The Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI

Making Leaders Successful Every Day

August 10, 2010 | Updated: August 12, 2010

The Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010by Boris Evelson and Jeffrey S. Hammondfor Business Process Professionals

www.forrester.com

© 2010, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

For Business Process Professionals

ExEcUTIvE SUmmAryComparing open source BI technologies is often an apples-to-oranges comparison: 1) not all vendors include the same functionality in the free community versions of the software versus commercial open source versions that carry license and/or support cost, 2) some tools offer full BI suites, while others offer just reporting and analytics. However, by rolling up the scores to high-level aggregates, providing customizable weights to each evaluation criteria, and drawing a clear distinction between community and commercial editions, we have achieved as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible. Using this approach for Forrester’s 157-criteria evaluation of open source BI vendors, we found that Actuate BIRT led the pack because of richness of reporting functionality. Jaspersoft Enterprise, SpagoBI, Pentaho Enterprise, and Pentaho Community are close behind and also offer much fuller and broader BI stack than Actuate BIRT, including extract, transform, and load (ETL) and advanced analytics functionality. The community versions of BIRT and Jaspersoft mostly offer individual BI components that can be used for embedding BI functionality into applications, but these frameworks are yet not enterprise-grade fully functional BI platforms or suites.

TABlE OF cOnTEnTSWhy Open Source BI Matters

Open Source BI Evaluation Overview

Open Source BI Choices Differ Vastly By Vendors And Editions

Vendor Profiles

Supplemental Material

nOTES & rESOUrcESForrester conducted product evaluations from november 2008 through June 2010 and interviewed four vendors and eight user companies: Actuate, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, and SpagoBI.

Related Research Documents“Open Source Software Goes mainstream” April 7, 2009

“BI Belt Tightening In A Tough Economic climate” February 20, 2009

“Best Practices: Improve Development Effectiveness Through Strategic Adoption Of Open Source”February 2, 2009

“The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008”July 31, 2008

August 10, 2010 | Updated: August 12, 2010

The Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010Actuate BIrT leads, With Jaspersoft Enterprise, SpagoBI, Pentaho Enterprise, And Pentaho community close Behindby Boris Evelson and Jeffrey S. Hammondwith connie moore, ralph vitti, and charlie coit

2

6

11

8

14

mailto:[email protected]

www.forrester.com

www.forrester.com

http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=54205&src=46490pdf







© 2010, Forrester research, Inc. reproduction ProhibitedAugust 10, 2010 | Updated: August 12, 2010

The Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010 For Business Process Professionals

2

WHy OPEn SOuRCE BI MAttERS

Open source software (OSS) and BI are two related market segments where Forrester sees continually increasing interest and adoption levels. BI specifically continues to be one of the top priorities on everyone’s mind. The main reason? Enterprises that do not squeeze the last ounce of information out of their data stores and applications, and do not focus on getting strategic, tactical, and operational insight into their customers, products, and operations, risk falling behind competition. And when it comes to open source, 2009 could best be described as “the year IT professionals realized that open source runs their business.” The reason is simple: Over the past few years, we’ve seen that developers adopt open source products tactically without the explicit approval of their managers. This has shown up in numerous surveys where the actual adoption of open source ranks higher than what IT managers report.1 Well no longer: Forrester’s Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009 shows that management has caught on to the fact that developers increasingly use open source to run key parts of their IT infrastructure (see Figure 1). And management has grown increasingly comfortable with it. In fact, throughout 2009, most client inquiries Forrester received regarding open source were focused on how to move from tactical adoption to strategic exploitation.

Open Source Has Started Moving up the It Stack

When you look at how open source is actually adopted, one thing becomes clear: Adoption in the core layers of IT infrastructure (e.g., programming languages, operating systems, application servers) is higher than at the upper layers of the IT stack (office productivity, packaged applications). It makes sense. When developers lead the adoption of a technology, they tend to focus on the things that matter to them — the building blocks they use to create custom applications. But as more IT shops shift from tactical adoption to strategic exploitation of open source, don’t expect decision-makers to focus solely on the bowels of IT infrastructure. We’ve already seen adoption move from programming languages to operating systems to IDEs, and then to databases and app servers. Now we’re seeing interest in open source portal solutions and Web content management. As you move one click out, what’s next? BI.

