Business Intelligence with Pentaho

Business and Technology Challenges

Wide range of end-user needs
Reporting
Analysis
Dashboards
Data Mining
Static and interactive
Multiple formats and delivery mechanisms

IT need for centralized management

Security
Consistency
Integration with other systems
Customization
Integration with business processes
Pentaho BI Platform
Provides critical services for end users
Scheduling
Subscriptions
Bursting/Distribution
Alerting and notification
Integration of end user tools
Provides critical services for
administrators
Integration with external business logic
Definition and execution of business
rules
Content presentation
Integration points to applications,
portals
Process management and integration
Centralized security
Pentaho BI Platform Advantages
Open source platform
Not open source reporting - >
proprietary platform

Rule-based bursting
“conditional” delivery, customized
content

Embeddable
Not a “BI Monolith”
Delivered as libraries, use what you
need

100% Java
Portability, scalability, integration
Pentaho BI Platform Advantages
Componentized
No requirement to use only/all
Pentaho components
Choose components that best fit
your needs

Operational BI, tightly integrates

business processes and
components in BI Suite

Service Oriented Architecture via

Web Service (HTTP and SOAP)
Based on open technologies and
standards (J2EE, JDBC, JNDI,
JSR-170, JSP, HTML, XSL, and
XML)
Pentaho BI Platform
“Our research shows that having a
complete BI offering is the most
valuable feature in an open source BI
offering,” said Dan Everett, Research
Director at Ventana Research. “Users
are clearly looking for more than just
reporting in open source BI offerings.”
- Dan Everett, Ventana Research
“Pentaho has established itself as a
leader within the burgeoning open
source Business Intelligence (BI) market
with its Open BI Suite and Reporting
Server products. Both offerings display
an impressive range of choice BI
functionality built on open source
developed source code. Despite the
relative youth of the open source
business intelligence space in general,
the Pentaho suite is a tried and true
integrated and stable product."
Reporting
Business and Technology Challenges
Broad range of reporting needs
Simple Columnar or Tabular
Operational
Production
Financial
Provides an assortment of output
formats
HTML
PDF
Microsoft Excel/OpenCalc
RTF (Microsoft Word/OpenWriter
CSV
Support a variety of distribution
methods
Ease report maintenance
Pentaho Reporting
Provides critical functionality for
end users
Web-based Access
Prompting/Parameterized Reports
Scheduling
Subscriptions
Bursting/Distribution
Graphical Design Tools

Provides features for administrators

Relational, OLAP (Mondrian), XML,
custom and Pentaho Data Integration
Transformations as data sources
Single report definition for content
presentation, query is not embedded
Integration points to applications,
portals
Pentaho Reporting Advantages
Flexible Report Design
Graphical design environment
Externally reference commonly
used Report Sections
Conditional hiding of report objects
Access relational, OLAP, or XML
data

Embeddable
Lightweight
Easy to extend

100% Java
Portability, scalability, integration
Cross Platform (client and server)
Mac, Linux/Unix, Windows
Pentaho Report Designer
Graphical Layout
Drag and Drop
Integrated Report Design Wizard
Integrated Query Builder
Report Object Palette
Browse Report Structure
Easily edit object properties
Preview Report
Publish to Pentaho server
Pentaho Reporting at Orbitz Orbitz, Global Travel Services Company
Key Challenges
• Self-service reporting for extranet application
serving travel agents
Pentaho Solution
• Pentaho Reporting and Pentaho BI Platform
• MySQL database, JBoss application server
• 2,500 users
Results
• Integrated, self-service reporting
• Application selected as 2006 JBoss Innovation
Award winner
• 3-year, $1.5M ROI
Why Pentaho
• Cost of ownership
• Embeddability within custom web-based
applications (security, user interface, etc.)
Pentaho Reporting
Pentaho Reporting Project
(JFreeReport)
Owned, led, and sponsored by
Pentaho
Large and contributing
community
Rapidly evolving technology

Pentaho Reporting Subscription

Professional support
Certified software
Management services
Indemnification
Analysis
Business and Technology Challenges
Knowledge workers need quick answers
to tough business problems
Easy to understand Dimensional Model
Intuitive User Interfaces promote
exploration through drag-and-drop,
drilling and cross-tabulation of data
Speed-of-thought response times to
complex analytical queries

Analyst need to uncover underlying

causes and hidden correlations
Drill through to underlying details
Find patterns and relationships to predict
future performance and derive
recommendations
Pentaho Analysis Advantages
Standards-based architecture
J2EE architecture
JDBC and JNDI connectivity
SQL-based data retrieval
XML/A and MDX front-end support
Embeddability and extensibility
Rich, interactive analysis
Web- or Excel-based access
Performance and scalability
Optimized SQL
Aggregate table support
Aggregation Designer
Pentaho Open BI Suite Integration
Comprehensive auditing of user activity,
performance and data access
Integrated security, scheduling, alerting,
portal integration, and metadata
Pentaho Analysis at Frontier Airlines
“The competition is intense in the
airline industry and Frontier is
committed to staying ahead of the
curve by leveraging technology that
will help us offer the best prices and
the best flight experience…. [the
application] fits right in with our
philosophy of providing world-class
performance at a low price.”
Frontier Airlines
Key Challenges
Understanding and optimizing fares to ensure
Maximum occupancy (no empty seats)
Maximum profitability (revenue per seat)
Pentaho Solution
Pentaho Analysis (Mondrian)
BizGres MPP database (Greenplum)
500 GB of data, 6 server cluster
Results
Comprehensive, integrated analysis to set
strategic pricing
Improved per-seat profitability (amount not
disclosed)
Why Pentaho
Chose Greenplum and Mondrian over Oracle
Rich analytical and MDX functionality
Cost of ownership
Pentaho Analysis and Spreadsheet Services

“Pentaho today rolled out a feature that

sweetens its already-popular (more than a
half million downloads to date) open source
Pentaho BI Suite: Pentaho Spreadsheet
Services, which lets business users access
OLAP data using Microsoft Excel
PivotTables.”
“The OLAP Surveys have shown that Excel is
consistently the most popular front-end for
most major OLAP servers. Pentaho Spreadsheet
Services will make it much easier for the many
organizations which rely on Excel to take
advantage of Mondrian’s capabilities. This is a
sensible, pragmatic link between popular open
source and proprietary software“
- Nigel Pendse, The OLAP Report

“Mondrian, now also the analysis component of the

Pentaho platform, is the leading OS ROLAP server
…supports access to all leading proprietary and OS
databases for source data….enabling easy-to-use
drilling and slice-and-dice functionality familiar to
OLAP users.”
Dashboards
Pentaho Dashboards
Immediate insight into Key
Performance Indicators
Comprehensive metrics
management
Rich, interactive visual displays
Exception tracking and alerting
Portal Integration
Fully integrated with Pentaho
Reporting, Analysis, Dashboards
and workflow
Business and Technology Challenges
Executives need to monitor Key Performance Indicators
Single-screen access to metrics, related reports, and other content
Simple, unified solution for analyzing KPIs across all business functions
Exception tracking and alerting for early notification of potential problems

Analysts need to understand root causes for business problems

Rich, interactive visual displays to spot trends, exceptions, and drill down
to more detailed information
On-screen filters to zero in on data specific to the business problem

IT need customizable, easy to deploy solutions

Dashboard-linking for simple, contextual navigation between dashboards
Integrate external content using frames, URLs, or AJAX components
Standards-based architecture supporting most common environments
Performance and usage monitoring through comprehensive audit reports
Portal integrated and embeddable into existing web applications
The Evolution of Dashboards
The Old Way
KPI insight scattered among a multitude of
reports and spreadsheets
EIS systems geared towards a small subset of
executive users
Delivery-focused dashboards with no ties to
business processes

The New Way

Unified interface for analyzing KPIs across the
organization
Highly interactive and customizable interface
that can be tailored to all types of business users
Tightly integrated with business processes
including exception tracking, alerting and
workflow
Pentaho Dashboards Advantages
Flexible deployment options
Out-of-the box
Fully integrated with entire Pentaho
Open BI Suite
AJAX components provide high-
performance, customizable
extensions
Embeddable into existing solutions
Portal integration
Rich, dynamic information delivery
Wide variety of visual components
Role or subject-based filtering
Drill to detailed reports, analysis
views or other Dashboards with
context
Integration with Google Maps for
location intelligence
Pentaho Dashboards Advantages
Tight business process integration
Embedded workflow
Can receive events from or trigger events in
external systems

Security and compliance

Role-based security and business rules
Integrates with existing enterprise security

Pentaho Open BI Suite Integration

Comprehensive auditing of user activity,
performance and data access
Rich reporting and analysis leveraging Pentaho
Reporting and Analysis
Integrated security, scheduling, alerting, portal
integration, and metadata

Modern, Standards-based Architecture

100% J2EE providing scalability, portability,
and integration
All components exposed as web-services
Open, XML-based repository
JDBC 2.0 compliant
Pentaho Dashboards at Unionfidi
€1B Italian Financial Firm
Key Challenges
No unified Reporting & Analysis solution
Difficult for users to analyze KPIs across different
business areas
Pentaho Solution
Pentaho Data Integration to build and maintain the
Data Warehouse
Pentaho Analysis for interactive analysis
Pentaho Open BI Platform and Reporting for
scheduled reports and email “bursting”
Pentaho Dashboards for executive KPI analysis
Results
“Pentaho provides a great solution for Improved response time to Customer Needs
us, addressed our technical and Fast, reliable, unified access to information

business requirements, was quick to Complete delivery of BI as a “service”

8 weeks from inception to deployment
deploy, and provided far better value
Why Pentaho
than other alternatives.” Breadth of functionality
Technology leadership
Value and TCO
Data Integration
Data Integration Challenges (Business and IT)
Customer
Data is everywhere Order
Customer
Customer order information in one system, History
Service
customer service information in another History

Data is inconsistent Marketing

The record of the customer is different in Campaigns
each system

Performance is an issue
Running queries to summarize 3 years of
data in the operational system takes
forever Data
AND it brings the operational system to its Warehouse
knees

The data is never ALL in the data

warehouse XML Acquired
System
Acquisitions, Excel spreadsheets, new
applications
Pentaho Data Integration Advantages
Meta-data, model-driven approach
Tell it WHAT to do and not HOW to do it
Complex transformations with zero code
Graphically design data transformations and
jobs

100% Java, cross-platform support

Extensible architecture
Easy to develop and plug in custom
connectors
SAP connector available

Repository-based
Structured management of models,
connections, logs and more
Easy re-use of queries and transformation
components
Pentaho Data Integration at Belgian Traffic Control
Traffic Center of the Flemish government
Belgian Traffic Control Center
Key Challenges
Monitoring and analyzing minute-by-minute
traffic flow design from 570 remote traffic
sensors
Pentaho Solution
KETTLE for data acquisition and population of
the data warehouse
Largest fact table has over 1 billion records,
adding 100 million records per month
Results
Ability to analyze traffic patterns based on
weather, time of day, day of week, season
Why Pentaho
Ease of use
Performance and scalability
Cost of ownership
Professional Open Source