Dynamic Pentaho User Console Logos

The following topic covers how the Pentaho User Console logo can change based on the user id or role of the user that logs in.

This is performed by adding the UrlRewriteFilter Java Web filter to the Pentaho BI Server installation.

Learn how here: http://sandbox.pentaho.com/2010/09/demonstrating-a-user-group-defined-logo/

Regards,

Michael Tarallo
Sales Engineering Director
Pentaho

Dynamic Step Metadata with PDI

Did you know that Pentaho Data Integration includes Experimental Transformation steps? Experimental steps encourage proactive testing and critical feedback from the user community. The reported results are used to harden the product for the next revision. You can always provide your feedback, suggest new features and report issues here on our tracking site for any of Pentaho's product offerings.

One of the experimental steps available in PDI version 4.1 is the ETL Metadata Injection step. This Transformation step is used to dynamically set another transformation's step metadata, i.e the actual editable properties of a step.

Transformation steps already ........ read more of this topic and download a working sample here at the Pentaho Evaluation Sandbox.

Pentaho Sales Engineering Live Techcasts

Greetings Everyone. Pentaho Sales Engineering is introducing live weekly Techcasts starting this Monday December 13th at 11 AM EST. The weekly Techcasts will cover a variety of topics ranging from installation and configuration of the Pentaho BI Server, to development, best practices and tips and techniques with the desktop and web based design tools. Anyone can join and take advantage of this valuable free education presented directly by the experts. Weekly events and descriptions will be posted in the Upcoming Events section on the homepage of the Pentaho Sandbox on the right-hand side. Click the link to join on the day of the even or download the latest calendar invite from the "Download" link below.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Michael Tarallo
Director of Sales Engineering
Pentaho

Click here for more information: http://sandbox.pentaho.com/2010/12/sales-engineering-live-techcasts/

"Drilling" in to the detail with Pentaho

"Drilling".....(with respect to Business Intelligence applications and Information Technology). Where did that word come from? What does it mean? What can it mean? I am sure you have heard the phrase "Drill down to detail" before, but you may have also heard "Drill Up", "Drill Out", "Drill Across", "Drill In" and "Drill Through" and don't forget "Drill Anywhere". In general, it means to simply move from summary level information to underlying detail data, either within its current data set or even outside to another data set. Its main purpose is to allow one to easily view summarized information in the form of a chart, table or some graphical visualization with the added ability to "click" on a value, series or region and "drill in" to the next level of detail or out to some other dimension. "Drilling" allows business users to make informed decisions quickly without having to page through sheets of raw data. For example, summarized sales revenue for the year 2010 is $200K, but upon drilling down we see that $175K was brought in by 3 out of 4 regions, leaving 1 region with very low numbers. This now exposes a single region as being an outlier or a entity that needs focused attention. The power of Business Intelligence applications at work, turning raw data into actionable information.

The Pentaho BI Suite can provide "Drilling" in a number of ways depending on which module you deploy. We will explore each of these in this article..........read more about it here at the Pentaho Evaluation Sandbox.

http://sandbox.pentaho.com/2010/11/drilling-in-to-the-details-with-pentaho/

Regards,

Michael Tarallo
Director of Sales Engineering
Pentaho

Pentaho Data Integration Reporting Plug-in

I was recently invited, by Matt Casters (Pentaho Data Integration’s Chief Architect and founder of the Kettle Project) to test out a new plug-in for Pentaho Data Integration version 4.1 RC1. The Pentaho Reporting Plug-in, is a new transformation step entry that allows the execution of a Pentaho Reporting object (*.PRPT) to be rendered and saved to a desired location on a file system. With the included efforts of Thomas Morgner (Chief Architect and founder of Pentaho Reporting formerly JFree Report), Matt was ale to develop this plug-in in a very short time period due to the tight integration between both of the products; a “couple of evenings” to be exact. This plug-in can serve a number of use cases, from including additional reporting capabilities in to the actual flow of an ETL job to more advanced EII, EAI type work-flow processes. ork-flow. One of the most powerful differentiators of Pentaho Data Integration is that it is not just used for ETL. Along with the Pentaho BI Platform and Pentaho Reporting – real-time data access, data federation and data virtualization can be achieved.