The advantages open source offers in the BI space are similar to what we’ve found in other segments where OSS adoption has taken off:

· Lower initial capital costs (capex). Let’s be honest, the first quality of open source solutions that attracts decision-makers is that the software is free! Well, not quite: While it’s true that OSS is available without paying for the cost of a software license, that doesn’t mean it’s free. You should still expect to incur support costs, either from a third-party vendor or systems integrator (SI) or in the form of higher internal labor costs, which come from needing to hire top-notch IT personnel.2 It is fair to say, though, that open source solutions generally save companies money upfront, and it’s often a substantial sum when large deployments are involved.

© 2010, Forrester research, Inc. reproduction Prohibited August 10, 2010 | Updated: August 12, 2010


3

Figure 1 IT management Awareness Of OSS Is now On Par With Developer Adoption

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.46490

“Which of the following OSS infrastructure tools does your firm currently use?”

Programming languages (e.g., PHP, Ruby, Python, Java)

Operating systems (e.g., Red Hat Linux, SUSE, OpenSolaris)

Development IDEs (e.g., Eclipse, NetBeans)

Databases (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite)

Web servers or networking components(e.g., Apache, Samba, RADIUS)

Application servers (e.g., JBoss, Glassfish, Tomcat)

Application frameworks (e.g., Spring, Rails, Zend)

Content management systems (e.g., Alfresco, Drupal)

Business intelligence tools(e.g., BIRT, JasperReports, Spago)

Business applications (SugarCRM, Bravo)

Portals or mashup servers (e.g., Liferay, Dapper)

Other, please specify

Application developmentand program professionalsSoftware decision-makers*

Base: 1,298 application development and program professionals*Base: 1,900 software decision-makers at North American and European enterprises and SMBs

Source: Forrester/Dr. Dobb’s Global Developer Technographics® Survey, Q3 2009 *Source: Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009

57%55%

48%61%

46%24%

45%58%

45%58%

28%35%

22%13%

10%12%

7%6%

4%7%

3%4%

7%6%

· Flexible support sourcing. When you purchase commercial software licenses, it’s normal to budget 20% to 25% for an annual support agreement, which does two things: It gives you the right to call for support and the right to upgrade to newer versions of the product. These two rights are linked, and even if you don’t get timely, valuable support, you still pay the yearly contract to keep your upgrade options open and avoid renewal penalties. Open source software severs this link. Not getting value from a support contract with an independent software vendor (ISV)? Take the money, and use it to get support from an SI instead. Or take the money and invest it in building your own staff, or hire a committer on the open source project that you’re using.3



4

· Extensive integration options. What if you want to integrate a commercial software product with one of your own systems? If there are good APIs, you might be able to do it, but what if the APIs aren’t sufficient? Open source is exactly that: open and available for integration in whatever manner needed. While different open source licenses carry different implications when you choose to extend and integrate the code, there’s no denying that you can take it and integrate it as deeply as you want to into your own applications and infrastructure without depending on a third party to give you that right.

