
Don't shell out big bucks -- lots of open source BI suites are available - jfruh
http://www.itworld.com/software/168101/4-money-saving-open-source-business-intelligence-suites
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kenjackson
The problem is the SW is a very small cost for BI. When I consulted I worked
alongside a medium sized BI project and the costs went something like:

$40k for SW

$500k for development (they brought in a BI shop to get their warehouses
setup)

$120k/year for a BI developer

So the delta for making the SW go to $0 just isn't very motivating. Getting
the best BI tool is far more important than the cheapest one.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
It really depends of the size of the project really. For one client we have
for instance ~5 facts and around 12 dimensions. For that kind of requirement
the cost is much lower in term of development/maintenance, and free of
licenses was a plus in that case (we're using activewarehouse-etl and an
"Excel on top of ODBC" front-end).

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amosson
At my company we've used Jaspersoft and Pentaho and at various times paid for
commercial licenses in JasperSoft's case to get support and some consulting
(which we only used once) and in Pentaho's case to get a bug fix patch faster.

Both tools are relatively cheap, you can expect to pay around $10K per year if
you want the commercial version of the full suite and are very developer
friendly. They both use Java extensively, so you have to be willing to have
that in your environment.

I would add one more tool to mix - MSFT SQLServer 2008. The standard edition
(about $2K, I think) comes with a the full suite minus the data mining tools.
The reporting tools are on par with what Jasper and Pentaho offer and the
Analysis tools are very simple to use and allow one to use Excel as a front
end interface (which is what you end users want anyway).

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thibaut_barrere
The four suites mentioned in the article are:

\- <http://www.spagoworld.org/>

\- <http://www.pentaho.com/>

\- <http://www.jaspersoft.com/>

\- <http://www.actuate.com/>

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rhizome
OT: With this, and the story about phones being the best universal remotes[1],
the straw has finally broken my camel's back. There are few ways to get me to
hit the back button faster nowadays than to intersperse "See why [related-ish
topic]" links between every other paragraph. I'm pretty sure the people who
come up with those UX ideas will be the first ones axed when the bubble pops.

[1]
[http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2072502,00....](http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2072502,00.html)

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dataisfun
Hey, just to throw ourselves in the ring: We're Chart.io, a Y Combinator
company. Our product is "Google Analytics for databases" and we've basically
stripped out a lot of the complexity of BI (and a lot of the cost :)

We're in private beta now, so email me at dbeyer at chart dot io if you'd like
to give it a shot.

~~~
dtran
+1 for Chart.io. We use it and love it. It addresses the most costly part of
BI tools which someone pointed out above - paying one of your engineers to
hook up your data with an external tool or have to code something custom from
scratch.

~~~
arvindn
Nice article. Other than open source, one more affordable option available
today is SAAS BI. Especially for small and medium companies who may not want
to allocate precious IT resources for installing and maintaining the open
source solutions in-house. I work for Zoho and we have one such SAAS BI
solution, Zoho Reports (<http://reports.zoho.com>). Do have a look.

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jbaker
One problem I have had with BI suites (specifically JasperSoft but it applies
elsewhere) is the bolt-on nature of the solution. I found security
integration, with a web app, to be a major pain. But the worst part was the UI
and feature set. Honestly, I think modern web dev can be a real alternative to
these packaged deals ... of course depending on the circumstances. What do
others think?

Another issue I have is that the packaged solutions ~tend~ towards some kind
of interface where they are eventually essentially presenting a join syntax to
the user. This doesn't seem right to me. I think the value of the solution
really needs to be at least a level higher than that. But when you think about
it, what else is a generic tool going to do?

I'm really interested in other people's opinions on this. I recognize I am in
the minority.

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synnik
I am on the fringes of BI at my company, and do not claim to be an expert. But
to me, the value in the BI suites is not the UI, nor the platform on which BI
runs. It is the integration points to everything else. This article told me
very little about that aspect of the open source tools.

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dgudkov
Opensource BI might be interesting for small and medium-sized business,
however for large companies price is rarely a disabling factor. Not to forget
that Enterprise BI suites often go further than just reports and dashboards
and include metadata management, lineage and impact analysis, business
glossaries, predictive workbenches etc. Many of enterprise BI suites offer
additional benefits from integration with existing infrastructure from the
same vendor. So it's not only a matter of price for BI software.

Even for SME sector there are strong alternatives to opensource BI tools --
e.g. MicroStrategy offers its basic product for up to 100 users for free,
there is free and very powerful QlikView Personal Edition, etc.

------
cridal
BI field has been moving slowly but steadily into mainstream as more and more
businesses recognize the need to be able to analyze internally generated
information.

What are the biggest unsolved challenges in the field as of today? 1) Is it
difficulty in getting a project up and running quickly due to lack of in-house
expertise? 2) Is it expense of getting all the moving parts
(software/hardware/personel) together? 3) Is it lack of strong management buy-
in? 4) Is it bad/incomplete/fragmented data? ...

Please share your thoughts...

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jpwagner
A lot of what you're paying for with the "big bucks" vendors is support,
maintenance, advice, and depending on your position in the business food
chain, some visibility (presenting at their conferences, etc.)

Intangible: what about when your "intelligence" isn't working so
intelligently, would you rather be angry with your internal team or some
vendor?

In a lot of cases open source BI makes sense, but the cost-benefit analysis
should include things other than money.

~~~
Joeri
Support is overrated. My experience with big bucks companies is that even if
you do have support, it's very hard to actually get your money's worth out of
it. If your problem isn't in an FAQ, you can get stuck in an endless cycle of
"we'll get back to you on that".

Unless you have ironclad service-level agreements, good luck getting a big
vendor to solve emergency problems for you.

~~~
bobochan
I coded in SAS for a long time and I can say unequivocally that their support
was absolutely worth it. I have had techs work practically around the clock to
find fixes and offer suggestions. MathWorks is about the only other company
that I've dealt with that had that level of responsive support.

------
m311ton
All depends on the complexity of your project. We tried using open source BI
but it just didn't accomplish what we needed. QlikView, on the other hand, has
been a great solution. My only concern with QlikTech is that they're a bit
arrogant and don't know how to price or write license agreements that support
scalability.

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djworth
Another open source BI suite is Palo <http://www.jedox.com>

If you need MS Excel or OOo integration it's awesome

------
joevandyk
If I'm running a few web apps, how does a "Business Intelligence Suite" help
me? What can I do with it?

~~~
mediaman
It may not be for you, unless you have a some operational complexity behind
your web apps. Otherwise your favorite web analytics service will do the job
well.

It's ideal for manufacturing companies, companies with some complexity in
their supply chain, companies that wish to maintain service standards (e.g., a
call center), have sales teams with measurable objectives, etc.

In other words, it's for companies that look more like traditional businesses
in some way, versus a super asset-light web app company. By revenue, that is
the majority of businesses in the US.

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jfruh
Ugh, as the submitter, I officially apologize for the typo in the headline.
Jeez.

~~~
username3
did someone correct it for you?

~~~
jfruh
Looks like it - it was originally "buckss". I'm not proud.

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thibaut_barrere
That makes me wonder: what is your favorite OLAP open-source solution ?

