According to the August 2005 TDWI Report Series,

Enterprise BI Licenses Costs up to $700,000 for 1000 users, not including Training or Premium Support Services.

Cost has been a motivator to moving to Open Source Business Intelligence (OSBI). But, why are large enterprises not fast enough in Open Source BI adoption?

I believe some of the challenges to moving to OSBI by large enterprises with existing BI implementation include but not limited to:

• Investment: Large enterprises have spent millions of dollars in their current BI infrastructure as well as staff training. Would they easily throw that away?
• Resistance to Change: It is human nature to resist change. As human beings, we fear what we don’t know. There is the politics involved in moving to an OSBI solution. I have seen users and administrators become attached to how they do things and using a particular tool is part of “how we do things”.
• Changes to Operational Procedures: For BI administrators, changing tools and infrastructure means a disruption to the current and working set of operational procedures.
• View of Career Threat: I’ve seen push backs when people think their careers will be in jeopardy because they are not knowledgeable in it. In the tough job market, people get worried that their job will go away because a new software or tool is going to be deployed.

I am sure there are other challenges out there. OSBI tools have a lot to offer. For instance, OSBI tools can be used to prototype new implementation. Developing a prototype is a good way to confirm that the design and technologies used will meet the enterprise BI needs. The OSBI prototype can be extended to see data validity or to assess data cleansing needs.

There are many possibilities but many challenges as well. Each challenge has a solution. For instance, when it is viewed as a career threat, it can be repositioned to appeal to one’s love of learning and playing with new “toys”. In adopting new technologies, cost, technologies, people and culture matter. Positioning OSBI as providing value with respect to cost, technologies, people and culture will go a long way.