· Improved staff engagement. Long-term users of open source report a curious phenomenon in their shops. When the black-box barrier of commercial compiled code that separates IT developers from ISV developers is removed, the IT developers behave differently. They are now able to follow a defect as deep into the core of the product they are using as they want. They can add the features and extensions that they want. In a sense, the distinction between developer type and class no longer exists. Open source shops report that over time, they become more engaged

— not just in the technologies used, but in the business problems they are trying to solve.

navigating the Open Source BI Landscape Often Leads to Apples-to-Oranges Comparisons

Alas, even with all of the potential benefits of adopting open source technologies, navigating the open source BI landscape is as challenging, and sometimes as confusing, as evaluating and picking a commercial source BI vendor and products.4 Before plunging into a tool evaluation and selection process, ask yourself the following questions, and make sure you are doing a like-to-like comparison:

· Do you understand the categories of BI and BI-related open source tools? Are you looking for a product that supports only partial BI functionality or are you seeking an entire BI suite with broad capabilities? Focused tools include Apatar, CloverETL and Enhydra Octopus, Jetstream, Jitterbit, Pentaho’s Kettle, SnapLogic, Talend, for data integration, and Talend and Open Source Data Quality and Profiling project for data quality jobs. Reporting tools include BIRT, iReport, JasperReports, JFreeChart, OpenI, and OpenReports, while OLAP tools include Mondrian, JPivot, and Palo. Advanced analytics tools include R and data mining tools like Orange and Weka. For geospatial analytics and location intelligence, SpagoBI is sponsoring a GeoBI project with partners like Spatialytics and OpenGeo. If you seek a full BI suite, then the options are BEE, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, and SpagoBI. Some critical components of enterprise-grade BI capabilities like integrated metadata management are not even fully addressed by the open source community at this point.

· Are you clear on the differences between community and commercial versions of the tools? Don’t be misguided: Open source does not always equal free software. In some cases it is, but you will get what you pay for: just certain components rather than entire suites, or products and suites that lack the functionality required for large enterprise operations like GUI-based administration, robust integrated security, scalability tools (load balancing, etc.), connectivity to popular data sources, and many others. In most cases, you’ll have to get a commercial version of the product to get such capabilities.



5

· Are you looking for a community, commercial version, or a mix? Once you map your BI requirements to a specific BI suite, you’ll need to understand what portion of the fully functional suite comes from a community version versus a commercial version. Vendors evaluated in this Forrester Wave™ differ drastically in the amount of functionality they include in the two versions (see Figure 2). Eclipse BIRT offers mostly components; to get enterprise features, one must go with the commercial version, Actuate BIRT. Jaspersoft offers a few more community-based components, but still, getting the Jaspersoft Enterprise commercial version is a must for most enterprises. Pentaho takes it up yet another notch with the availability of even more components in its community version, and all of SpagoBI components are on hand in the community edition.

Figure 2 The varying BI Functionality Available From The community Edition Of The Software

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.46490

Vendor/product

Enterprise suitefunctionality available fromthe free community version

Actuate BIRT

Jaspersoft Enterprise

Pentaho Enterprise

SpagoBI

Little

Some

Most

Full

A Word Of Caution

Open source BI suites are suffering from the same syndrome as their larger commercial BI cousins that acquired multiple technologies and are struggling with integrating them. But while a commercial vendor can prioritize integration, open source projects are mostly independently governed and have little to no incentive to prioritize tight integration with BI components from other projects. As a result, common graphical user interface (GUI), common data access methods, and integrated metadata are mostly nonexistent across open source projects. While the commercial versions of suites like Jaspersoft and Pentaho are slowly but surely bridging that gap, and SpagoBI has future plans for integrated metadata in the community edition, the full integration and common components may not happen soon enough in the community versions.

Scalability is also often an issue with open source BI, with the exception of Actuate BIRT, which leverages its battle-proven, highly scalable iServer (not included in the community edition). But in most other cases, Forrester found only a few open source BI clients using these tools on multi-terabyte data warehouses.



6

OPEn SOuRCE BI EVALuAtIOn OVERVIEW

To assess the state of the open source BI market and see how the vendors stack up against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top open source business intelligence vendors.

Evaluation Criteria: Current Offering, Strategy, Market Presence, Open Source Community

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 157 criteria, which we grouped into three high-level buckets:

· Current offering. To assess product strength, we evaluated each offering against four groups of criteria: architecture, development environment, and functional and operational capabilities.

