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Pentaho

Pentaho

Overview

What is Pentaho?

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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Pentaho has proven to be a valuable tool for users across a range of industries and business functions. Users have found value in using …
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Best for Reporting and Dashboard

10 out of 10
April 12, 2022
I use Pentaho for reporting and dashboard development. We develop the reports and integrate them with different database sources. It …
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Pentaho - Yay or Nay?

6 out of 10
November 04, 2016
Incentivized
I worked in a small-size private consulting firm that used Pentaho for analytics and reporting firm-wide. It catered to clients in a broad …
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Popular Features

View all 28 features
  • Publish to PDF (19)
    9.7
    97%
  • Role-Based Security Model (19)
    9.5
    95%
  • Multi-User Support (named login) (20)
    9.3
    93%
  • Formatting capabilities (19)
    8.3
    83%
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Pricing

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N/A
Unavailable

What is Pentaho?

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.

What is SAP Lumira Discovery?

SAP Lumira Discovery is SAP’s data visualization and discovery application. It facilitates data discovery, visualization, and analysis by assisting users with creation of dashboards, infographics, presentations, data facets, tag clouds, and more.

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Product Demos

Pentaho and Hadoop Demo

YouTube

Adempiere Pentaho Demo - Products & Sales figures

YouTube

Agile BI with Pentaho BI Suite Demo

YouTube

Google Analytics (part 1/2) - Pentaho Data Integration Demo

YouTube

PENTAHO DATA INTEGRATION TOOL DEMO

YouTube

Control de Mando (Dashboard) con Pentaho de Matrix CPM Solutions

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

9
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.7
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

9.6
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.2
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

9.1
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.3
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.6
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

Pentaho Integrations

Pentaho Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Reviewers rate Report Delivery Scheduling and Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete) highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of Pentaho are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(131)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Pentaho has proven to be a valuable tool for users across a range of industries and business functions. Users have found value in using Pentaho for building data warehouses for data migration and analytics, covering all scenarios and allowing the use of external jars for unsupported activities. Pentaho's BI stack is utilized for ETL, report delivery, and as an endpoint for custom web apps. It offers ease of learning and impressive functionality, making it a popular choice for small-size private consulting firms. Pentaho is also used by engineering departments to create data warehouse environments for multiple customers, enabling analytics usage. In addition, it serves as the primary source for Business Intelligence in many companies, used by multiple users for creating reports and evaluating work across different teams. The software's ability to handle large and complex data sets with ease has been highly regarded by users, along with its advanced features for data integration, reporting, and analytical dashboards. Overall, Pentaho meets various needs such as scheduled ETL processes, data ingestion, reporting and dashboard development, making it a flexible solution across organizations.

Wide range of tools and features: Users appreciate the flexibility of Pentaho, as it offers a wide range of tools and features that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of different users and organizations. This has been mentioned by multiple reviewers who found this feature highly customizable and easy to learn.

Excellent reporting tool: Pentaho is praised for being an excellent reporting tool, with features like data reporting, integration, data mining, and ETL. Users find it intuitive and easy to use, even for advanced users. The visual interface simplifies processes that would traditionally require writing lines of code. Many reviewers have highlighted this aspect as one of the strengths of Pentaho.

Highly accessible data integration module: Pentaho's Data Integration module is highly regarded for its maturity and ease of learning. It allows business users to quickly connect to almost any data source. The ability to preview data in a pivot view format enables early data analysis. Several users have mentioned this module as a valuable feature in their reviews.

Limited Data Visualization Capabilities: Users have expressed the need for Pentaho to improve its data visualization capabilities in order to enhance the end result of dashboards. Specifically, some users feel that the current options are limited and lack advanced features and customization.

Difficulties with Mondrian-based ROLAP: Some users have mentioned that the Mondrian based ROLAP capability does not scale up well when analyzing data for a large number of subscribers over different time periods. This has resulted in performance issues and challenges in meeting the needs of complex business requirements.

