Globally, open source BI solutions are in huge demand, with
interest picking up in a huge way during the recession. Open Source
BI products from vendors such as Pentaho and Jaspersoft have
evolved from being community-driven tools to being backed up by
support from professional service vendors. In India, awareness
levels are low and the market is at a nascent stage. However, the
potential for adoption is huge—especially among SMEs—a
market that is made of over 6 million Indian enterprises,
contributing to 42 percent of India’s total exports.
“Many Indian SMEs need BI tools but cannot afford them
primarily due to their high costs. With open sourcing, these BI
tools are now within their reach,” says Prakash Advani,
Partner Manager for Central Asia, Canonical. The primary motivation
is undoubtedly cost, since there are no license fees associated
with open source BI solutions.
However, it must also be noted that most open
source BI implementations are taking place in green field
implementations, and not at the cost of proprietary BI solutions.
“As companies from the SME sector are extremely price
sensitive, they see no risk in going for open source BI tools.
However, most of my customers do not look for a BI tool per
se—they are looking for a solution. If the solution is based
on open source BI tools, they are fine with it as long as they like
the solution,” says Himanshu Sharma, Founder,
BusinessInsights Consulting, a firm offering solutions on the open
source Pentaho BI stack.
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Some products in the Open Source BI Space
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- Pentaho
- Jaspersoft
- RapidMiner
- OpenI
- BIRT
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Typically, Sharma says that most companies who adopt open source BI
tools are the ones who have no history of BI tools in the company.
The firm derives a bulk of its revenues from consulting and helping
customers to deploy open source BI solutions. In India, it has 10
customers using open source BI solutions. The firm’s clients
include HRS Process Systems (Asia Division), Weikfield Foods, Manav
Promoters, Polychem & Cleanhome and NB Entrepreneurs.
Price – the prime
reason
With a close to 50 percent price
differential between proprietary and open source BI solutions, SMEs
tend to prefer open source BI. Additionally, some of the open
source BI solutions also offer most of the basic functionality that
proprietary BI solutions offer. This is a tempting proposition for
companies in the SMB segment. For example, Manav Promoters, a firm
engaged in the construction space, uses open source solutions from
the Pentaho BI product suite for its reporting needs, as this
solution fit the company’s requirements far more than
commercial vendors would.
“For a medium-size firm like us, cost is a prime reason for
choosing an open source BI solution. The added advantage is
customization, as our requirements in the construction industry are
extremely different from what is offered by standard BI
vendors,” says Rupesh Banthia, Director, Manav Promoters.
Large companies who use open source BI solutions use them only for
specific applications, and not for the whole organization. Says
Prem Kakani, Business Manager (APAC), Saama Technologies (India),
“While interest in the SME segment is huge, large companies
are still not sure of adopting open source BI solutions. Lack of
awareness is a prime reason with some enterprises afraid of what
will happen to future releases of the product, if there is not
enough community support.”
Saama Technologies is one of the world’s largest pure-play BI
services companies, and has executed hundreds of BI projects in the
US, Europe and Asian markets. Many of these projects have been
executed using the Pentaho BI product stack. However, although the
domestic market has immense potential in India, the actual adoption
rate is significantly less when compared to its global reach. The
company has close to five customers in India who use open source BI
solutions.
Just like the Linux OS which took years before actual adoption
started percolating down in Indian enterprises, the open source BI
movement too requires a few poster boys. Once that happens, expect
the trickle seen now to convert into a flood.