integration tool and the Pentaho Server, are pretty self-explanatory. The other tools maybe are not so quickly and obvious to use, but again, with some documentation and some customer support, you can find your way around them.
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Support Rating
Apache
1. It integrates very well with scala or python. 2. It's very easy to understand SQL interoperability. 3. Apache is way faster than the other competitive technologies. 4. The support from the Apache community is very huge for Spark. 5. Execution times are faster as compared to others. 6. There are a large number of forums available for Apache Spark. 7. The code availability for Apache Spark is simpler and easy to gain access to. 8. Many organizations use Apache Spark, so many solutions are available for existing applications.
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Hitachi Vantara
They were responsive to our questions when we raised issues. They gave us workarounds when required. They were quite knowledgeable when it came to issue analysis and providing fixes. They were forthright in informing us if a bug was not due for release soon.
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Online Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
Hitachi Vantara
Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000
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Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
Hitachi Vantara
Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
All the above systems work quite well on big data transformations whereas Spark really shines with its bigger API support and its ability to read from and write to multiple data sources. Using Spark one can easily switch between declarative versus imperative versus functional type programming easily based on the situation. Also it doesn't need special data ingestion or indexing pre-processing like Presto. Combining it with Jupyter Notebooks (https://github.com/jupyter-incubator/sparkmagic), one can develop the Spark code in an interactive manner in Scala or Python
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Hitachi Vantara
Since the Pentaho platform offers a range of broad functionality across data preparation and advanced analytics, it also can be easily integrated to support many data sources and machine-learning frameworks. Based on that fact, we selected Pentaho to be used in our internal department. It also supports many of our BI use cases as required by company management or the business user. Last but not least, the Pentaho license is cheaper than their competitor.
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • Faster turn around on feature development, we have seen a noticeable improvement in our agile development since using Spark.
  • Easy adoption, having multiple departments use the same underlying technology even if the use cases are very different allows for more commonality amongst applications which definitely makes the operations team happy.
  • Performance, we have been able to make some applications run over 20x faster since switching to Spark. This has saved us time, headaches, and operating costs.
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Hitachi Vantara
  • Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
  • Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
  • We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.
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ScreenShots