Check it out and give it a try here: http://sandbox.pentaho.com/Pentaho-Data-Integration-Reporting-Plug-in/

Pentaho Data Access and 3.7 New Features

Come see a brief tutorial of the new features available in Pentaho 3.7 as well as how easily one can prototype their data with the new Data Access and thin client model editor.

http://sandbox.pentaho.com/tutorial-extra-pentaho-data-access-and-new-features/

The Pentaho Pre-Sales Sandbox

Quick Bit About Pentaho

Pentaho has been all about building and delivering a scalable, complete end-to-end BI Suite from day one. From making the software "possible" during those humble beginnings to making it "available" and now "easy". You will find that Pentaho has an extensive offering that is both flexible and intuitive. Pentaho software has been targeted as the Commercial Open Source BI alternative by System Integrators, Consultancies, Enterprises, OEMs and SMBs. It has been deployed worldwide in a variety of industries; supporting mission critical applications which encompass both data integration and information delivery, all provided by "one" vendor, Pentaho.

The Pentaho Pre-Sales Sandbox

The Pre-Sales Sandbox is a resource that will streamline the effectiveness of the Evaluation/Selection process. With this resource at hand, you will be able to make an informed decision as quickly and efficiently as possible. Examples, tutorials, consolidated information are staged here to view and download to assist you in your evaluation process. Please be aware that the collateral available on this site can be posted on a moments notice and is intended to serve the masses as quickly as possible. Therefore the content downloaded may be a work in progress, a draft, incomplete, or limited in detail. Please see our website at www.pentaho.com for more information about our products and value added services.

Who should use this resource

This resource is primarily for those who are actively evaluating the Pentaho BI suite. It is not a replacement for our FREE evaluation support offering or the Pentaho Knowledge Base. It has been designed for those who are intending on exploring the power, flexibility and extensibility of the software. They have a basic understanding of Business Intelligence applications including information delivery and data integration. They are familiar with concepts of accessing data sources, creating and publishing reports as well as understand the fundamentals of ETL (Extract Transfer Load). They understand terminology such as metric, measure, dimension and have a general understanding of data modeling. Professional documentation for the Pentaho BI suite, including Administration and Security guides are located in the Knowledge Base.

If you are evaluating Pentaho, or are simply a bit curious come check out the Pentaho Pre-Sales Sandbox here: http://sandbox.pentaho.com/

I hope to speak with you in person.

Michael Tarallo
Pre-Sales Director
Pentaho

Top 3 questions asked to Pentaho Pre-Sales

Can you...? How does...? Where do...? What is...?

Sound familiar?

Pre-Sales Engineers are the stage performers of the IT world; immensely capable, adaptable, confident, excellent communicators who are equally cool in front of large crowds and intimate groups. If you are in a Pre-Sales role, you have the absolute pleasure of showcasing what your product / service / solution can offer to help prospects make an informed decision. Pentaho Pre-Sales Engineers, have numerous discussions everyday with qualified prospects that want to evaluate Pentaho and prove that the software can satisfy their goals. Most prospects are looking for a solution that will help them reduce costs, increase profits and make their businesses function efficiently. Part of my job is to identify a "fit" for these objectives and recommend an approach to take when evaluating. During these discussions I am asked many questions that have definitive answers and some questions that have more than one answer. I thought it would be helpful to share the 3 most common questions asked to my team and I and our responses.

Question 1: What is the most common reason an evaluation or implementation will not be successful?

That answer is quite simple. So simple in fact I wrote a blog entry about it in March 2009. You can view it here. However I will summarize it for you in one word.

Answer: People

People involved in the evaluation process of anything, are the lead cause for its success or failure. There are those who are self sufficient, "read" the provided materials, have the knowledge and expertise to get the job done with little assistance....then there are those that expect everything to be done for them. I elaborate more about this in the fore mentioned blog entry. However, for those who need a lot of hand holding, please be prepared to present clearly identified evaluation criteria to those you will be working with.

Question 2: What skill sets are required to use the Pentaho software?

Answer: I will first state that having Java Engineering skills are not necessary. You do not have to be a Java developer to use Pentaho. This stigma can attach itself to not just Pentaho, but to other "Java" developed platforms. Someone sees the word "Java" somewhere in the Wiki or on the Web and they automatically assume they need to know Java. This is not true. Pentaho is built on modern open standards that are written in Java. All this should mean to you, is that Pentaho provides a cost effective alternative that can run almost anywhere that supports Java.

