Open source solutions started out as shiny, new playthings for the academic techno crowd. Why? They were fun, innovative, and most importantly, free. No one would have considered using them in any real world corporate IT shops. … My, but times have changed. Today, open source solutions are not only being considered, they are being implemented by large and small enterprises at increasing rates. Here are a few reasons:

Shrinking IT departments – While large companies are seeing their IT resources get downsized, mid-sized companies have very little IT “fat” to remove. Even so, given today’s economic downturn, these companies are trying to reduce their IT staff wherever possible. While these IT departments were never very large to begin with, they are now being asked to do much more with many fewer resources. They need all the help and inexpensive technology they can get.

Reduced budgets – Funding for IT is under severe scrutiny now. While BI still remains the number one initiative for most enterprises, CIOs are struggling to find the funding for these projects. Outsourcing, budget cutbacks, spending freezes are all in play. The ability to fund the purchase of necessary BI technology is becoming increasingly difficult. Again, the availability of free BI software is quite attractive.

Minimal tolerance for trial and error projects – Gone are the days when the business would give IT some funding and leeway to see if something “might work.” Testing BI technologies or potential applications was a useful way for IT to learn what worked and what didn’t, but it was also fairly expensive. The ability to test whether a technology might work was quite limited; implementers either had to buy the technology outright or get a limited time license that may have been too short for a proper trial.

What started out as a group of developers who were fed up with proprietary software practices has grown into a full-fledged sophisticated community with standards, codes of conduct, rules, and formal procedures for what constitutes open source products. The road to this end is still not finished, and there are still those who doubt the longevity of open source offerings but overall, it has grained traction in the BI industry.

Benefits of Open Source Software

What draws people to open source offerings (OSS)? There are a number of benefits established for OSS:

• Price! Given the cutbacks occurring today, you can see why the fact that open source BI is free is perhaps the most compelling benefit – you don’t need to justify significant upfront fees before you even get started with a BI project. Instead, you download the software, begin building a prototype of a BI application, and demonstrate it to the business community, long before you have to fork over a single dime to a software company. You can try before you buy. Of course, most OSS vendors have commercial open source offerings as well which are often priced below products from proprietary vendors. These offerings usually include more features, functions, or extended professional services support beyond what is available for free.
• The expanding open source BI ecosystem. Over the past several years we have seen the emergence of open source products for the full BI stack. This expanding ecosystem signals the start of the mainstreaming of open source in the BI market. This is good news for IT implementers since open source vendors must work together to ensure interoperability and offer joint solutions to simplify deployment and operations.
• The open source community has grown to a significant size – and it is really active. The combination of a lower cost of production with the freedom and flexibility prevalent in open source deployments has been driving both adoption and production. The yin of BI software commoditization and the yang of demands for lowered costs of ownership have created a good opportunity for open source software and the open source community. If you adopt open source, you should also become active in the open source community.

Considerations in Adopting BI Open Source Software

What we have seen are four models of deployment for companies adopting OSS offerings:

• Coexistence with traditional proprietary BI technologies. IT resources should do their due diligence and prove the fit of the technology and services with their internal environment.
• Co-deployment with traditional proprietary BI technologies. IT implementers should do their due diligence and prove the fit of open source BI technology and services within their existing BI architecture and technical environment.
• Replacement of traditional proprietary BI technologies. Many enterprises justify this move due to the need to upgrade their BI capabilities, reduce their overall costs, expand into new areas of the organization, etc.
• New installations.One of the advantages of open source is the ability to quickly and easily download software and get started – with no upfront cost.

An obvious consideration must be your IT department’s stance on open source. If there is push back on its adoption, you can always point out that open source is everywhere. If you use TiVO, Google, YouTube, or even a cell phone, you have experience with open source. Many enterprises use Linux, Apache, or Firefox – all of which are open source solutions.

A final consideration concerns the question of support from your existing IT team for the open source BI capability. Of concern is whether the existing skills of the IT implementation team will transfer to an open source offering. For example, if a programmer/analyst is already versant in similar software, then the transition from one environment to another is relatively straightforward. Of course, the BI OSS vendors all offer training but it is important to understand that many of the skills used in BI environments today are easily transferable to the open source environment.

Take a look at these innovative and cost-effective solutions. Determine your company’s needs, its acceptance of open source, the specific features and functions of such a comprehensive offering, and come to your own conclusions about its fit for your BI environment.

Author

Claudia Imhoff, Ph.D. is the President and Founder of Intelligent Solutions, Inc. and the Boulder BI Brain Trust. As a thought leader and practitioner in the rapidly growing field of business intelligence, Claudia is a popular and dynamic speaker on business intelligence and the infrastructure to support these initiatives. She is the President and Founder of Intelligent Solutions, Inc., a data warehousing and BI consultancy.  She has co-authored five books on these topics and writes articles and research papers (totaling more than 100) for technical and business magazines. She has served as an expert on DW and BI for several media companies. Dr. Imhoff was chosen by the DAMA organizations to receive the 1999 and 2005 Individual Achievement Awards. She is an advisor for and was bestowed the title of Fellow of the Data Warehousing Institute.

The Boulder BI Brain Trust is a consortium of independent analysts and consultants dedicated to furthering business intelligence.