· Strategy. We reviewed each vendor’s strategy and considered how well each vendor’s plans for product enhancement position it to meet future customer demands. We also looked at the financial and human resources the company has available to support its strategy, and its go-to-market pricing and licensing strategy.

· Market presence. To establish a product’s market presence, we combined information about each vendor’s financial performance, installed customer base and number of employees across major geographical regions, partnership ecosystem, as well as horizontal and vertical industry applications.

Another key long-term predictor that we use to judge the staying power of an open source software project is the vitality and size of the community that has grown up around it. It’s the community that drives new innovations into a project, tests early releases, provides feedback, and is often the source of new project committers. To determine the vitality of each project’s community, we combined information about communication mechanisms and bandwidth, downloads, number of committers, project road map, and community structure.

Evaluated Vendors Must Meet Architecture, Functionality, And Scalability Criteria

Forrester included seven vendors and open source projects in the assessment: Actuate BIRT, Eclipse BIRT, Jaspersoft Community, Jaspersoft Enterprise, Pentaho BI Suite Community Edition, Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition, and SpagoBI. Each of these vendors has variations between community and commercial editions (see Figure 3):

· At least three out of the four major functional BI components. We only included vendors that have at least three of the following major components that are necessary for large enterprise BI environments: production/operational reporting, ad hoc querying, OLAP, and dashboards.

· The ability to query databases using SQL and/or MDX. While other querying technologies such as XQuery and DMX are available, SQL and MDX are used most widely in large enterprises.



7

· A self-contained, complete, fully functioning BI environment. We focused on generic BI tools, not technologically or functionally tied or limited to particular functional/horizontal applications (ERP, SCM, etc.). These tools must be self-contained, complete BI environments or platforms that do not necessarily have to be embedded in other applications. Community editions of the open source projects, which often provide mostly components, rather than full suites, are an exception to this rule.

· Sufficient market presence and interest from Forrester clients. We included vendors with at least 80 in-production customers present in more than one major geographical region, with more than 10% enterprise-grade, cross-line-of-business installations with more than 100 users. We also focused on vendors Forrester clients frequently mention or ask about in the context of BI.

Figure 3 Evaluated vendors: Product Information And Selection criteria

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Vendor

Actuate

Actuate

Jaspersoft

Jaspersoft

Pentaho

Pentaho

SpagoBI

Product(s) evaluated

Actuate BIRT

Eclipse BIRT

Jaspersoft BI Community

Jaspersoft BI Enterprise

Pentaho BI Suite Community Edition

Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition

SpagoBI

Product versionevaluated

11

2.6

3.7

3.7

3.5

3.6

2.5

Versionrelease date

July 2010

June 2010

January 2010

January 2010

August 2009

June 2010

April 2010

Vendor selection criteria

At least three out of the four major functional business intelligence (BI) components. Vendors must have at least three of the following major components that are at the very least necessary for large enterprise BI environments: production/operational reporting, ad hoc querying, OLAP, and dashboards.

The ability to query databases using SQL and/or MDX. While other querying technologies such as XQuery and DMX are available, SQL and MDX are used most widely in large enterprises.

A self-contained, complete, fully functioning BI environment. We focused on generic BI tools, not technologically or functionally tied or limited to particular functional/horizontal applications (ERP, SCM, etc.). These tools must be self-contained, complete BI environments or platforms that do not have to be necessarily embedded in other applications. Community editions of the open source projects, which often provide mostly components, rather than full suites, are an exception to this rule.

Sufficient market presence and interest from Forrester clients. We included vendors with at least 80 in-production customers present in more than one major geographical region, with more than 10% enterprise-grade, cross-line-of-business installations with more than 100 users. We also focused on vendors Forrester clients frequently mention or ask about in the context of BI.