Primarily, Pentaho training is the #1 skill set needed to really exploit all of the power that the software provides from the GUI design suite. Just like learning anything new, you should attempt to pick up the manual. I certainly wouldn't start driving a car without learning how to operate it first. Other skills that can help are a general understanding of BI technologies and terminology. Relating to terms such as KPI (Key Performance Indicator), RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) metrics, dimensions, operational reporting, analyitcs, dashboards, and even a little acronym known as ETL (Extract Transform and Load). Furthermore, if you want to dive deeper and start embedding, integrating and enhancing the applications...having a Java background or even a simple web development skill set is always a plus.

Question 3: How scalable / performant is your solution?

Answer: I love this one. What answer do you think I am going to give? - Simply stated, your mileage is going to vary and greatly depends on what products you are using. Are you using the software for data integration or content delivery or perhaps both? I don't care if you have the beefiest machine on the block or are paying for the largest cloud, your scalability and performance are going to be dependent on numerous factors. Prospects are usually looking for exact sizing statistics. They want to have some predetermined knowledge of application performance as well as what hardware and software infrastructure they may need to provision. Fortunately, Pentaho has produced the Pentaho Linear Scalability White Paper for the BI platform, and an independent consultancy has created the PDI Scaleout White Paper for Pentaho Data Integration. These documents can give additional insight in setting those expectations. Pentaho Services can also conduct capacity planning sessions with prospects to give an estimate of what can be expected. In addition to the white papers please note that there are a number of real-world scalability customer success stories you can read about on our website.

Thanks for your time, I look forward to answering your questions in person.

Michael Tarallo
Pre-Sales Director
Pentaho

Part 3: Easily prototyping your data

Hello everyone. Starting with Part 3 of the Pentaho Video Tutorial series, I will now be using wordpress.com to exclusively post future video tutorials covering the Pentaho BI Suite. The videos available from Wordpress are of a higher quality and are also shareable and download-able directly from the embedded video viewer.

So please navigate here to view Part 3 and Part 4 of this series.

http://michaeltarallo.wordpress.com/

Part 2: Configuring Server Side Data Connections - even easier!

Welcome to Part 2 of the Pentaho Video Tutorial Series. In Part 1, we covered the installation of the Pentaho BI Suite on an Ubuntu Linux O/S using the Pentaho BI Suite Installer. Many have already experienced how easy it was to download and install, thanks for your comments. (You can obtain the installer from the Pentaho KB or from http://www.pentaho.com/download/.) In this part we will cover configuring Pentaho server side data connections that can access your traditional RDBMS data sources. In this example I demonstrate adding connections to Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server 2008. It is important to note that the Pentaho design tools, such as Report Designer, Schema Workbench, Data Integration and the Metadata Editor can publish content using these server side data source connections that have been configured. (We will cover this in Part 3 of the series) To prepare for this configuration, please have the appropriate vendor specific JDBC Type 4 driver available for the data source you want to connect to. You can obtain them from the database vendor's web site, your DBA, or perhaps the installation location of the RDBMS.

You can view the video inline in this blog, or download the higher quality .wmv (Windows Media Video) to your workstation for local viewing.

Para ver esta entrada en español chasque aquí here (Google Translation)
Pour regarder cette entrée en français cliquez sur ici (Google Translation)
Um diese Eintragung auf deutsch anzusehen klicken Sie hier (Google Translation)

Part 1: Installing Pentaho Enterprise Edition 3.6GA - it's that easy

That's right, I said it. It's that easy. I am creating a series of Pentaho related tutorial type videos published exclusively on my blog. This is part 1 of an N part series that will showcase the power, flexibility and extensibility of the Pentaho BI Suite. My goal is to help you evaluate the Pentaho BI Suite with as little frustration as possible. In this 15 min video you will watch me go through the process, of downloading, installing and testing the Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition on an Ubuntu Linux operating system. From start to finish, you will see it is just that easy. The next entry will focus on configuring data sources to be used for content creation. Enjoy!

Para ver esta entrada en español chasque aquí here (Google Translation)
Pour regarder cette entrée en français cliquez sur ici (Google Translation)
Um diese Eintragung auf deutsch anzusehen klicken Sie hier (Google Translation)

You can download the high quality .wmv (Windows Media) here

Choices - The Best of Both Worlds - Pentaho On-Demand or On Premise

Yeah, yeah I did it again. If you are reading this, I roped you in with one of my wacky eye catching titles.

Today Pentaho announced its On-Demand BI Subscription. - Press Release - On-Demand BI Subscription, you say? What exactly does that mean? Simply stated, choices. Choices for those who want to "implement" or even "evaluate" a Pentaho BI solution easily.

