Open source BI tools production deployments to grow five-fold through 2012: Gartner

IT research and advisory firm Gartner says that though once used almost exclusively by cash-strapped organizations, open source business intelligence tools are becoming part of mainstream deployment.

Gartner analysts say that while functionality is yet to be on par with larger commercial platforms and is still rarely seen as an enterprise-wide BI standard, open-source BI tool deployment is growing solidly.

“Open source BI has seen an interesting adoption pattern over the last few years,” said Andreas Bitterer, research vice president at Gartner. “Hardly any organization looked at open-source BI until 2004, let alone deployed it to a significant number of users, but this submarket had developed nicely, having developed consistent growth rates over the last few years.” Although the average size deal for an open-source BI contract remains approximately $30,000 for a yearly subscription, some contracts repeatedly exceed $500,000 for a multi-year support subscription, which is in the same ballpark as many commercial counterparts.

Organizations pushing open-source BI adoption often hail from different vertical industries than those of the mainstream commercial vendors. Though the latter claim deployments in every industry, most flagship implementations are typically in Type A organizations in the financial sector and in telecommunications. Open-source is more often seen in price-conscious mid-size companies, as well as in government and the public sector, healthcare or manufacturing, and more Type B organizations with smaller budgets.

A large portion of the growth in open-source adoption is coming from the vendors' original equipment manufacturer business, which cannot be properly sized, as many independent software vendors simply use the downloadable version of the open-source BI product and add it as an additional functionality in their own applications. Additionally, system integrators have commenced building practices around open-source technology they are also implementing BI platforms (mostly reports and dashboards) as part of contracted solutions.

“As you might imagine, the increasing open-source traction has not gone unnoticed by the commercial vendors. While often dismissed as being no competition, even the large established BI vendors have come up with counter measures to address the challenges from the lower-cost competitors,” said Mr. Bitterer.