Knowage Reviews

Building reports and user cockpits/dashboards from data and a MySQL database. Later, it will implement the ad hoc reporting tools to improve the user experience.

It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost.

The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice.

Development of SpagoBI has now been moved to Knowage. Users interested in further developments of the platform will have to look there.

We used the visualization part and web deployment part of the suite. It was handy to pump out visualizations needed for our project.

The project was a medical state government funded one. The stakeholders were both management and researchers. It helped us showcase our data in a meaningful way.

SpagoBI is an open-source tool which can be used freely. We expected the community to be bigger than what it currently is. There were geomaps, etc. included with the suite, but we felt they were lacking compared to JavaScript solutions.

We have used it for at least a year and will continue to do so.

There were issues in deploying it at first, and there were errors for which we had to reach out to the community. But in due time and investigation, we were able to smooth it out. Rarely did we have a problem after that.

There were no problems with the scalability of the platform. We did not have a massive deploy but whatever we had deployed worked pretty well.

The technical support was on our end. We did not approach SpagoBI. We tried posting in the SpagoBI community, but didn’t get too far.

This was the first time we were going to use a BI suite.

The initial setup was easy on our local systems. Being a developer for it, I rarely had problems on the local setup. Deploying and communicating between SpagoBI Server and SpagoBI was sometimes finicky after we went live. They were ironed out in due time. Most of the issues were related to security and permission setup, and interfacing with Java.

SpagoBI is an open-source tool, which is free to use and implement. We did not have any problems with using at our department.

Before choosing this product, there were other options we considered; the main one being Pentaho. The only reason we choose SpagoBI was it being open source and free. Pentaho did have more options/features albeit being paid.

The tool requires initial setup built around a couple of developers. It does not have any problems once it is deployed. I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features. For expert features, it might be prudent to go for a paid tool.

• Our customers really appreciate the self-service BI functionalities. For us, this is the most valuable feature. It allows them to work more autonomously without the need to engage us.
• For example, loading a spreadsheet and being able to make analysis inputs along with the data stored in a DWH without any external support in an easy and guided way.

SpagoBI helped us to move a lot of analysis activities from our company to the customer side. Moreover, we avoided extending other products we used in order to add BI functionalities.

Because it is an open source product, we were also able to adopt it in our project from the early stages for very simple tasks.

Speaking of a very complete suite, I think there is no area that can be considered fully mature. I think there is chance to improve the product in every direction.

• We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly. I think a global re-styling is a must.
• Speaking of a BI suite, I think this is an important point. The SpagoBI Studio, which is used by developers to create traditional reports and dashboards, is not fully mature. It is still missing a lot of functionalities.
• For example, the UI for building charts is not complete and does not allow you to do everything that you need to edit configuration files with a text editor.

I have been using SpagoBI suite since Version 3.6. Right now, I'm using Version 5.1.

I never had stability issues. The product has been designed using quite consolidated technologies.

I never had the chance to use it in very challenging contexts from a performance point of view. But I know it is designed to scale quite well in very demanding scenarios.

SpagoBI Labs, who provide consulting services and actively work to improve the product, can support customers in almost every kind of project.

People working there are very skilled and professional, so I would give the technical support a rating of 8/10.

We didn't use a previous solution. Since SpagoBI was originally created by my company, and we still support it, the choice was easy.

The initial setup can be quite straightforward, especially in a complex context where stability aspects are the key factors.

To start using SpagoBI in a productive way, I suggest that you ask for support.

SpagoBI suite is free/open source software and can't be identified with a specific vendor.

We created it and we actively support it. At the beginning of this year, we presented its successor http://www.knowage-suite.com.

The main advantages of adopting SpagoBI are:

• The possibility to have lots of features in one product
• A chance to save money using an open source solution.

• Reporting
• Email delivery
• Dashboard

It is mainly for reporting a variety of telecom traffic and revenue-related metrics to executives. It is also used to generate invoices (billing).

