MS SharePoint / SQL vs. Pentaho

As I mentioned in my previous answers, MS SharePoint is very useful as a shared drive for the organization and is very easy to manage. It also helps us import data from SharePoint directly into PowerBI for creating reports. According to my understanding, only share link features should be improved.

Incentivized

Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.

Incentivized

• Flexible - able to make any changes we would like vs traditional service desk system.
• ROI - We were already using SharePoint for internal intranet, so we are simply getting more use out of licensing we had already committed to.
• Easy to use for end users.

Incentivized

• Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
• Import data from any sources and different databases
• Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
• Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
• Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
• Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics

• It is hard to setup and nightmare
• It requires a of infrastructure, thus it could be costly because of requirement and licensing required for everything to run smoothly
• If it is not setup and organized properly from the beginning it could be maintenance nightmare
• It is hard to have "test" environment to do patches or similar

Incentivized

• I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
• Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
• Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.

Incentivized

This was a long-term buy-in from a corporate perspective, to remain in the SharePoint space. Migration is certainly possible, which is good for planning and having options further out. At this point, the only planned migration is to eventually move the architecture up to SharePoint/SQL 2013. At that point, we will be able to leverage some greater efficiencies, some enhanced content design and management features, and some more current social features. It is well worth a full consideration in any shop looking at a new implementation of or migration to SharePoint (although you will probably be considering 2013 versions or beyond in those discussions), but the platform should be a strong competitor to any alternatives. Realizing the capability of a fully-branded and customized website was not part of the original choice for the architecture at Lincoln, but seeing it implemented and functioning now with this capacity far beyond original expectations has certainly cemented plans to continue using it.

I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration

Incentivized

I gave this rating due to MS SharePoint being a big help with our userbase. We have a lot of users that are just old enough to not have much technical skills or they have been in this industry long enough to where they haven't really needed to utilize much technology. MS SharePoint helped us move beyond that barrier without too many bumps and bruises.

Incentivized

Even if Pentaho requires less technical skills to develop a pipeline or ETL project, its learning curve can be a bit slow since there are many ways to do the same thing as in any other platform. However, in Pentaho, some things can be confusing some moments for non-technical teams.

Incentivized

I've only had to call in to support on one occasion but they were able to work though our issue and find a solution that did fully resolve the issue in a timely manner. I can't always say the same about support from other companies so it was a refreshing change to have support that did help.

Incentivized

We are an Enterprise customer. They handle problems INSTANTLY when they are critical, including initiation an immediate WebEx screen share call when needed. Smaller/less-critical problems are handled within 1-2 days -- and NEVER fall off their radar, no matter how small. As needed, we can also leverage "professional services" from them -- much of which is included in our Enterprise contract. Finally, when a problem I have discovered turns out to be a bug..they create a JIRA for the fix, and make me a watcher. I love seeing notes come in showing me status updates of bugs filed because of something I found. They really are TOP-NOTCH.

Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000

Mo major insight regarding the implementation if very well documented for standard products.

Incentivized

Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.

Incentivized

At the time of the two large projects, SharePoint was the enterprise solution so we were required to use that. We have since lobbied the enterprise teams to review and consider Atlassian Confluence and were successful. Confluence is cheaper than Sharepoint which is why we wanted to bring that in. The enterprise has now made Confluence an enterprise solution as an alternative to SharePoint. After using both I think SharePoint has many more add-ins than Confluence. It has much more customization ability than Confluence. SharePoint is not good for mobile readiness. Confluence is so there is a difference that might lead you to Confluence over SharePoint. I would also say that SharePoint is very document-centric and that Confluence has better KM than SharePoint does. even with the use of SQL Server. We were told that we could not use Google Drive even though it had features we liked.

Incentivized

Perhaps Snowflake and SalesForce have some components which align with the Pentaho tools. The Pentaho tools have integrations with these technologies to add more value to the final users. Perhaps the only weakness I can honestly find in the Pentaho tools right now is the lack of a powerful web interface for data transformations. There is a web component from which you can access existing data transformations created with the Pentaho Data Integration tool. Still, the web component only allows visualization of the data transformation and remote execution. A complete web interface with remote execution would be excellent, and I'm sure that we might see something like this available at some point in the future.

Incentivized

• ROI for ms SharePoint/SQL considering that is the best database engine with excellent features that help you to have all information in your hand.
• Something negative could be license format.
• These are the best relational databases in the market with powerful features that complement your system.

Incentivized

• Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
• Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
• We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.

Incentivized