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Oracle OBIEE vs Pentaho Business Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Oracle OBIEE
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
4th
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
21st
Ranking in Reporting
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Oracle OBIEE is 3.8%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.4%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

VishnuReddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles large datasets and easy to interact with and handle but performance could be better
Oracle's technical support usually recommends to upgrade when you contact them for support. They don't focus on fixing the issue at hand or providing guidance on how to do it. If you are in a lower environment, like one version down, they will blindly suggest upgrading. Additional patches are given for other Oracle products like WebLogic, databases, and apps. They fix issues and create patches based on client needs. But from an OBIEE point of view, they mostly provide bundle patches of around 5 to 6 GB that need to be applied and tested end-to-end. It's not an easy way to get small patches, and if issues arise after applying the patches, you have to contact Oracle again.
Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are some great new features in the latest version."
"The dashboard and analysis are the most valuable features of this solution."
"We do you use Oracle support. We've been paying for an Oracle support subscription for four or five years, and not one ticket has ever been logged. When I came in, I've encouraged the team to ask Oracle questions. They do get back quite quickly. Their support is good. Working with our account managers, if I need to escalate anything, I can speak to them and they escalate the call. I've got that ecosystem working quite well. That does work for us."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to set up the automated delivery of reports."
"I think having the conformed structures makes it a lot easier for end users and pulling reports together."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to run it in Exalytics within memory coupled to a Repository on Exadata is where it flies. So it's not meant for mom and pop shops, but if you are a global 500 fortune 1000 company, this is a tool that can get you what you need on time and even in real time."
"Oracle OBIEE is good for data visualization and analytical reporting."
"Easy to create ad hoc reporting for different solutions."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"Pentaho is an analytics platform that can be used when an organization has a lot of big data storage systems already installed and needs to manage and analyze that data. It has a specific use case for unstructured data, such as documents, and needs to be able to search and analyze it."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
 

Cons

"This solution is weak in the data science perspective. I have past data science experience. And, I find that there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of incorporating more advanced statistical modeling into the product."
"Expanding beyond pure data reporting and into analytics, or expanding data science, would be areas for improvement."
"The performance could improve and in a future release, they could provide more virtualization options."
"I would like to see Machine Learning included in this solution."
"When a large number of queries are running at the same time, the report fails."
"OBIEE doesn't have audit logs."
"One of the things that have been difficult with OBIEE during all the time that I've known it is that when something goes wrong, many times, the error messages are not specific, and you've got to spend a lot of time digging and digging and digging before you say, "Oh, okay. I figured out what it was." There should be more detailed error messages or troubleshooting messages."
"It is complex for designing RPD, and it can be simpler. Their support can also be improved in terms of response time."
"The repository should be improved."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Logging capability is needed."
"Pentaho, at the general level, should greatly improve the easy construction of its dashboards and easy integration of information from different sources without technical user intervention."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Oracle OBIEE is expensive, it is difficult for a small business to afford."
"It's comparable to the current technology we're using, Qlik Sense."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Power BI is less expensive than Oracle OBIEE. A benefit to Power BI is having the option to work with concurrent licensing."
"The company had twenty-five Oracle OBIEE licenses and never expanded. Price-wise, the solution is expensive."
"It is high."
"The cost of this solution is a little bit high compared with other products like Zoho, so reducing it would make OBIEE more competitive."
"The licensing cost is based on the number of users using it."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"Pentaho is expensive ."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
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?
For those starting to use this tool, there is a free version available which is beneficial. The company also finds the pricing to be good.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java. The platform works with Java, and it has brought some issues to the company.
 

Also Known As

OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle OBIEE vs. Pentaho Business Analytics and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.