Lack of Support and Guidance for WEKA: Users believe that WEKA, the machine learning platform used by Pentaho, lacks use cases in production environments and requires more support and guidance. They have found it challenging to implement and fully leverage the potential of WEKA within their organizations due to limited resources and documentation.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Alex Meadows | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Pentaho Data Integration is used to move data into our data warehouse solution, used for various projects.
  • Data Integration. PDI handles pretty much any type of data source and can transform data and conform it to any type of business logic.
  • Object Oriented ETl Coding. Code developed in PDI can be shared across numerous jobs/transformations. This allows for resusable and maintainable code.
  • Flexibility and plugins. If the function that you are looking for is not built into the tool, it's fairly straightforward to either download or develop plugins. There is a huge community of users that build new functionality all the time.
  • Scaleable and cloud ready. PDI is able to cluster and scale out to handle huge data sets.
  • The speed at which some trouble issues get resolved could be improved.
PDI is a great alternative to proprietary tools. If your environment is just starting out using ETL tools, definitely look into using PDI. The number of features plus the ability to write flexible dynamic processes allows for much more maintainable code.
Talend and Pentaho have a lot of the same functionality, but Talend's interface is not as intuitive. Talend generates code that is then executed while Pentaho is an engine based tool with highly optimized Java code templates that are compiled at runtime.
The flexibility of the tool and the quality of support from Pentaho make this a great, relatively inexpensive alternative to the larger proprietary tools.
  • We are able to be agile with our code development.
  • We are able to have faster turn around on code development, integrate to standard tools like Git and Jenkins, and save time to release products.
1
Knowledge of Business Intelligence, Data Integration, and data usage is a must. The tools are relatively easy to learn with the given references, community, and general ecosystem but it does take time to master - as with any tool set.
Sandro Frattura | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use it for what you would expect. ETL for process and aggregate data, and then building data cubes and reports for viewing that data. We also use the ETL tool to auto-process files (CSV, XML etc) from that we receive from a few of our vendors daily.
  • The Data Integration tool is fantastic. A novice user can get up to speed quickly with it and the GUI is intuitive
  • Support. As an enterprise customer, I am always thrilled with the fast turnaround on support tickets that I open.
  • Job Scheduling. The Job scheduler is easy to use and very reliable
  • Data Analyzer Tool in "User Console". The drag and drop UI makes it easy for me end users to see the data in whatever way suits them. They can even GEO-MAP the data instantly!!
  • Speed on ETL. Without a very complex setup, the ETL Job runs single threaded and can be slow for BIG jobs.
  • The "Report Designer" is decent, but lacks a lot of control that you might get from more mature products (like Business Objects, for instance). Sometimes to want to rotate or reformat a chart label, and it can't be done. In other cases, it can. It is not consistent. Also, 3D charts don't work in certain circumstances. Finally, charts mapped over time, in some cases, don't have the X Axis auto-scale and so all the data points are not readable.
If you are an open-source shop, this is a great choice. Also, if your developer has minimal experience with ETL, Pentaho is a great way to go wince it is easy to use. There is also a ton of help in the forums, in you go with Community Edition (i.e. sans support)
  • Jasper
We chose Pentaho because their initial sales support was fantastic, and the value proposition was great. Also, they "threw in" training for our 2 developers for free!
Pentaho is integral to our business now. We are married to it! :-)
BI Platform
N/A
N/A
Supported Data Sources
N/A
N/A
BI Standard Reporting (3)
76.66666666666667%
7.7
Pixel Perfect reports
90%
9.0
Customizable dashboards
70%
7.0
Report Formatting Templates
70%
7.0
Ad-hoc Reporting (4)
57.5%
5.8
Drill-down analysis
90%
9.0
Formatting capabilities
70%
7.0
Integration with R or other statistical packages
N/A
N/A
Report sharing and collaboration
70%
7.0
Report Output and Scheduling (4)
75%
7.5
Publish to Web
100%
10.0
Publish to PDF
100%
10.0
Report Versioning
30%
3.0
Report Delivery Scheduling
70%
7.0
Data Discovery and Visualization (3)
43.33333333333333%
4.3
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
60%
6.0
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
70%
7.0
Predictive Analytics
N/A
N/A
Access Control and Security (3)
46.66666666666667%
4.7
Multi-User Support (named login)
70%
7.0
Role-Based Security Model
70%
7.0
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
N/A
N/A
Mobile Capabilities (3)
N/A
N/A
Responsive Design for Web Access
N/A
N/A
Mobile Application
N/A
N/A
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
N/A
N/A
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
N/A
N/A
10
developers (to build the stuff).
marketing folks (to pull data to make business decisions)
C-Level -- pulling data to view business trends and analyze success of different promotional campaigns we run.
2
moderate level of competence as a developer helps, but is not absolutely necessary. Knowledge of database architecture and design helps a lot
  • auto-processing vendor data files
  • ETL for aggregate OLTP data into OLAP for reporting
  • auto-producing reports for weekly meetings
  • using the ETL tool (PDI) to process external files was unexpected.
We are an Enterprise customer. They handle problems INSTANTLY when they are critical, including initiation an immediate WebEx screen share call when needed. Smaller/less-critical problems are handled within 1-2 days -- and NEVER fall off their radar, no matter how small.

