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Databricks vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Databricks efficiently lowers costs with cloud services, though ROI varies by sector and integration, particularly with Azure.
Sentiment score
5.4
Pentaho Business Analytics mixed ROI perceptions highlight efficiency gains but unclear returns compared to competitors like QlikView and Tableau.
For a lot of different tasks, including machine learning, it is a nice solution.
When it comes to big data processing, I prefer Databricks over other solutions.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Databricks support is praised for prompt, professional service, comprehensive resources, and effective communication, enhancing overall user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics receives mixed reviews for customer support, with users relying heavily on forums and community assistance.
As of now, we are raising issues and they are providing solutions without any problems.
Whenever we reach out, they respond promptly.
I rate the technical support as fine because they have levels of technical support available, especially partners who get really good support from Databricks on new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Databricks is praised for its scalability, enabling easy adaptation to large data and user loads with efficient resource management.
Sentiment score
7.0
Pentaho Business Analytics is scalable with good performance but occasionally needs professional help for complex data handling.
I would rate the scalability of this solution as very high, about nine out of ten.
The patches have sometimes caused issues leading to our jobs being paused for about six hours.
Databricks is an easily scalable platform.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Databricks is stable and robust, with minor issues, handling large data volumes and earning high stability ratings.
Sentiment score
6.5
Pentaho Business Analytics is stable but may face Java caching issues, impacting performance and requiring careful cache management.
They release patches that sometimes break our code.
Databricks is definitely a very stable product and reliable.
Although it is too early to definitively state the platform's stability, we have not encountered any issues so far.
It can handle large datasets.
 

Room For Improvement

Databricks requires visualization improvements, pricing clarity, user-friendliness, expanded integrations, and simplification for non-technical users to enhance usability.
Pentaho Business Analytics lacks an intuitive interface, robust integration, self-service features, and requires technical expertise, limiting usability.
If I could right-click to copy absolute paths or to read files directly into a data frame, it would standardize and simplify the process.
They're now coming up with their IBI dashboard, and I think they're on the right track to improve that even further.
We use MLflow for managing MLOps, however, further improvement would be beneficial, especially for large language models and related tools.
Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers view Databricks as moderately pricey, with high setup costs, though discounts and licensing flexibility are available.
Enterprise buyers find the free Pentaho Community Edition cost-effective, while the Enterprise Edition offers value with support and features.
It is not a cheap solution.
Pentaho Business Analytics is priced similarly to other competitors such as QlikView and Tableau.
 

Valuable Features

Databricks excels in scalability, integration, and user-friendly features, making it ideal for data processing and AI across industries.
Pentaho Business Analytics provides easy data integration, customizable dashboards, extensive connectivity, and supports efficient data transformation and delivery.
The Unity Catalog is for data governance, and the Delta Lake is to build the lakehouse.
Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed.
The platform allows us to leverage cloud advantages effectively, enhancing our AI and ML projects.
It is a stable product, and it can handle large datasets.
 

Categories and Ranking

Databricks
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (1st), Streaming Analytics (1st)
Pentaho Business Analytics
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (19th), Cloud Operations Analytics (2nd), Reporting (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Databricks is designed for Cloud Data Warehouse and holds a mindshare of 8.3%, up 5.6% compared to last year.
Pentaho Business Analytics, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 0.5% mindshare, down 0.6% since last year.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Databricks8.3%
Snowflake17.7%
Dremio9.4%
Other64.6%
Cloud Data Warehouse
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pentaho Business Analytics0.5%
Microsoft Power BI14.5%
Tableau Enterprise11.0%
Other74.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ShubhamSharma7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Capability to integrate diverse coding languages in a single notebook greatly enhances workflow
Databricks offers various courses that I can use, whether it's PySpark, Scala, or R. I can leverage all these courses in a single notebook, which is beneficial for clients as they can access various tools in one place whenever needed. This is quite significant. I usually work with PySpark based on client requirements. After coding, I feed the Databricks notebooks into the ADF pipeline for updates. Databricks' capability to process data in parallel enhances data processing speed. Furthermore, I can connect our Databricks notebook directly with Power BI and other visualization tools like Qlik. Once we develop code, it allows us to transform raw data into visualizations for clients using analysis diagrams, which is very helpful.
Mir Gulzar Ahmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels in handling unstructured data, helping organizations navigate through different storage systems
Pentaho can help organizations by providing them an insight of their unstructured data using one platform(Pentaho Business Analytics). The features are almost identical to other BIS platforms but to me, customers can benefit as it has a community version with most of its Enterprise features. It also has a free limited-period trial version. The other feature that I would like to share here is, that users have access to a complete spectrum of data from different sources with the system’s adaptive big data layer, which takes the source of the data into account. The software is built on an open architecture and can be integrated with multiple systems. However, Pentaho Data Integration and Analytics has been acquired by HDS which offers an Enterprise edition for organizations that also need to meet product compliance.
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Comparison Review

it_user6978 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 10, 2013
Jaspersoft vs. Pentaho – Which one to use & is there any need to purchase the commercial edition
Any company (be it technology, manfucaturing, human resource, ecommerce, SME etc) always has the need for Business Intelligence to some or the other extent. If cost is one of the consideration factor, then the 2 BI tools which are at the forefront are Pentaho and Jaspersoft. But, often the same…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?
Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or Python. It offers many different cluster choices and excellent integration with ...
How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?
We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designed to accelerate innovation projects. It is based on Spark so it is very fast. It...
Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?
Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analytics teams that have to interpret data to further the business goals of their orga...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
Pentaho Business Analytics offers the best value for money. While improvements can be made in some areas, particularly with more cloud-based solutions, it is not in their domain because they do not...
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
From an integration perspective, Pentaho Business Analytics is not the best tool on the market. There are things done by Apache that are better, though I am not the one implementing them, so this i...
 

Also Known As

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about Snowflake Computing, Microsoft, Google and others in Cloud Data Warehouse. Updated: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.