8

OPEn SOuRCE BI CHOICES DIFFER VAStLy By VEnDORS AnD EDItIOnS

The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 4):

· Actuate BIRT leads the pack. This is a prime example where one needs to clearly understand what they are getting, as Actuate cannot really be directly compared with the other vendors in this Forrester Wave. As we mentioned earlier, other than a few basic reporting components from the Eclipse BIRT — the community edition of the product — Actuate BIRT is mostly a commercial offering. Also, Actuate BIRT is a “traditional” or “pure play” (reporting, analytics, and dashboards only) BI suite that does not offer advanced analytics, and it only offers limited data integration functionality. But BIRT’s advanced and highly interactive reporting functionality, made highly scalable and function-rich with Actuate commercial extensions, propel Actuate BIRT to the leadership position. Actuate is also expanding its offering into end-to-end document management (or ILM — information life-cycle management) capabilities. Producing reports often starts a report life cycle, where a report needs to be distributed, stored, secured, and archived. With that approach in mind, Actuate acquired Xenos and is currently integrating Actuate’s and Xenos’ document management capabilities.

· Jaspersoft Enterprise, SpagoBI, and Pentaho (both editions) offer competitive options. These vendors don’t just offer competitive options. Unlike Actuate BIRT, they offer nearly fully functional broad BI suites that include reporting, OLAP, data visualization, dashboards, and data integration functionality. Rather than comparing them with Actuate BIRT, a much better comparison is to leading commercial source full BI suites from vendors like IBM, Information Builders, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and SAS. While Jaspersoft, Pentaho, and SpagoBI still do not stack up, feature by feature, to these larger, much more mature commercial vendor offerings, ask yourself whether you actually need all of the bells and whistles of BI. In conversations with BI customers, Forrester consistently finds that only some requested BI features are used often, while all requested BI features get used very seldom. So if your IT culture calls for an 80/20 rule (where 80% of requested functionality is mostly good enough) and your budget is limited — sure, Jaspersoft, Pentaho, and SpagoBI offer very respectable options.

· Eclipse BIRT and Jaspersoft Community editions lack enterprise BI suite functionality. These community editions of open source projects cannot really stand on their own as enterprise BI suite platforms or solutions; however, you may still get lots of mileage out of them. These community editions especially attract developers, as the source code is freely available. Access to source code that makes the software easy to embed in other software solutions, and lower variable costs (no need to renegotiate royalties for each copy they ship), also makes it popular with ISVs for embedding BI functionality into other enterprise applications. Additionally, OSS has become increasingly popular with SIs when requiring software to win a deal without the headache of dealing with packaged applications, or as a differentiator from competition. And for enterprise buyers, if you have a tech-savvy IT department and struggle with a BI buy-versus-build decision, Eclipse BIRT and Jaspersoft components may just be the right answer for a compromise best-of-breed solution.



9

This evaluation of the open source BI market is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage readers to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

Figure 4 Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence, Q3 ‘10


Go online to download

the Forrester Wave tool

for more detailed product

evaluations, feature

comparisons, and

customizable rankings.

Risky Bets Contenders Leaders

Strong Performers

Strategy Weak Strong

Currentoffering

Weak

Strong

Market presence

Actuate BIRT

Eclipse BIRTJaspersoft Community

JaspersoftEnterprise

Pentaho Community

PentahoEnterprise

SpagoBI



10

Figure 4 Forrester Wave™: Open Source Business Intelligence, Q3 ’10 (cont.)


Act

uate

BIR

T

Eclip

se B

IRT

Jasp

erso

ft C

omm

unit

y

Jasp

erso

ft E

nter

pris

e

Pent

aho

Com

mun

ity

Pent

aho

Ente

rpris

e

Spag

oBI

CURRENT OFFERING Architecture Development Functional Operational Open source community

STRATEGY Commitment License Multiple sources Public road map Governance Expanding adoption Development plan New features Pricing and licensing Product direction

MARKET PRESENCE Company financials Global presence Partnership ecosystem Installed base Functional applications Product ecosystem Training and publications User adoption/downloads Vendor adoption Commercial support Ubiquity