As needed, we can also leverage "professional services" from them -- much of which is included in our Enterprise contract.

Finally, when a problem I have discovered turns out to be a bug..they create a JIRA for the fix, and make me a watcher. I love seeing notes come in showing me status updates of bugs filed because of something I found.

They really are TOP-NOTCH.

Deepak Paramanand | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our product intended to analyse Media and Communications data and provide decision making capabilities to our end users. Whereas we built the workflow management, transactional capabilities, Pentaho provided the BI layer for our product. Analysts were our end users. Everything from data ingestion to decision making was the scope of our product. We read data across disparate data sources/formats and using our business expertise provided decision making capability.
  • Data Integration. Pentaho wins hands down. You can read huge data using a Hadoop process, do your encirchment, load it to a Netezza database afterwards, finally input the data to your WEKA model to predict which Customer will churn or what offer should be made to the customer so that he/she stays put.
  • BI Server. If you want to schedule a data read operation of your clickstream data, to finally burst out recommendations of next best actions to end users, Pentaho's BI Server performs this integration seamlessly.
  • Mondrian. This layer provides Cube based Hierarchical data modeling on the front end and at the back end converts this OLAP structure to a ROLAP, SQL based model. Hence any relational database becomes a ROLAP engine seamlessly.
  • Data Visualization. Provide richer library of data visualization capabilities. Ultimately the dashboards are the end result of all the hard work done at the back office. Yes, Pentaho has a lower TCO compared to other Products but richer data visualization capabilities would make it a winner! Pentaho has overcome this limitation by allowing external charting engines to be integrated with their product suite, but more needs to be done to strengthen core Pentaho Data Visualizaiton capabilities. Alternatively the external charting engine capabilities need to be documented and evangalized.
  • Alternative to Mondrian. In our case we needed to analyse data for a million subscribers over key performance areas like Churns, Activations etc. In these scenarios semi additive measures needed to be calculated and presented in a report across days to years grains of time. In such scenarios the Mondrian based ROLAP capability did not scale up to our expectation. Pentaho needs to address such issues and fast.
  • In the world of R/SAS/SPSS its hard to find use cases where WEKA was used in Production environments to solve a business problem. We would have needed some hand holding to replace our R/SPSS code to WEKA and help us build newer alogorithms on this platform ground up.
Integration is best with Pentaho. If you want to overlay your product capability with Pentaho's BI Server, Data Integration, Reporting Engine, Workflow capabilities then Pentaho is the only answer. Other tools provide each of these very well, but if you have already built your product and dont want to buy Informatica, Cognos/Microstratey and SPSS/SAS then Pentaho is the way to go.
Pentaho is Java based, so no shortage of skilled Java resources who can help you integrate. We did not spend time building our own reporting engine, Data Visualization layer, Security layer, workflow capabilities. We simply used our proven transactional product and used Pentaho to fill our gaps.
We evaluated Panorama, Cognos, MicroSrategy, Jasper Reports, Talend and homegrown solutions. Though each were awesome in their own right, none of them provided a end to end integration like we wanted. Pentaho did the job for us and more. Knowing that Pentaho was built by a team who were industry veterans made us feel comfortable that the basics were always a given and that we could always reach out to them for more. Plus Pentaho's responsiveness in providing a hands on expert to train us was a huge plus.
We have moved to homegrown ETL and have matured as a company as to what we need from a BI tool. Our focus is now rich and intuitive data visualization with blazing speed. Our customers had already used MicroStrategy/Tableau in the past so that bar was already set very high. Unfortunately Pentaho could not give us a better if not similar experience as the tools our Customers had already used.
10
