MM

Michael M.

Vice President | WSO Product Execution

Information Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

9/11/2014

"Pentaho Rocks!"

5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

Using Pentaho Business Integration tools was far easier than I expected. Taking a terabyte of public information and extracting, transforming and loading it into our own data store for quick reporting took less time than we expected saving both our sanity and our labor costs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

There is not much to dislike. I think the tools are not exactly intuitive to use but within an hour we had the "aha" moment where it all made sense and we could begin to see the fruits of our eforts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Pentaho:

Give Pentaho a try, you won't be sorry! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Pentaho solving and how is that benefiting you?

We were taking a bucketful of public data (that changes monthly) and creating a process to extract it, filter and transform it to our needs, and quickly load it into our own data stores. This process would have take us weeks in the past and tweaking the transformations would be tortuous. With Pentaho we could preview the results in seconds and make changes in minutes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AO

Adam O.

OpenERP Software Implementation Engineer

Information Technology and Services

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5/28/2014

"I use Pentaho for reports within OpenERP and I love it!"

5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

I like the easy to use report designer and the integration with OpenERP. It definitely requires technical savvy to set up but it is very easy to use once it is. I like that you can parameterize your reports to give clients that ability to filter through data as they would like to see it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

The designer is a bit buggy on my Windows 7 machine. I may have the incorrect Java version or it could be a conflicting setting on my machine but that has been frustrating. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Pentaho:

If you are considering Crystal Reports or some other popular report writing software, have a look at the trial version of Pentaho. If you're a techy, then you can easily set it up, install the designer and integrate with OpenERP, JDBC and many other popular platforms. There are many ways to connect to your data and the parameterized reporting feature works pretty well and is very helpful. I also like the SQL query builder in the report writer and use it extensively. If you are not a coder or don't know SQL, you can also build your reports using the data object functionality to accomplish much. I love the trial version and here that the paid version for Analytics and Business Intelligence is amazing. I cannot wait to try that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Pentaho solving and how is that benefiting you?

I needed to run reports across multiple data models in OpenERP and wasn't able to do it with out Pentaho. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AC

Amey C.

Data Engineer

Consumer Electronics

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

5/28/2014

"Pentaho for Data Migration"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

I loved the Spoon product of Pentaho. It has lot's of possible data sources ready to use, including mongodb, redshift etc. Also you can create your own adapters using Java. This ETL tool is really fast and it's community edition is free.

You can even write you own script to pull data from social media and combine with relational data. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

There is minimal logging provided out of the box. You need to find some work around to get the logging in place. I didn't like the reporting portion of it. Looks out of date and needs better visualizations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Pentaho:

If you are looking for a low cost, customizable ETL tool, Pentaho is the right choice. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Pentaho solving and how is that benefiting you?

I used Pentaho to move huge amount of production data from one DBMS to another in very short time frame. It was really fast and could work seamlessly with different DBMS at the same time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JB

John B.

Business Intelligence Analyst

Internet

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

5/20/2014

"Probably the best all in one tool on the market"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

The easy to use client tools, multiple out-of-the-box database connections, and simple integration is most notable about this product. Also, it is great for dynamic data-sources and ETL jobs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

The administration portion could use some work, currently there is no functionality for the user to change their own password, only an administrator role can do that. Also, using a Mondrian schema directly into a Mongo source is not available, currently we would have to manipulate the data into a relational database in regards to Mondrian schema. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Pentaho:

It will be the best investment you ever made. We broke even on it's cost in year one and continue to optimize through our partnerships. We have also added value to our product by offering reporting to our clients. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Pentaho solving and how is that benefiting you?

We have found hundreds of uses for this tool. From a client CRM, to real-time business metrics, to campaign optimizations, and even as a reporting solution for our clients and vendors (who barter services with us now).

Executives get important top line data in real time, even on their phones; managers now manage instead of putting together excel reports to answer their questions; and the tech team works on several priority tasks instead of wasting time pulling raw data for analysts. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

JS

Jonathan S.

Practice Leader of Enterprise Architecture

Information Technology and Services

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

9/14/2014

"I used this product to control the loading of an Enterprise Data Warehouse"

4/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

Speed of development and ease of use were the highlights. We were able to use a metadata repository to generate the packages. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

This is a hard question to answer because we were very satisfied with our experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Pentaho:

Do not be afraid to try it. The ETL product works well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Pentaho solving and how is that benefiting you?

We needed a low cost alternative to a major ETL product we were using. We found that we could replace our previous tool and generate new work at a much faster pace with higher quality using Pentaho. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AI

Verified User in Information Technology and Services

5/12/2014

"Decent ETL for 0 cost"

4/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

It's open source, very good for small to medium (volume/complexity) processes, simple. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

It's java based, runs locally (where you have the designer interface), post-SQL transformations are not straightforward. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Pentaho:

There's a reason the big ETL tools have a reputation and a price tag associated with. If you need something small and easy to implement, I would highly recommend Pentaho, but I'm not sure how scalable it'll be. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Pentaho solving and how is that benefiting you?

The main issues solved with this tool were importing/exporting from files (csv/xls) to DB. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

IM

Verified User in Marketing and Advertising

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

5/23/2014

"Pentaho Review"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

Wraps reporting duties in a user-friendly manner, and Report Designer allows for easy customization. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

The user interface could stand to be more refined; Auto-submit or text entry functions could stand to not refresh every time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

EA

Verified User in Apparel & Fashion

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

10/2/2013

"Good ETL product, mediocre reporting product. "

2.5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

Pentaho ETL product is good and seems to scale well. Has comparable functionality to Informatica.

Wide range of connectors / transformations to pretty much do any transformation.

Support is fairly responsive and knowledgeable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

Reporting products are mediocre at best. Their various reporting products are quite buggy.

Pentaho Consulting is expensive. Go with a 3rd party firm. I would not recommend using Pentaho Consulting at all.

The metadata layer is not very intuitive / easy to use. Error messages are vague. Product documentation is poor.

No perpetual licensing. Same cost every year. Therefore, there isn't a large upfront investment, but a recurring one. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AC

Verified User in Consumer Electronics

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

12/3/2013

"Pentaho PDI is awesome "

5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

Love their Kettle product. We have used both the BA and PDI and stopped using BA. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

The BA Server and admin dashboard. Filter logic leaves something to be desired. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UN

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

11/19/2013

"Experience with etl module"

3.5/5

What do you like best about Pentaho?

Software allows you great flexibility to connect to a variety of data sources Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Pentaho?

Does not natively connect to Microsoft authentication (NTLM over SSL). This can cause problems when trying to connect to Sharepoint web services. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.