B.I. made simple. Pentaho rocks!
Updated June 03, 2015

B.I. made simple. Pentaho rocks!

Sandro Frattura | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

4.8 Enterprise Edition

Modules Used

  • Data Integration, Schema Workbench, Report Designer, Enterprise COnsole

Overall Satisfaction with Pentaho

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.

Pros

  • 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!!

Cons

  • 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.
  • 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! :-)
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)

Pentaho Feature Ratings

BI Platform ()
Not Rated
Supported Data Sources ()
Not Rated
7.7
Pixel Perfect reports
9
Customizable dashboards
7
Report Formatting Templates
7
7.7
Drill-down analysis
9
Formatting capabilities
7
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Not Rated
Report sharing and collaboration
7
7.5
Publish to Web
10
Publish to PDF
10
Report Versioning
3
Report Delivery Scheduling
7
6.5
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
6
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
7
Predictive Analytics
Not Rated
7.0
Multi-User Support (named login)
7
Role-Based Security Model
7
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Not Rated
Not Rated
Responsive Design for Web Access
Not Rated
Mobile Application
Not Rated
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Not Rated
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding ()
Not Rated

Using Pentaho

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.

Pentaho Support

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.

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