OTOinsights

Pentaho BI Open Source Solution Continues to Grow

Since 2002, a group of executives from companies including Hyperion, SAS and Cognos have been developing a series of interoperable open source packages that provide a full range of Business Intelligence (BI) offerings.  As of November, SourceForge.net reports over 500,000 downloads of Pentaho's software from their servers alone, and Pentaho estimates over 2.5 million total downloads in the past 2 years which may not seem like a large number in the grand scheme of things, but is akin to a landslide when compared to the number of operational licenses sold and managed by the proprietary BI players. 

In 2006, Pentaho was named to Red Herring's list of 100 privately held North American companies that are innovating the technology landscape.  They also made the Red Herring 'Open Source 20' list in August and were highlighted as the most popular open source BI suite by Intelligent Enterprise magazine. 

Also launched this year was Pentaho's Partner Program, with nearly 30 implementation and hosting companies already signed up.  They also formally joined IBM's partner program in October and partnered to demonstrate a join IBM/Pentaho solution at the "Information On Demand" conference. 

Press has been very favorable, including clips such as:

"Pentaho is well-positioned for the high-growth performance management market, which is poised to reach $23 billion this year. Some important wins include Abbott Labs, Divx, and Orbitz. To compete in a market of very big players, Pentaho will have to continue to snag large customers, but Chairman Andre Boisvert, an enterprise software veteran, can open a lot of doors for this fledgling." Source - Red Herring August, 2006

"After a lengthy development, and some initial market skepticism, Pentaho BI certainly seems to be gaining steam and followers. It's already listed as one of the top one hundred projects hosted on the Sourceforge.net nexus, a website that lists around 120,000 open source projects. The ranking is based on the number of downloads and activity." Source - Computer Business Review Online April, 2006

Pentaho has also made numerous enhancements and additions to their suite this year including integration with Google Maps for enhanced geographic analytics, rollout of Mondrian 2.2 including a wizard-driven business cube creation engine, and acquisition/integration of the Weka open source project which adds a rich new layer of data mining offerings developed by the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

To learn more about Pentaho's free* suite of products, check out their website.    

*Software is free, licensing for professional use will run $20k-50k which is 10% of the fees for the bigger proprietary players

Marketing Sherpa’s B-to-B Demand Generation Summit - Summary

B2B or not B2B… if you are - then you must go to Marketing Sherpa’s B-to-B Demand Generation Summit (next one is Nov. 13/14 in San Fran – see http://www.sherpastore.com/Summits.html).   I was at the Boston event this week to learn, and also to meet key marketing decision-makers at Dow, Dupont, HP, IBM, TechTarget, Bearing Point, DoubleClick, etc.

This is a great event with insight from real marketers in the trenches telling you what worked for them. Ann Holland filled in like a champ with an impromptu international marketing presentation with tips like this: in your alphabetical drop down list of “what country are you from,” it is reeeeeally insulting to list United States first.

Here are Ann’s “5 Key Points” from the entire event (Thanks Tad Clark, Sherpa Editorial Director):

1. We heard the word “content” 100 million times. It's now the word in B2B. Not copywriting, not creative, not measurement, but the content… Journalism is king.

2. Personas. The average B2B marketer is building personas more than B2C, profiling everyone from pain points to pragmatists to their own CEOs.

3. Multitouch, drip irrigation. We need to stay in touch with people. When they're ready to buy we need to be in front of them. Should you spend all your money on a big splashy ad campaign or a little drip across a long period of time? Do the drip.

4. The days of the super big generic trade show are over. The trend is to do a niche show, private parties, road show, regional show. You’ll get more leads from those.

5. Measurement, measurement, measurement. At past shows it's been about open rates, click rates, drop-off rates. Now it's about measuring the results. Be less tactical and more goal based.

Way to B2B…!

David Cutler
Director of Business Development