Pentaho upgrades BI platform to empower end users

Open-source business intelligence (BI) firm Pentaho has announced an upgrade to its software platform designed to improve productivity and usability when carrying out data analytics.

The 3.8 update is available from today and contains a series of new features, the first of which is a Guided Analysis tool that offers a single navigational path through data so staff can link their queries together.

Secondly, Pentaho has added an in-memory caching layer so staff can recall data that has already been retrieved from a database once without having to wait for it to be found again.

Lastly, the firm has improved its interactive dashboard so that staff can bring together widgets containing key data simply and easily, as Davey Nys, the head of EMEA for Pentaho, explained to V3.co.uk.

"We had interactive dashboards already, but there were limitations. Now, though, users can set up interactive panels without the need for any coding, so they can set up the display as they want," he said.

Nys explained the updates had been formulated based on both the firm's assessment of the market and feedback from customers, which shows a clear trend for the wider use of BI software among staff in organisations of all sizes.

"The use of BI software is becoming very focused on the end users and so we want to empower these people to be able to do what they want without needing to involve IT departments," he said.

"We are seeing firms giving hundreds of members of staff access to data analytic software and we're evolving to meet this by offering a low-cost platform that can offer flexible tools for a broad range of uses."

The firm has also announced that it will run a series of seminars across Europe to give training and guidance on the use of BI software for firms, particularly for those following this trend of getting large numbers of staff involved in analytics.