5 Open Source Business Intelligence Tools
It's impossible to imagine making good business decisions without the right information to back up the decision making process. Business intelligence (BI) tools help by making it easy to extract and understand the information that you need from the mass of business data that you collect and store. In other words, they can help turn piles of data into meaningful insights that help you run your business.
Because the potential business benefits of a good business intelligence tool are so great, it's not surprising that plenty of big-name vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAS provide excellent proprietary business intelligence software — though sometimes at a significant price. Less well-known companies with strong BI offerings include Panorama Software, Tableau Software and Qlik.
There are also a large number of powerful open source BI solutions – both free and commercial – which can be used as provided, or as base code which can be customized to suit your organization. These open source tools have typically been adopted by small and medium sized companies rather than large enterprises, but some are gaining acceptance in the large enterprise space.
Paul Ferrill has been writing for over 15 years about computers and network technology. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering as well as a MS in Electrical Engineering. He is a regular contributor to the computer trade press. He has a specialization in complex data analysis and storage. He has written hundreds of articles and two books for various outlets over the years. His articles have appeared in Enterprise Apps Today and InfoWorld, Network World, PC Magazine, Forbes, and many other publications.
