To make optimal business decisions, organizations must extract meaningful information out of the enormous amount of raw data generated by their enterprise systems. Business intelligence is a set of methodologies and technologies that enable more tactical and strategic decision-making, allowing companies to cut costs, identify opportunities, and redesign inefficient processes. The BI market is large and confusing, and many organizations are hard-pressed to identify solutions that best meet their needs and maximize ROI. This book details the benefits of open source BI, from offering lower initial costs to more flexible support and integration options compared to proprietary products. OS BI tools are going mainstream. Increasingly, business analysts need to understand the trade-offs between traditional and open source BI alternatives. Drawing on case studies and OS project templates, this is the first book on the market to provide a centralized view of all available OS BI systems and tools, including the benefits and challenges associated with their implementation. Laying out the steps required to develop OS BI solutions, it will enable readers to evaluate the ROI of OS BI versus traditional deployments without having to spend time developing their own solutions from scratch.

1. The differences between general OS and commercial open source2. Commercial open source options3. Implications for users4. The business benefits and challenges of OS for BI5. Selling a BI OS project to the business6. Evaluating ROI and TCO7. Developing a cost benefit analytics8. Complementary solutions - OS DI, databases, etc.9. Technical considerations10. Integration and data preparation11. Working within an OS environment12. Development steps and considerations13. Required skill sets14. Challenges15. Technical benefits