Managers, System Analysts and Business Analysts. We provide financial analytics hence the users are somewhat tech savvy, know how to use the system and get meaningful information from it to complete their day to day activities. Some users use our product for strategic planning purposes such as budgeting and marketing spend.
5
Java is a must have. Somebody who is proficient with object oriented programming concepts, understands APIs.
ETL Developer. Must have hands on experience coding ETL using SQL and/or proprietary tools.
Report Developer. Must have experience with building reports with Excel, Business Objects et al.
Solutions Engineer. Must understand how Pentaho fits with the overall Product offering. Should have the customer in mind at all times during product integration.
  • As a replacement for our costly and technically disparate ETL and data visualization solution.
  • As a integration software for our transactional systems with our BI systems.
  • As a workflow management, business process specific application system.
  • As a dashboard/reporting solution.
  • As a end to end data integrator. Right from data ingestion to pretty pictures that provide business value and decision making capability.
  • As a workflow management solution.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
Integration. That Pentaho had ETL, reporting, scheduling, workflow management included in one software plus being Java based it could be easily integrated with our existing software stack was the most important factor in choosing Pentaho.
I would place high marks on the visualization layer. If I cannot use one aspect of a Product suite it becomes difficult to evangelize the product within an organisation. Or I would set internal expectations that though the Product offers various modules, our evaluation should restrict itself to 2-3 core ideas and evaluate accordingly.
  • Implemented in-house
Yes
We first chose the reporting solution as a module to integrate. Via API calls this module was integrated with our existing Product for transactional reporting purposes. Next phase of our implementation was centered around integrating the ETL solution into our product as a single point of data ingestion mechanism. Once the data was brought in using Schema Workbench we built the logical layer to help publish dashboards/reports via the Pentaho BI Server.
  • Technical expertise. Finding the right people who understood Java and BI was a tough ask. So we decided to keep the teams separate and let a Solutions Engineer/Architect provide direction for the integration.
  • The team had prior experience in using stable proprietary products where documentation was plenty and hence any issue could be solved easily by tapping into the knowledge base around. Customer support interactions were infrequent. With Pentaho it was vice versa, where we depended more on Customer support than on community knowledge.
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.
Yes
For any production related issues where a hotfix is the only way to go.
For any configuration related issues where best practices are known but are not working as expected.
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.
Yes
Some bugs were resolved whereas some were slated in a much later release.
  • End to end data ingestion to data visualization is easiest to do.
  • Dashboard/report creation, distribution is easy too.
  • Workflow integration is best used in Pentaho. You can schedule an invoice to be loaded as soon as it arrives in your ftp server, you can apply business rules, load it to your database, refresh the data warehouse with this latest invoice and finally burst an email with telling all users to go and see the report. All this can be achieved in Pentaho's Workflow integration tool.
  • You HAVE to know Java to use Pentaho to the best of its capability. For pure BI enabled users like myself, it was a steep learning curve.
  • Trying to match Customers data visualization expectations was tough, Our customers had already used Tableau and/or Microstrategy/Cognos/Business Objects, hence it was always a tough ask to match/better what they had already seen and experienced.
Yes, but I don't use it
I would have liked some hands on help in trying to match what Customers were already used to. Plus having a team of Java/BI folks was difficult to assemble since what required to be done in an object oriented fashion could have easily been done via a SQL construct. This hash of technologies was difficult to manage.
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