We [Clarise and I] met with Bernard Golden, The CEO of Navica, again. One of the topics of conversation brought together our work in Business Intelligence and Open Source. Bernard's background includes Informix and our's includes Oracle [No rivalry though] All three of us have worked on large system integration projects requiring strict data modeling and centered around the RDBMS, ETL, EAI, OLTP and OLAP tools selected to best meet the business needs. Clarise and I have worked with Jetstream [ETL & EAI], Mondrian with JPivot [OLAP].

One of the most important aspects of a BI project is the implementing the business process and best practices for the users. Determining what that really means is key to the success of such projects. Do the current business processes implement best practices for that industry, giving the organization a competitive edge, but needing better implementation from IT? Are the best practices implemented in a COTS BI suite better than the organization's current business processes? This is at the heart of most "build versus buy" decisions.

And this is one advantage that open source packages may have over buying a proprietary solution that implements the vendor's version of BI best practices for a given industry or vertical. Open Source can be more cost effectively customized to implement those processes and practices that your organization views as giving a competitive advantage.

By the way, Bernard gave us a copy of his book, Succeeding with Open Source.