Open Source BI Sometimes the best things in life ARE free! Dan Peacock Auto-Wares, Inc. danp@autowares.com
Agenda Introduction What is Open Source BI Opportunities and challenges of Open source BI A little bit of mythbusting Open Source BI at Auto-wares Demo
A Few Introductions Who is this Dan guy anyway? Thirteen years working with data warehousing and BI, both proprietary and open source tools What is Auto-wares Aftermarket Auto parts wholesaler and retailer Distribution centers in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois Over 100 retail stores and repair centers
What is Open Source BI Source code is freely available and modifiable to suit your needs Tools that provide the common BI functionality (ETL, Reporting, Dashboards, Data Mining) Strong community support Commercially supported at prices much lower than proprietary vendors
Open Source Opportunities Lower operational costs Community supported editions are free Enterprise editions are typically based on a subscription model Flexible implementation options Scale from embedded implementations to clustered solutions Rich feature set and if something is missing you can create it yourself
Open Source BI Challenges Everything is built from the ground up But it's done the way you want it, not the way the vendor wants it Forging your own path to success Not a lot of consultants that are well versed in Open Source BI, but that's rapidly changing Free editions often lack features EE editions have Overcoming misconceptions about Open Source software
Mythbusting Open Source BI Myth: You get what you pay for Truth: No correlation has been shown between the amount spent on licenses and the benefits provided Myth: Proprietary BI has been proven in thousands of customer implementations. You don t want to risk failure by using open source BI Truth: Failure in any BI implementation is rarely attributed to the software. Typically, BI projects fail due to lack of training, lack of executive support, an poor communication between IT and the business users.
Mythbusting Open Source BI Myth: Open Source software isn't as secure Truth: The truth is that Open Source software supports all the latest security standards and is as secure as you want to make it. (Really laughable when it comes from certain monopolistic companies)
Mythbusting Open Source BI Myth: Open Source BI 'isn't ready for prime time' and doesn't have all the features of proprietary solutions. Truth: Open source solutions exist for all of the defined functions of a BI solution from databases, ETL tools, dashboards, reporting, and Data mining. Not all proprietary vendors can claim that.
Mythbusting Open Source BI Myth: Open Source support and development is done be people in their 'spare time' and just isn't as reliable Truth: While not all open source vendors have dedicated engineers for development and support, several do and it is just as good if not better than proprietary vendors. Several proprietary vendors (Oracle included) have Open Source offerings.
Open Source BI Vendors Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.org) JasperSoft (http://www.jaspersoft.com) BIRT (http://www.eclipse.org/birt for community edition; http://www.actuate.com/home/ for commercially supported edition) Yellowfin (http://www.yellowfinbi.com) And more...
Open Source BI at Auto-wares Data challenges Silos of data across multiple database platforms No End to End view Design Considerations Start with high level Executive dashboards One place to get information
Open Source BI at Auto-wares Open Source OS (RHEL/Ubuntu) Oracle 11R2 for repository and data warehouse Pentaho BI Server (Enterprise Edition) Tomcat web servers
Demonstration
Conclusions Open Source BI is a viable means of implementing a BI strategy Savings in license fees can be invested in training (an area usually lacking in many BI deployments) or other value added areas Don't believe the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) but don't ignore the warnings either