In addition to the traditional means of an "on premise" or "in the cloud" installation approach, prospects and customers now have the option to choose dedicated hardware and software resources. This enables them to "choose" and combine the infrastructure management and professional services they need while maintaining the option to expand or contract services as business needs change. This not only makes Pentaho BI Solutions available to those with limited budgets, but also allows those with non-existent or poorly skilled IT resources to play in the BI space as well. Believe me, in my career I have seen many evaluations go south simply because the individuals involved couldn't even spell BI let alone evaluate it. See prior article here.

Let's face it. When it comes to evaluating BI Solutions, it can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. There are needs and wants and hopefully a scope surrounding those objectives you want to prove. If you have the resources, time, money and are a control freak then maybe Pentaho On-demand is not for you at first. No big deal. You can use the Pentaho software in the traditional approach, work with our evaluation support team and evaluate in the comfort of your own infrastrcuture. However if you are resource constrained (who isn't these days), lack the time to focus specifically on just evaluating BI and possibly don't have the proper data structures in place to support BI (you know who you are - OLTP or Pseudo DW guys) perhaps the 72 Hour Challenge is the way to go. - 72 Hour Challenge details - Business champions can get rapid reusable results without IT involvement and even showcase the results internally to achieve further buy-in. This gives others in the organization the opportunity to preview a preliminary Pentaho solution while reducing the risk of wasting additional resources from the vendor and the prospect.

For additional details on this topic, please follow the links embedded in this blog. As you can see, prospects and customers are truly getting the best of both worlds,...hmmm kind of like Hanna Montana (yes, my kids watch the Disney channel, so shut up :-) ).

Pentaho Harnesses Apache Hadoop to Deliver Big Data Analytics

Pentaho First Major BI Vendor to Announce Support for Apache Hadoop

Orlando, FL – May 19, 2010 – Pentaho Corporation, the open source business intelligence (BI) leader, today announced plans to deliver the industry’s first complete end-to-end data integration and business intelligence platform to support Apache Hadoop. The Pentaho BI Suite features a single visual development environment that dramatically simplifies the creation of applications for analyzing the massive volumes of information currently being collected by enterprises. This will widen the appeal of Apache Hadoop by enabling developers and business analysts to more quickly and easily access and analyze data.

Hadoop is rapidly becoming a technology of choice for enterprises that need to effectively collect, store and process large amounts of structured and complex data, including many of the world’s leading consumer websites and financial services organizations. Hadoop, in its raw form, lacks easy-to-use interfaces for timely and cost-effective analysis. The Pentaho Enterprise BI Suite delivers a unified visual design environment for ETL, report design, analytics and dashboards, providing an enterprise friendly environment for using Apache Hadoop. Pentaho is enabling more organizations to reap the benefits of Hadoop by making it easier and faster to create BI applications.

The first deliverable in this initiative is the enhancement of Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) to be the visual design environment for ETL processes that include the manipulation of Apache Hadoop files and the execution of Hadoop tasks. This enables the design and execution of ETL processes that involve both Hadoop and non-Hadoop tasks. This deliverable also includes an embedded ETL engine for Hadoop. Soon, Hadoop users will be able to transform, manipulate, and aggregate files and data using the full functionality of a robust graphical designer and powerful ETL engine. The next set of deliverables, to follow soon after, will enable reporting, dashboards and analysis directly against data stored in Hadoop.
NEWS SUMMARY

* The Pentaho BI Suite offers comprehensive data integration, reporting and analytical capabilities that enable Hadoop developers and business analysts to quickly and easily create BI applications without coding.
* Pentaho Data Integration (also known as Kettle) is a natural technology fit and data integration solution for Hadoop given its rich design tools, scalable architecture, open source distribution and adoption at a large number of Hadoop sites.
* Pentaho is the first full-function BI vendor to announce support for the Hadoop platform, further cementing the open source provider’s status as an innovation leader in the BI industry.
* Pentaho’s support of Hadoop marks another key milestone in the company’s Agile BI initiative, aimed at simplifying the use of BI for a much wider set of users across the enterprise, resulting in faster time to value and increased ROI.
* The Pentaho BI Suite offers unmatched deployment flexibility as the same full-feature platform can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud or embedded in custom applications.
* Apache Hadoop, a top-level Apache project, is built by a vibrant community of developers around the world. It is a Java software framework that supports data-intensive, distributed applications, allowing them to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data.

QUOTES AND MULTIMEDIA

“Five years ago, few people anticipated the common need to perform analytics on tens of terabytes of data, but we’ve blown past that threshold,” said Richard Daley, founder and CEO of Pentaho. “Organizations of all sizes are facing a massive influx of both structured and unstructured data. Pentaho is helping them to cost-effectively maximize the benefit they obtain from the information they collect.”

