Canada's Second Largest University Chooses Pentaho over Proprietary BI

Orlando, FL. – June 28, 2007 - Pentaho Corp., creator of the world's most popular open source business intelligence (BI) suite, today announced that Université de Montréal Registrar Bureau has selected Pentaho to provide better insight into critical university operations with open source reporting, dashboards, OLAP analysis, and data integration. Pentaho was ultimately chosen after an evaluation which included numerous proprietary BI suites.

Founded in 1878, the Université de Montréal, with its two affiliated schools, the École Polytechnique and the HEC Montréal, is now the largest university in Quebec and the second largest in Canada. With over 55,000 students from around the world and some 10,000 employees, the Université de Montréal awards close to 10,000 diplomas at every university level. Deeply rooted in Montreal and dedicated to its international mission, the Université de Montréal is one of the top universities in the French-speaking world.

Managing the daily operations of such a large organization requires timely insight into critical data and metrics like student enrollment, student academic performance, university staffing, government funding, allocation of university resources, and more. Based on The University's business rules, users will receive e-mail alerts with detailed reports whenever an operational situation needs management attention. Beyond that, users will have access to daily information for reporting and analysis. Data from an Oracle database and other systems will be integrated into a MySQL-based data mart using Pentaho Data Integration.

Université de Montréal already uses data warehousing and BI technologies from Business Objects and Oracle in other areas within the University. The University already owned the required licenses from Oracle, but wanted to avoid the complexity of deploying the necessary infrastructure. BusinessObjects XI is deployed elsewhere in the University for reporting, but the need for integrated reporting, analysis, and dashboards, combined with the need to deliver results quickly, eventually drove the selection of Pentaho for deployment at the Registrar Bureau. SAS BI server was also evaluated, but also required an excessive investment in infrastructure to deploy.

Pentaho's standards-based architecture was also a key driver in the selection of Pentaho at Université de Montréal Registrar Bureau. Pentaho's modern, java-based architecture, flexible customization via XML, and comprehensive web services interface offered the organization an opportunity to integrate easily, deploy quickly, and start generating business benefits rapidly. Pentaho's professional support and indemnification, delivered as part of a Pentaho Subscription, provide Université de Montréal Registrar Bureau with a low-risk, professionally-supported alternative to proprietary BI.

"Pentaho was the clear choice for us after reviewing the alternatives from Business Objects, Oracle, and SAS," said Luc Boudreau, Information Systems Analyst. "Pentaho's flexible architecture lets us build our operational business rules directly into the BI system, and integrate easily into our IT infrastructure as well as our strategic business processes."

"We continue to see competitive wins over proprietary BI, driven by better product, better service, and better value for customers," said Lance Walter, VP of marketing at Pentaho. "Université de Montréal Registrar Bureau is another example of an organization reducing risk and accelerating BI benefits with professional open source BI from Pentaho."

About Pentaho

Pentaho provides a full spectrum of open source Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities including reporting, analysis, dashboards, data mining, data integration, and a BI platform that have made it the world's most popular open source BI suite. Formed by a highly experienced team of industry veterans, Pentaho's mission is to bring innovative, high quality technology and professional support to the BI market. Pentaho uses a revolutionary approach to development, distribution and support made possible by an open source business model. Pentaho is the primary sponsor and owner of popular open source projects including Mondrian, JFreeReport, Kettle, and Weka, Pentaho's technologies support a wide range of business initiatives from sales and profitability analysis, customer analysis, HR reporting, Financial reporting, KPI dashboards, Supply Chain analytics, and operational reporting.