Business intelligence software is all the rage, but it doesn't have to be high-priced to be of value. Before signing up with any of the big-name BI vendors, consider some of the open source options that are available, advises author Carla Schroder.

The major BI vendors are expensive, but they are not necessarily easy to work with, Schroder writes in a post at ITworld. "Dealing with these giants of tech is not unlike seeking audience with the priests of the temple, and hoping to be found worthy," she writes.

Most open source BI packages have free community versions and free trials for enterprise versions, so you can test them out at your own pace. Schroder describes the offerings of four open source vendors--Jaspersoft, Pentaho, SpagoBI, and Actuate.

"Let's dispose of a popular BI myth right now, and that is the myth that spending a giant wad of money on fancy BI software will do you any good. It won't," she writes. "BI software suites are marvelous tools, but like any tool they are no better than the people using them. The most important tools are brains, knowledge, and the time to do the job right."

Before deploying any BI software, first determine what information you are looking for, which is not necessarily easy because, as Schroder puts it, "there are daunting quantities of information available: sales, revenues, performance of various products and services, employee performance, supply chain, management performance, different departments, IT infrastructure, facilities, customer loyalty, and on and on."

For more:
- see Carla Schroder's post at ITworld

Related Articles:
The special challenges in BI purchasing
Four examples of business analytics at work
Five steps to tackling the data challenge