Likelihood to Recommend A simple and important scenario well suited is that you can configure alerts to notify you when the production server fails. another best feature is the report server is the central component of reporting services. For me something less appropriate is that the admin must ensure optimal performance for farm operations, they recommend that you install SQL Server on a dedicated server that does not run other farm roles and does not host databases for other applications.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros Flexible - able to make any changes we would like vs traditional service desk system. ROI - We were already using SharePoint for internal intranet, so we are simply getting more use out of licensing we had already committed to. Easy to use for end users. Read full review 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 Read full review Cons It is hard to setup and nightmare It requires a of infrastructure, thus it could be costly because of requirement and licensing required for everything to run smoothly If it is not setup and organized properly from the beginning it could be maintenance nightmare It is hard to have "test" environment to do patches or similar Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew This was a long-term buy-in from a corporate perspective, to remain in the SharePoint space. Migration is certainly possible, which is good for planning and having options further out. At this point, the only planned migration is to eventually move the architecture up to SharePoint/SQL 2013. At that point, we will be able to leverage some greater efficiencies, some enhanced content design and management features, and some more current social features. It is well worth a full consideration in any shop looking at a new implementation of or migration to SharePoint (although you will probably be considering 2013 versions or beyond in those discussions), but the platform should be a strong competitor to any alternatives. Realizing the capability of a fully-branded and customized website was not part of the original choice for the architecture at Lincoln, but seeing it implemented and functioning now with this capacity far beyond original expectations has certainly cemented plans to continue using it.
Read full review 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
Read full review Usability SharePoint is very complex. This makes usability somewhat difficult from an IT perspective. An IT generalist will be able to pick it up and run with basic tasks. More customized functions would require significant specialized training and therefore limit what a standard user would be able to achieve. From an end user perspective, it's pretty straightforward to use.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Support Rating It's been fantastic in terms of Premier Support so far. If there is an issue and if you report if the product has an issue, they will act upon it immediately. In some cases, if you design/develop something using the platform, Microsoft appreciates it and... publishes it on their public website. But you have to wait for some time if it is a non-Premier Support issue as you may experience delays.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Online Training 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 Read full review Implementation Rating Not implemented in best practice way, there are many customizations
Read full review 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered At the time of the two large projects, SharePoint was the enterprise solution so we were required to use that. We have since lobbied the enterprise teams to review and consider
Atlassian Confluence and were successful.
Confluence is cheaper than Sharepoint which is why we wanted to bring that in. The enterprise has now made
Confluence an enterprise solution as an alternative to SharePoint. After using both I think SharePoint has many more add-ins than
Confluence . It has much more customization ability than
Confluence . SharePoint is not good for mobile readiness.
Confluence is so there is a difference that might lead you to
Confluence over SharePoint. I would also say that SharePoint is very document-centric and that
Confluence has better KM than SharePoint does. even with the use of SQL Server. We were told that we could not use
Google Drive even though it had features we liked.
Gene Baker Vice President, Chief Architect, Development Manager and Software Engineer
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment I've installed SharePoint in many different industries and each industry has seen greater collaboration among their teams both locally and nationally. The ability to collaborate more efficiently has reduced the need to have employees centrally located. Companies which have used SharePoint in a end user training portal have had great ROI, since they can create the content once and share with all their users who subscribe to their training service. The web content management aspect of SharePoint is a very helpful feature. Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots