Though its value-adding capabilities are widely recognized, business intelligence (BI) is still considered a high-cost endeavor. BI projects are indeed costly, and important investments in expensive software licenses are usually required up front. In this context, the promise of open source BI (OS BI) as a low-cost alternative to commercial BI is worth considering. OS BI products are not entirely free, but there is a strong sense of “freeness” associated with them. Unfortunately, this notion of freeness can bring about negative perceptions that should be rectified, such as that OS BI may not meet quality expectations, or that it is poorly tested, or that it suffers from a lack of support, and so on.
Open source BI products have clear advantages over commercial offerings. The most important advantage is that they are available to download and evaluate for free, without having to deal with a software provider. They can also be used as a quick and low-cost solution for the implementation of a proof of concept or prototype, and they allow corporations to lower the complexity of license cost management. Several other aspects are, of course, worth mentioning, such as the extensive online support community involving tens of thousands of active forum users, not to mention the proliferation of white papers and third-party books on the subject. OS BI tools are usually more accommodating to custom environments and offer more integration possibilities and flexibility than commercial products. Moreover, a corporation can integrate OS BI to its own infrastructure without having to acquire rights from third parties. OS BI is also especially geared towards agile environments where it is useful for tools to fit on standard laptops from which they can be scaled up to full-blown enterprise platforms. Read More
By TMCnet Special Guest
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