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Data Mining & Business Intelligence >> Open for Business
2/1/2007
The UC Press IT team had been looking for a reporting solution for some time before it turned to open source. Says Brenneman: “Not surprisingly, we have a constant drumbeat of requests for reporting from management, and while previously that need was met with periodic reporting that included sales and transaction data, etcetera, it has become very clear to us that what senior management needs is transparency—real-time transparency—to the data that drives our business.”
In IT shops that have some development expertise, open source BI can provide some interesting new options in addition to lower price tags, points out Joseph di Paolantonio, a Montara, CA, technology consultant. He recalls the case of an IT staffer at a school whose administrators wanted a program to analyze financial aid data, and needed the software right away. Unfortunately, IT had virtually no funds to purchase the application. But the staffer discovered that his team could simply download Palo, an open source, online analytical processing (OLAP) system—essentially a multi-dimensional analytical plug-in for Excel—and have it up and running within a week.
Compare that with trying out one of the established BI names, di Paolantonio says, where you can only work with sample data. With Palo and most open source systems, “you can download any of these projects and just start using them; start your prototyping,” he maintains. If the prototype goes well, you can decide either to purchase a license (many of the private companies that act as stewards of these open source systems sell enterprise versions that include more heavily tested software and smoother functionality), or a contract for support.
Brenneman at the UC Press sees another flexibility advantage, as well. “Obviously, by not being dependent on proprietary technology, we have more latitude when it comes to potential vendors and potential service providers, which gives us greater leverage on pricing,” he says. Open source also makes it easy to work with a variety of different sources of software and data, he adds.
A free download doesn’t mean the whole system is free, however. Often, an open source provider will have a free version available for download and a more feature-rich version (including some proprietary software) available for license. Licenses for open source BI still cost money, although typically they cost only 10 to 20 percent of what a commercial BI developer would charge for proprietary software, open source providers say, and there’s no large recurring fee. (Importantly, some commercial providers do “open source” their code; the distinction here is between proprietary and open source software, whether it is commercial or not.)
On the other hand, the cost of support can still be an issue. Some CIOs reportedly have shied away from adopting an open source program, fearing that free software may turn out to be something like adopting a “free” puppy. Others with experience insist that support is generally available at costs comparable to that of support for a conventional software system. Stephen at NU says that in fact, this was a key selling point for her CIO when the school decided to begin using JasperSoft applications.
Such support can be offered either by a company that licenses the full version of the software, or by an independent consulting service. At JasperSoft, for instance, support is available for free via the vendor’s online newsgroups, or by contract. Stephen puts it this way: “You can stand in line for the city bus and then ride with the commoners, if you will, or you can get a little more handholding.”
Finally, there is what Eric Gamazon, development manager at the UC Press, calls the “intellectual” cost of using open source BI, since typically the tools take some time for the IT team to learn to use and to modify. “You have to go through the documentation and understand it, but once you have, there’s true ease of use and flexibility.”
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