"The demanding pressure to apply Analytics to deliver insight for business continues to grow as the volumes of data exponentially grow," said Mark Smith, CEO & EVP Research at Ventana Research. "Pentaho is stepping up to lead the integration of data for Hadoop and provide the BI platform and tools to generate the Analytics and deliver a broad range of capabilities for business and IT."

“We use Hadoop simply because we hit the wall with traditional RDBMS based on our impression volume,” said Naghi Prasad, Vice President of Engineering at Offerpal. “The combination of Hadoop and Pentaho will give us the opportunity to easily and cost effectively take our ‘big data’ analysis to an entirely new level and gain insights never before possible.”

“Attributor’s Guardian™ monitoring service scans more than 40 billion pages daily; consequently, our data needs are significant,” said Adrian McDermott, CTO of Attributor. “We are committed to both Hadoop and Pentaho, and this integration is a huge win for us.”

Visit www.pentaho.com/hadoop to:

* Watch a demonstration of Pentaho Enterprise integration with Hadoop.
* Read the blog “Big Data Shouldn’t Mean Big Costs” by Pentaho Founder and CEO Richard Daley.
* Reserve your place in the beta program.

About Pentaho Corporation

Pentaho Corporation is the open source business intelligence leader. Thousands of global organizations deploy Pentaho software to make faster and better business decisions that positively impact their bottom lines. Pentaho provides a comprehensive BI suite that includes capabilities for data integration/ETL, modeling, data mining, analysis, reporting and dashboards. The Pentaho BI suite supports the company’s Agile BI initiative, which enables organizations to build BI applications more quickly, respond to business changes more easily and expedite time-to-value for up to 90% less cost than traditional BI vendors. Pentaho was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Orlando, FL, USA. For more information, visit www.pentaho.com.
Pentaho Media Contact
Eastwick Communications
650 480-4054
Pentaho@eastwick.com

Being "Agile" with Pentaho Business Intelligence - Letting "Agile" help you decide

There are still numerous organizations that have not yet standardized nor adopted a Business Intelligence strategy. For example, I have heard so many "spreadmart" horror stories, they can be used as a basis for a white paper on how "not" to implement BI solutions. Most of the time these "spreadmarts" are the fallback due to too little time, too little money and slow development of a proper BI solution. Daily, I consult with multiple prospects on how the Pentaho software can soothe all types of "pain". These discussions reveal a "need" to reshape their business. They want to reduce costs, increase profits, offer competitive products and services, as well as consolidate raw data from multiple silos. All at the same time they want to "do it" as cost effectively as possible. Because they are looking at a Commercial Open Source solution that provides significant cost savings, they also want to understand what other value Pentaho delivers versus a proprietary BI vendor.

However you want to slice it, the offerings provided by most BI vendors generally perform and look the same. Especially on the surface. So, what differentiating criteria can help one make that informed decision when evaluating BI software? First of all, it is my practice that the decision should not be influenced by an unnecessary feature or a function. Output to PPT for example has never been a deal breaker for us. Instead, I recommend that one looks deeper for a complete BI stack built on an "integrated" modern architecture. An architecture that allows for setup both on-premise and in the cloud. Factors including "Agile" development, ease of use and scalability also should contribute to the decision. Other points can include differences around services, support, collateral and training. Think about it, what is the sense of deploying a "sexy" dashboard if it can only run on one platform, can only be created by IT, is hard to discern information from and can't scale to multiple users? Oh, and did I mention that there may be a charge for each dashboard user? (sorry, had to throw that one in there) As you can see, there is simply much more to consider when deciding on what BI solution can meet your objectives, not just what is on the surface. Quoting the phrase, "Beauty is only skin deep" comes to mind.

Let's break a few terms down to identify the bigger picture.

First, Business Intelligence.

In general, the term "business intelligence" is not new. It has been around for years, even before I was born. BI is neither a product nor a system. It should be thought of as an activity not a project. It is a term that combines architectures, applications, and databases and the action taken when using them. In a 1958 article, IBM researcher Hans Peter Luhn used the term business intelligence. He defined it as:"the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal." In 1989 Howard Dresner (later a Gartner Group analyst) proposed BI as an umbrella term to describe "concepts and methods to improve business decision making by using fact-based support systems." It was not until the late 1990s that this usage was widespread. Almost 20 years later, in today’s modern world the application of Business Intelligence technology is now becoming more popular day by day.

