Praxis – Pentaho Fast Track BI Seminar Series Debuts in South Africa

US-based Pentaho Corporation, a leader in open source business intelligence and local systems integrator Praxis Computing, are holding  the Pentaho live seminar series, Fast Track BI in Johannesburg and Cape Town,on June 1 and 3, 2011. This half-day free  seminar has helped companies around the world implement BI projects that are better, faster and more cost effective.

Open source software and technologies are strongly backed by the South African government and have been steadily growing in acceptance in both the public and private sectors  due to their efficiency and cost effectiveness. Gartner recently predicted, “Open-source business intelligence tools production deployments will grow five-fold through to 2012.” This is evident in the growth of open source BI vendors; the National Treasury being a recent example of an  organisation replacing one of their key systems with Pentaho.

Presentations at the seminar will focus on the capabilities of the Pentaho Business Intelligence Suite,  which includes data integration, dashboards, reporting and analytics. Speakers will also present some case studies of the implementation of Pentaho in large international customers, illustrating its reputation as the hottest BI platform in the open source arena.

In addition to covering the benefits of Business Intelligence and Pentaho technology, the seminar will cover :

How does the open source model work?
How does open source BI technology compare with other established proprietary software?
What are the cost differences between Pentaho and other BI products?

“We have seen an increased interest in Pentaho BI technologies, especially from data intensive organisations such as financial institutions as they see a higher return on investment from its implementation,” said Yugasen Naidoo, CEO, Praxis. “This seminar represents an opportunity for local BI technical and management staff to interact with experienced professionals around the international trends and usage of open source technology, and of course to understand the capabilities of Pentaho from the parent company.”

“We want to ensure  that companies leave the seminar with in-depth knowledge of the tools and services available to help them make better decisions,“ said Richard Baldwin, VP of Worldwide Channels. “I look forward to attending and speaking along with Sharmila Wijeyakumar at both seminars hosted by Pentaho SI Partner, Praixis.”