Commercial and Community Open Source and Pentaho BI

Last week, I offered the opinion that BI software publisher Pentaho has moved beyond a commercial open source business model. When "strategic" software components such as the new Pentaho Analyzer interface are not open source, having a "core open" suite like Pentaho's seems no longer enough to define the vendor as an open source company. I held up EnterpriseDB as a company that went down a similar route just last year.

While what counts most is great, affordable software, an understanding of market trends helps everyone concerned make strategic choices. In this spirit, I'll present perspectives that complement mine, from Pentaho and from the Pentaho community, regarding the importance of the open source base to Pentaho and the company's users and regarding a new community development, the open source Pentaho Analysis Tool (PAT).Because it's open source

Pentaho Marketing SVP Lance Walter is clear about many business issues including that "What we do would not be possible without a commercial open source model." Pentaho has (or had?) always been a commercial OS company, from its start providing professional development and support for core suite components including the Mondrian open-source OLAP engine and later bringing out non-open source software components that build out the core open source BI suite. These additional components are among the enterprise edition "Bells and whistles, things that make the product easier to use, easier to manage, and things that make your boss want to reach for his or her checkbook" in the words of Julian Hyde, Mondrian's architect, who works part-time for Pentaho.

According to Lance,

I do see EnterpriseDB as closer to Pentaho and its business model than the companies Lance named. In my opinion, MySQL is a counter-example to Pentaho so far as BI is concerned: If you wanted the most robust analytical engine available, you had to pay a licensing fee to vendor Infobright... until Infobright went open source earlier this year. Former CEO Miriam Turek recently posted to Twitter that the company had passed the 100-customer mark!

I'll offer other comparisons in response to a passing comment by Julian Hyde his long, thoughtful blog article devoted to Pentaho's acquisition of LucidEra Clearview. Julian's an authentic BI innovator and his article is worth reading, but I'll focus in on one remark, "If Mondrian had not been available under a business-friendly open source license, LucidEra would probably have written it on top of another vendor's engine, and Pentaho would not have been able to use it." I disagree. The folks who started Pentaho had earlier created Wired for OLAP, a closed source analytical interface for Hyperion's Essbase OLAP engine, which was and is decidedly not open source. Hyperion liked Wired for OLAP so much that it bought the company and hired CEO Richard Daley, who left the company and co-founded and heads Pentaho. Similarly, Panorama or ProClarity created closed source analytical interfaces for Microsoft OLAP. (Microsoft later bought ProClarity.) These three BI examples show that it's the market and technical strength of the OLAP engine and not its licensing status that led to the creation of third-party tools. The same principle holds for Mondrian.

It happens that Pentaho Analyzer isn't the only new third-party analytical interface out there in the Pentaho orbit.

From the community, regarding Pentaho Analysis Tool

Julian Hyde's blog article is a good place to read the Pentaho Analysis Tool (PAT) back story, then visit the PAT community wiki and the project home page, which describe PAT at "a [Google Web Toolkit] based analysis tool designed to replace JPivot and work alongside the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite, giving end users better and easier control of their data."

Here are views related to me by Roland Bouman, co-author with Jos van Dongen of Pentaho Solutions: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL, a Pentaho community member who is not a Pentaho employee:

I also reached out to Tom Barber, another Pentaho (super-)user, after reading his blog item, Pentaho's New Addition To The Family. Tom is "currently working in the IT dept for a large construction company, currently integrating Pentaho into the reporting setup, and working on Pentaho Analysis Tool in my spare time." Concerning PAT in the wake of the Pentaho Analysis product announcement, Tom says, "We are still looking to write what will become the best Analysis tool in the world."

Tom further explained to me,

So Pentaho Analyzer and Pentaho Analysis Tool are complementary software components, and community members perceive much greater interest on Pentaho's part in the first of these, the closed source tool Pentaho owns, than in the open-source community tool. That said, Pentaho's corporate focus could is surely in large part and indication of confidence in the Pentaho community!

The commercial open source "party line"

So is Pentaho still best identified as a commercial open source company? It should go without saying that the company will legitimately make its own decisions.

Lance Walter relates:

In the end, again, it's not the "party line" that matters most, it's great, affordable software. All signs are that Pentaho will continue to deliver on that latter front. Yet stakeholders -- users, customers, community developers, and just observers like myself -- do benefit from a clear understanding of vendor directions.

Update (Oct 22, 4:38 pm): I have corrected an omission by citing Jos van Dongen as co-author of Pentaho Solutions: Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing with Pentaho and MySQL. I see that Jos had himself blogged on themes similar to mine here! I was unaware of this.Last week, I offered the opinion that BI software publisher Pentaho has moved beyond a commercial open source business model. While what counts most is great, affordable software, an understanding of market trends helps everyone concerned make strategic choices. In this spirit, I'll present perspectives that complement mine, from Pentaho and from the Pentaho community...