Building BI

Course taught by Krish Krishnan and Mark Madsen

I spent Monday afternoon attending the Open Source BI/DW course.  The first part of the session was really a history lesson on technology patents and the economic forces behind the open source movement.  The point here is that as technology makes leaps that change underlying usage and business models, someone loses and someone gains.  The entrenched old-guard (the ones making the money) throw up roadblocks and challanges (barriers to entry), but eventually lose to a new generation of entrepreneurs and technology.  Rinse and repeat.  It doesn’t matter the technology, historical precedent, culture, etc – economics always wins in the long term.

Following the patent law/economic history lesson, we looked at the growth of the commercial software market, especially around the DW/BI.  This is a maturing market.  As the market for enterprise software matures, sales and licensing revenues decline with increasing emphasis professional service and consulting to keep overall profitability flat.  Shifts in technology and architecture open the door to low-cost providers – enter open source.

We are seeing various models for open source software – either completely free and community supported (ie PostgreSQL, etc) or models that build on the community product by adding features or professional services that are available for a cost (ie Greenplum who turned PostgreSQL into MPP for a price, etc).  The space for open source operating systems and DBMS’s is maturing (Linux, Suse, MySQL, MonetDB, etc), reporting and dashboarding tools are also (Pentaho, Jaspersoft, BIRT, Palo, etc).  Open source data integration tools are not far behind (Pentaho/Kettle, Talend, etc).  Options for metadata management and data visualization are fewer as these are niche markets still being served by commercial options while open source catches up.

Primary reasons why open source is catching on:  (1) Cost savings, (2) Integration and customization options, (3) Reduced vendor dependence.

Risks of going open source are both real and imagined, depending on circumstances: (1) Lack of support, (2) Products are immature, (3) Perceived quality problems, (4) Lack of internal skills

The “right” approach for implementing open source in your organization is probably one where these technologies coexist with commercial solutions, with the commercial software being phased out over time as more open source options become available or mature.

This was a great presentation that dispelled myths and gave good insight into where the future is taking us.  My notes above are summarizations of the material presented by Mark Madsen and Krish Krishnan – I take no credit for it.   They have posted an older version of their presentation at Slideshare.