Now let's look at the term "Agile", as a noun and then as an adjective.

"Agile" software development refers to a group of software methodologies based on iterative development where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between IT and the business users or other cross functional teams.

"Agile" as an adjective can be simply described as moving quickly with what appears to be little effort.

Now let's combine the two. Agile Business Intelligence can be described as the activity of quickly, easily and iteratively developing Business Intelligence applications, while collaborating with the users who will be consuming them.

Pentaho Agile BI will allow "more" developers of varying skill sets to become "more" responsive to the growing needs of those users. It will also ensure that the information to be consumed and the way it is consumed is correct in less time reducing the need to "fallback" to spreadmarts and at the same time standardizing on a BI solution. Pentaho Agile BI brings together ETL (data movement and transformation), visualization (visualizing the data) and data modeling (building the business layer) under one integrated development environment that will serve as the foundation for this activity. Applying this methodology will ensure greater success for both parties involved and ultimate success for the organization. Take a look below (click the thumbnail) to get a quick preview of Pentaho Data Integration 4.0 and Pentaho Agile BI in action.


Business Intelligence and Agile development are not new concepts. However when combined they offer an organization a powerful approach in delivering BI applications that will help it meet it's objectives.

Let's Talk about Guided Ad hoc

Click here to see the Pentaho Community Technical WebEx

One of us is goin' down

Just having some fun

Pre-Sales Engineer San Francisco Office

The Sales Engineer is responsible for pre-sales activities across multiple sales territories. The SE will work closely with multiple sales teams, in both the SMB and Enterprise markets, to drive sales by effectively presenting and demonstrating Pentaho’s business intelligence suite. The candidate must have a broad technical and sales background and should be familiar with open source technologies, with a strong understanding of business intelligence.

Looking for Java Developers - Pentaho Open Source BI

Looking for Java Developers in the Orlando area to be a part of the Pentaho Open Source Business Intelligence team, please contact me if you are interested.

Pentaho Shines at TDWI Bake-Off

Pentaho Agile Business Intelligence Outperforms SAP and IBM in several critical areas

Orlando, Fla., February 26, 2010 – Pentaho, the commercial open source alternative for business intelligence (BI), went toe to toe with IBM and SAP at this week’s “Developing Your BI Tool Strategy and BI Bake-Off” at TDWI World Conference Las Vegas, and garnered the audience’s popular vote in the categories of best dashboard, best reporting, and best “Cool Stuff.” With this recognition, Pentaho takes its rightful seat at the enterprise table, showing that it provides the preferred BI Suite with a full spectrum of innovative capabilities all at a fraction of the cost of proprietary offerings.
Highlights

* Pentaho Agile BI: Pentaho won the audience vote in the “Cool Stuff” category. Attendees gained a sneak peek at development products that will soon be announced as part of Pentaho’s recently unveiled Agile BI initiative. Pentaho Agile BI, launched in November of last year, has forever changed the way people build and deploy applications, setting the standard for the rest of the industry to follow. Pentaho presents a radically different, integrated environment that collapses all of the steps from developer to end user, from data integration through end user visualization, so developers can work more closely with users to get value from business intelligence. With Agile BI, both novice and expert BI professionals are now empowered to rapidly create and use rich BI applications.
* Pentaho Dashboards: Pentaho’s bake-off demonstration of its industry leading dashboard capabilities won audience approval for speed and simplicity to design and deploy. Pentaho provides immediate insight into individual, departmental, or enterprise performance. Dashboards are the best way to present and interact with information to business users, and Pentaho raised the bar for delivering key metrics in an attractive and intuitive visual interface, giving business users the critical information they need to understand and improve organizational performance.
* Pentaho Reporting: Pentaho won the audience vote for best reporting. Reporting has long been considered the core business intelligence need and is typically the first BI application deployed. Until now, BI heavyweights got most of the attention for reporting, but the bake-off audiences were wowed by how easily the lightweight contender Pentaho Reporting allows organizations to access, format, and distribute information to employees, customers, and partners.

Quote

“For years, the BI giants have had customers up against the ropes with high priced, complex BI offerings that are difficult to develop and even more difficult to use. The resounding support for Pentaho at this year’s TDWI event is evidence that smart companies see Pentaho as the next BI champion. Over five million people have downloaded Pentaho in our short five years in the market, and we don’t expect that momentum to stop any time soon.”
– Richard Daley, CEO of Pentaho Corporation