So you are still looking at building your first or next analytics solutions and you have 3-4 vendors arrive onsite to showcase their wares. You narrow down that list and you really like the Pentaho demonstration because and I quote from the Pentaho page,
Any Analytics, Any Data, Simplified
Pentaho addresses the barriers that block your organization's ability to get value from all your data. Our platform simplifies preparing and blending any data and includes a spectrum of tools to easily analyze, visualize, explore, report and predict. Open, embeddable and extensible, Pentaho is architected to ensure that each member of your team — from developers to business users — can easily translate data into value.
That sounds great. Removing barriers. The vendor can implement this data warhouse and it will be wonderful. Then you have to look back at your situation. You have 20 people in your IT shop from BI to Helpdesk, etc.. you get the picture... And you have 7 reporting platforms including this new Pentaho platform. No one in your organization knows anything about Pentaho so you need to send them to training. Ohh and then you have to bring in a contractor to fill in the gap and help train your people, right? Wait there are only 3 on the East Coast. Ahh this raises issues. All of a sudden the slick software doesn't seem so slick any more. Suddenly you realize that although the software might remove barriers, the software company might raise a couple of barriers.
Examine all of your hidden costs in a situation. In no way, do I think that Pentaho is terrible, I just think that IT organizations need to think smarter not harder. Small organizations need streamlined solutions that meet the business needs and sometimes, you need to tell your vendors to plug into your data warehouse instead of you plugging into theirs.
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