3.423.284.252.883.054.26

4.314.205.005.005.005.005.003.004.003.204.00

3.122.204.502.001.301.405.002.405.005.003.005.00

Forr

este

r’sW

eigh

ting

50%25%20%30%15%10%

50%30%

5%5%5%

10%5%5%

10%0%

25%

0%20%15%

5%15%

5%5%

10%10%

5%5%5%

1.691.262.351.430.324.26

4.314.205.005.005.005.005.003.004.003.204.00

3.273.104.502.001.301.405.002.405.004.403.005.00

1.501.542.000.540.844.27

3.923.405.003.002.005.005.005.004.004.144.00

2.971.504.002.002.601.803.002.405.005.003.004.00

2.612.353.052.311.954.27

3.923.405.003.002.005.005.005.004.004.144.00

2.971.504.002.002.601.803.002.405.005.003.004.00

2.012.222.401.620.843.63

3.693.803.003.005.003.003.003.004.003.844.00

2.961.504.002.002.300.003.003.405.004.405.003.00

2.542.373.102.122.213.63

3.693.803.003.005.003.003.003.004.003.744.00

2.961.504.002.002.300.003.003.405.004.405.003.00

2.602.223.052.422.653.08

3.714.203.003.005.001.003.005.004.004.604.00

1.612.202.001.001.001.000.002.701.000.003.002.00

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).



11

VEnDOR PROFILES

Other than Actuate, with its long history of commercial source BI experience, Forrester did not uncover any other Leaders in the space. This finding is a testament to the fact that open source BI is still an evolving market, with multiple opportunities for existing vendors to grow and newcomers to take advantage of existing functionality gaps and opportunities.

Leaders

· Actuate BIRT inherits the Actuate legacy of large-scale production reporting. If all you are looking for is traditional, pure-play BI application (that mostly relies on other vendors for data integration) and highly scalable and function-rich reporting functionality, Actuate BIRT is the right option. Actuate leveraged technology and experience from its commercial source products such as eReports and iServer in Actuate BIRT. As a result, Actuate BIRT reports can be used for mass (millions) report distribution and for highly complex (with scalability and load balancing challenges) BI applications like interactive online customer statements. In the most recent edition, Actuate also added BIRT Data Objects, which can be used for disk- or memory-based OLAP-style analysis. But you will have to rely on other vendors for broader BI capabilities such as ETL, data quality, or advanced analytics. Actuate is also investing heavily into mobile BI with BIRT iPhone application and BIRT Mobile virtual appliance, which can deliver BIRT content to most popular mobile devices. Additionally, as BIRT is part of the Eclipse project, Actuate BIRT is also highly attractive to developers using Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Strong Performers

Vendors in these categories offer real competition to commercial, closed source BI suites. While Forrester rarely sees Jaspersoft Enterprise, Pentaho (both editions), and SpagoBI in competitive situations against each other, we do find them competing with and sometimes replacing more expensive and more complex closed source BI platforms and suites.

· Jaspersoft Enterprise offers an open source BI suite with the broadest range of capabilities. Forrester evaluation and customers we spoke with find JasperReports comparable to BIRT in terms of scalability and richness of functionality. Jaspersoft also owns and controls its JasperReports and iReport tools for core reporting and JasperServer for the repository, security, dashboarding, ad hoc, and in-memory data analysis capabilities. But Jaspersoft also uses best-of-breed components from other vendors and open source projects, and that approach carries a price. For example, Jaspersoft OEMs Talend, a leading open source ETL and data quality vendor. It integrates R, an increasingly popular advanced analytics development environment, offering a respectable alternative to SAS and IBM SPSS. It also integrates Mondrian (JasperAnalysis) for OLAP, in addition to its own in-memory analysis offering, JasperServer.

As a result, while Jaspersoft offers a BI suite that has the fullest and broadest capabilities among the open source BI competitors, it does not own or fully control some of the key BI components,



12

which may make it more challenging for Jaspersoft to provide tighter cross-product integration or influence product road maps.

