FAQ
Open source software, does that mean it’s free?
Yes! You can go to Pentaho today and download the entire suite for free. There is a commercial licence, but only major installations require that. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
If the software is free, how does BizCubed stay in business?
The short answer is through consulting services and ongoing support agreements. Business Intelligence solutions rarely are simple to install and get the results you want. This is true of even the most expensive offerings (often times the more expensive it is, the more difficult it is to implement.) Most of the time organisations have data in all sorts of different files, databases, and systems and it is difficult to get all of the information that a manager wants in a single place that allows reporting.
Do I need BizCubed to deploy Pentaho?
No, you can go online and download the entire Pentaho suite for free. Many of our clients recognize that they can do this themselves, but value the speed at which we can get them up and running, but it is entirely up to you. The other place that we can help, is when you come across a problem or are looking to dramatically improve performance, or are trying to deploy a particularly tricky report. No project or problem too big or too small.
Whom do I call if there is a problem?
That depends. We offer support packages, so you can call us. If you don’t want to pay for a support package, you can post questions to the open source forum, but there is no guarantee of a response. The choice is yours. We can help you assess what you are trying to accomplish and provide as much or as little support as your business and organisation require.
What does the commercial licensing provide that the free licence doesn’t?
The basic difference between the commercial licensing and the free licence comes at deployment time. All of the reporting, dashboard and analytic features are available in the regular version, things like clustering, version management, single sign on security and system admin tools come with the pro version. Generally, if you are a large organisation where more than 40-50 people are going to be using the reporting tool, then you would need the Commercial version. Otherwise, the off the shelf version is more then sufficient. For more information on the Commercial version, contact us or go to contact us or go to www.pentaho.org.
What platforms does Pentaho support?
Pentaho works on just about anything you’ll find — Linux, UNIX, Mac OS X, Windows…
Being Java-based, it doesn’t lock you into any particular platform. We do most of our own development on Linux, but we also use Mac OS X and Windows.
I’ve heard of open source, but can it be used in my business?
The truth is many people are using open source projects (or projects that started as open source) in their businesses already. A lot of people have already discovered the quality of the open source Firefox Web browser, OpenOffice.org office suite and GIMP graphics editor. Many Web and application servers use Linux, Java, Red Hat, and many others to work. The Internet is based on standards developed in the open source world, and 70% of Web sites are served from the open source Apache Web server. Google, the reigning heavyweight champion of Internet companies, has built its entire business on Linux!
Are there major companies using Pentaho?
In the US a major online travel agency uses Pentaho for about 5,000 users and are getting a couple of hundred report requests per day. In Australia, there is a health insurance company and a major wine producer implementing right now!
What if I want to do something that Pentaho doesn’t support? Can I customise the code for my business or application?
You can download the Pentaho SDK and change and update any part of the code (commercial components excluded) to meet your needs. BizCubed has a high calibre Java, XML and database development team that can help you customise any aspect of your deployment.
