Published on the 12/01/2010 | Written by Newsdesk

Once only found in cash-strapped organisations, open-source business intelligence (BI) tools are becoming a mainstream deployment option for all kinds of BI usage, according to technology research and advisory firm Gartner.

Gartner analysts say that while functionality is not yet on a par with large 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,” says Andreas Bitterer, research vice president at Gartner.

“Hardly any organisation looked at open-source BI until 2004, let alone deployed it to a significant number of users, but this submarket has 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 multiyear support subscription, which is in the same ballpark as many commercial counterparts.

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 additional functionality in their own applications.

In addition, system integrators have started to build practices around open-source technology, and they are also implementing BI platforms (mostly reports and dashboards) as part of the contracted solution.

“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,” says Bitterer.