· SpagoBI is the only full BI suite that is entirely available in the community edition. SpagoBI takes a different approach from Jaspersoft and Pentaho by leveraging its legacy and experience from OW2 — open source middleware and application integration experience. Until recent releases, rather than building or controlling major BI components, SpagoBI leveraged what came for free from the most popular community edition projects and provided its own integration. For example, the vendor offers integration with Talend ETL, Mondrian and Palo OLAP engines, BIRT and JasperReports for reporting, and Weka for data mining. In the latest releases, however, SpagoBI also began to provide some of its own components, such as a KPI engine, QbE engine, Smart Filters, geospatial analytics GEO and GIS engines, and finally a composite document engine that can pull objects from multiple sources and multiple tools into a single dashboard.

SpagoBI also offers open source integration components for commercial BI products so that its customers could enjoy a more seamless experience from multiple open source and commercial BI products. Also, SpagoBI’s real strength comes from consulting and systems integration. Unlike the other vendors in this Forrester Wave evaluation that only offer basic software support services, SpagoBI’s parent company, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica, employs a few thousand consultants, more than 100 of whom focus specifically on BI. The company offers a wide range of BI strategy, architecture, system integration, and other management consulting services.

· Pentaho Enterprise offers an open source BI suite with nearly full control of components. Contrary to Jaspersoft, Pentaho does control most of the open source projects that comprise its BI suite: reporting based on JFreeReports (converted more than four years ago and now known as Pentaho Reporting); ETL based on Kettle; OLAP based on Mondrian (with a GUI based on JPivot and a more interactive component that it recently licensed from Lucidera); and advanced analytics based on Weka. Jaspersoft and Pentaho are also the only open source BI vendors (also with close to no competition in this functionality in the commercial closed source BI world) that have recently announced plans to provide integration with Hadoop, which can potentially address some of the scalability issues of open source BI tools and perhaps even leapfrog its competition in terms of scalability.

While Pentaho ETL may not be as fully functional as Jaspersoft ETL (powered by Talend), Weka may not have as many advanced analytics functions as R, and Pentaho reports may not be as function-rich as JasperReports, the entire platform is more integrated, offering the additional benefit of easier impact and data lineage analysis, and application debugging. For those enterprises that favor integration over specific functionality, Pentaho Enterprise may be the right choice.



13

· Pentaho Community is a capable project, but it needs more visibility. Pentaho Community is much more closely aligned to Pentaho as a company than other open source projects, like Eclipse BIRT, for example. As such, it has a smaller team of core committers and not as much visibility. But that doesn’t mean that the core Pentaho BI project isn’t capable; in particular, the inclusion of the Mondrian server makes Pentaho Community particularly well suited to scenarios where OLAP capabilities are needed. The Pentaho BI project also does a good job at providing visibility into future versions of the project and the direction the committers plan to pursue. Pentaho community is a good choice for organizations that are willing to dig a bit deeper into the Web to find the materials needed to get up to speed and that are not that interested in Eclipse integration, but rather in using other Java clients or in the deployment of solutions in a Web context.

Contenders

Some of the pure open source versions of the BI products that we looked at may not be ready to go toe to toe with the major commercial vendors on a feature-per-feature comparison, but that’s not really the point. The real question is: Are these community solutions “good enough” to meet the needs of individual project teams and BI initiatives? Sometimes basic functionality is enough — and in this case, the price is certainly right.

· Eclipse BIRT benefits from the strength of two established communities. As noted above, BIRT benefits from Actuate’s lengthy history of product investments in a core set of technologies that make up the core BIRT libraries. But equally important is BIRT’s status as a popular top-level Eclipse project, embraced not just by Actuate but other top-tier ISVs, including IBM, InetSoft, and Innovent Solutions. And BIRT’s integration into the popular Eclipse IDE makes it particularly well suited for rich client applications based on the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). Extensive online resources are available to developers looking to integrate one or more BIRT subsystems into their applications, and it’s easy to find online code examples of how this is done.

