Open source business intelligence platforms are now considered comprehensive and credible alternatives to commercial business intelligence solutions. The various different components used exist for a number of years, are tried & tested, and highly reliable.

The web is the preferred support for open source platforms, offering visualisation, report design and data analysis.

While solutions such as Pentaho, Jasper and SpagoBI allow implementation of a complete business intelligence portal, business intelligence features can easily be added to an existing application, and the components on which these platforms are based be used separately.

Since the first version of this white paper, tools have been constantly developing and now integrate powerful interactive features, much-appreciated by users and administrators alike.

Numerous companies now choose to use open source business intelligence tools, benefiting from their performance, scalability, capacity to adapt to existing solutions, and their reduced cost.