If you think the open source model is mainstream only within the application servers and operating systems space, think again. With organisations increasingly preferring remotely managed application suites over a traditional and physical IT infrastructure, open source Business Intelligence (BI) tools are being adopted thick and fast.

Gartner predicts that the number of businesses using open source BI tools will grow five-fold by 2012.

The information technology research and advisory company insists that open source BI tools are becoming a mainstream deployment option for all kinds of BI usage even though its functionality is not yet on a par with large commercial platforms and open source is still rarely seen as an business-wide BI standard.

At a Gartner Business Intelligence Summit 2010 in February, Andreas Bitterer, research vice president, Gartner said: “Open-source BI has seen an interesting adoption pattern over the last few years. Hardly any organisation looked at open-source BI until 2004, let alone deployed it to a significant number of users, but this submarket has developed nicely, with consistent growth rates over the last few years.”

Business intelligence – the skills, processes, technologies, applications and practices used to support decision-making software – has been popular since the early 1990s and has been dominated by large players, including IBM and Oracle, and specialised vendors like SAS, Cognos, Business Objects and Hyperion.

Analysis tools

With the upward trends of “open-information” within the sector, professionals have been able to use a collection of open source tools to analyse business data such as competition, sales records and business development.

Open source BI tools allow info pros to visualise and analyse data or complex data sets and perform standard enterprise reporting through their desktops, avoiding the need for huge servers. They help professionals bring actionable intelligence to their business strategies and operations through data warehouse integration, analytics, and performance management services.

Open source penetration in information delivery is deeper than expected due to its lower costs, but to maintain this momentum BI applications must remain simple, with a non-technical, user-friendly interface. While companies may continue to use proprietary vendors for primary BI functions, they will adopt open source systems for other information activities such as dealing with dashboards or statistics or even customer interaction.

Gartner notes that although the average size deal for an open-source BI contract remains approximately $30,000 (£19,130) for a yearly subscription, some contracts repeatedly exceed $500,000 (£390,000) for a multi-year support subscription.

Organisations pushing open-source BI adoption often come from different vertical industries to those of the mainstream commercial vendors. While the latter claim deployments in every industry, flagship implementations are typically in financial and telecoms. Open source is, generally, more visible in price-continuous middle sized companies, as well as in government and the public sector, healthcare or manufacturing, and organisations with smaller budgets.

Growth in open source take-up comes largely from the vendors’ original equipment manufacturer business, which cannot be properly sized, as many independent software vendors simply use the downloadable version of the open source BI product to give additional functionality in their own applications. In addition, system integrators have started to build practices around open-source technology, and are implementing BI platforms (mostly reports and dashboards) as part of the contracted solution.

“As you might imagine, the increasing open-source traction has not gone unnoticed by the commercial vendors. While often dismissed as being no competition, even the large established BI vendors have come up with counter measures to address the challenges from the lower-cost competitors,” said Bitterer.

Lower cost model

Open source certainly wins points for being a lower-cost model, particularly when the economy looks grim. Another Gartner survey of chief information officers found that CIOs rated 2010 as another tough year with just 6% expecting growth, 41% predicting business contraction, and 53% foreseeing stabilisation.

These information officers have put BI projects and database licenses on hold because traditional vendors are expensive. Now they can create their own BI system by deploying open source databases, data integration applications and reporting tools to support BI activities. Even though these are not completely stand-alone resources performing all functions, they meet 80% of info pros’ BI requirements.

Anthony Deighton is senior vice president at QlikTech, a company in the in-memory BI space which works on the premise that meaningful analysis belongs in the hands of the users who need the information. “Open source could be extremely valuable to companies,” he points out.

QlikView’s product range is designed to deliver immediate business answers and enable users to explore their data without limits. Unlike traditional BI, QlikView can deliver value with payback measured in days or weeks rather than months or years. It can be deployed on premises, in the cloud, or on a laptop or mobile device – from a single user to the largest global enterprise. QlikView found a place in the “Challenger” quadrant of Gartner’s 2010 BI platforms Magic Quadrant.

Surf and save

Analysts say organisations are rapidly embracing the idea of providing data to end users and giving them the ability to navigate and visualise data in a “surf and save” mode as an alternative to report-only architecture. Threatened by the success of these suppliers, traditional BI platform vendors are attempting to imitate them with easy-to-use interactive visualisation alternatives, often incorporating in-memory technology.

This imitation, coupled with a growing recognition by user organisations that data discovery tools can be used as full-functioned BI platforms for a broader range of BI platform capabilities, illustrates the positive trend of open BI resources.

If traditional BI tools brought stability, maturity and consistency, open source bring cost benefits, simplicity and easy adoption. Besides, third party system integrators are willing to provide 24/7 technical supports, and open source commercial companies like JasperSoft and Pentaho are addressing other shortcomings.

Open source BI is close to becoming a mature mainstream option, suitable for complicated activities such as interactive analysis and ad hoc queries. Professionals who adopt early will reap the benefits when the economy gets back in shape.

http://www.pcw.co.uk/information-world-review/analysis/2259079/open-business