· Jaspersoft Community is a well-established project with multiple capabilities. Jaspersoft Community uses its own components as well as best-of-breed components from other vendors and open source projects, which creates a broadly based but loosely focused community. Jaspersoft iReport and JasperReports projects are based on large communities and usage profiles. Furthermore, Jaspersoft Community’s use of the Talend project for ETL makes it particularly well suited to projects where integration with company proprietary data formats is needed — teams can simply write dedicated cartridges to access the required data. Integration of R and Mondrian adds statistical and OLAP capabilities, making Jaspersoft Community a good starting point for teams that need to provide a broad base of capabilities to a BI user community.



14

SuPPLEMEntAL MAtERIAL

Online Resource

The online version of Figure 4 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product evaluations and customizable rankings.

Data Sources used In this Forrester Wave

Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each solution:

· Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.

· Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their product’s functionality. We used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor’s product capabilities.

· Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted reference calls with two of each vendor’s current customers.

the Forrester Wave Methodology

We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires, demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.

We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based on a clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.



15

EnDnOtES1 Adoption rates vary by region and company size, but a consistent increase in interest points to a second

wave of OSS adoption, this time led by mainstream development organizations. See the April 7, 2009, “Open Source Software Goes Mainstream” report.

2 During the past decade, OSS has become a force for change that development shops can no longer afford to ignore. In the early days of the free software movement, it was easy to view open source proponents as long-haired barbarians at the gates of enterprise IT software, but it’s getting increasingly hard to find an enterprise application platform vendor that is not incorporating OSS into its enterprise software strategy. See the February 2, 2009, “Best Practices: Improve Development Effectiveness Through Strategic Adoption Of Open Source” report.

3 An open source project committer is someone who has authority and permission to modify the source code. Typically, it’s one of the original code developers or someone who’s been authorized by other committers.

4 Getting better insight from information based on richer data sets, more complex models, or even making the same decisions as everyone else but before everyone else makes them — this is how most advanced enterprises compete in today’s world. BI tools and technologies form the major components of the foundation that supports and enables such competitive differentiation. In Forrester’s Q3 2008 151-criterion evaluation of enterprise BI platform vendors, we found that IBM Cognos and SAP BusinessObjects maintain their leadership positions, while Oracle and SAS Institute move into leadership positions in enterprise BI thanks to the richness of their functionality, ability to scale, and the completeness of their corporate and product vision and strategy. See the July 31, 2008, “The Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Business Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2008” report.






Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR)

is an independent research company

that provides pragmatic and forward-

thinking advice to global leaders in

business and technology. Forrester

works with professionals in 19 key roles

at major companies providing

proprietary research, customer insight,

consulting, events, and peer-to-peer

executive programs. For more than 27

years, Forrester has been making IT,

marketing, and technology industry

leaders successful every day. For more

information, visit www.forrester.com.

Headquarters

Forrester Research, Inc.

400 Technology Square

Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

Tel: +1 617.613.6000

Fax: +1 617.613.5000

Email: [email protected]

Nasdaq symbol: FORR

www.forrester.com

m a k i n g l e a d e r s S u c c e s s f u l E v e r y D a y

46490

For information on hard-copy or electronic reprints, please contact Client Support

at +1 866.367.7378, +1 617.613.5730, or [email protected].

We offer quantity discounts and special pricing for academic and nonprofit institutions.

For a complete list of worldwide locationsvisit www.forrester.com/about.

Research and Sales Offices

Forrester has research centers and sales offices in more than 27 cities

internationally, including Amsterdam; Cambridge, Mass.; Dallas; Dubai;

Foster City, Calif.; Frankfurt; London; Madrid; Sydney; Tel Aviv; and Toronto.

www.forrester.com

mailto:[email protected]