The product runs against a datamart for a telecom international gateway, delivering daily, weekly, and monthly traffic; usage; revenue expenses and profitability reports for the business, with scheduled delivery to specified executives. They also perform online queries for the same metrics as and when required.

I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant. Each recipient had to be added separately in the schedule. Turning the document into PDF, passing parameters (daily, weekly, monthly), etc. The issues could be sorted out mainly but required consulting a variety of resources and reading the logs.

Another issue was connection pooling, which I know is not specifically Spago’s domain. The system ran out of database connections after a few weeks, after our staff used it to generate 50 or so invoices one by one, delivered blank reports and needed a restart to release connections.

I have used it for two years.

I did not avail myself of any technical support; I just used Google for support on various issues.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was a learning curve because our executives collated multiple reports into a single report and needed email delivery.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Microsoft SSRS.

As such, the product is available for free download and, based on open-source products, has the capability to be enhanced. However, it is not fair to expect to realise its potential merely utilizing in-house skills.

I would highly recommend organizations desiring to implement the product to invest in consultancy and training and support.

I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time.

The Mobile Edition, which now they have stopped in the Community Edition.

It improves sales and products, which motivates employees.

Bring back the Mobile Edition in new releases.

Three years using SpagoBI v4.2, v5, v5.2 and Knowage.

Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service.

Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service.

• Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times

It was a free alternative at the time, but it could not handle the demands of our organization.

At the time the organization I worked for scheduled over a thousand jobs at any given time, and some were very complex. The demands of some jobs (IT special formatted) would slow Spago and lock the site, preventing any other job from processing. On the backend, one of the technicians would have to go in and kill the job that stopped, to resume functioning. There was no active visibility into processing as the dashboard was often behind, and confirmation emails would overlap, or wouldn’t generate.

I used it for 2.5 years.

There was an issue with the capacity at which it could process our jobs, and volume. We had a saying that, “Spago was down for the count,” or “Who broke Spago?”

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support was handled internally.

We changed systems altogether due to the volume and ease of the new product.

Integrated Data Visualization, GIS and Big Data Integration.

Since it was an full open source business model, it was easy to customized on general features

Many things need to be improved, most of all..robustness. the idea to combines many features in single point of view still became a stronger point. Keep improve in solution robustness and this solution could be one of the leaders

Six months

Yes, and most problematic when we deploy on manual deployment in Jboss or even Tomcat. Less documentation when more information needed.

Yes, when you deal with template creation in SpagoBI Studio, but it happened only when documentation was less and forum support was not so quick in response.

Yes, in terms of deployment in "real" application server when documentation was not so complete

Not so good, but since it was an open source and have no supporting deals, then it was a normal business case.

Not so good when relying much on forumsbut we have no supporting contract so, this is normal.

Yes I did, to try new and improved version of SpagoBI.

Yes in all-in-one deployment but tricky in application server for production

Individually implemented and self supported

In terms of ROI, much better than any other solution when it offer full fledged features in open source, planned to have direct contact with SpagoBI for better support.

Still have no firm opinion for now but will be shared after real contact and dealt with SpagoBI

Yes, I did

It is a good solution we plan to develop more, could be better if more features improved for robustness and stability.

Dynamic Dashboards & KPI was the most valuable because these provide great insights about the business and sales with a very simple mechanism.

It has helped us to automate the report generation. Dynamic Dashboards & KPI provides data for stakeholders in real time.

Because it is an open source BI tool, there are many areas of improvement:

• The UI is not very profound.
• The Widgets are not ample enough to showcase data in different formats
• The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything

We have been using this solution for nine months

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

There were some scalability issues. To scale, we needed to build proper ETL models. Due to the lack of support, it was very laborious to find the correct method.

I would give technical support a rating of 2/10.

We used SAS Analytics.

The initial setup is quite easy. However, the process to implement complex reports is not described. You have to struggle to find the steps.

If you are exploring open source tools and you don't want to invest in any BI tool, then this is a good option.