Pentaho Attracts More Open Source Channel Partners

Pentaho, which specializes in open source business intelligence, continues to expand its channel partner program. The latest example: Levementum, a solutions provider that frequently leverages Amazon Web Services and cloud computing, has inked an alliance with Pentaho. Here’s the scoop, and some perspectives.

Let’s start with Pentaho. The open source BI specialist held its first partner conference in April 2009. Since that time, Pentaho has expanded its channel organization with additional headcount and signed up five Gold Resellers in the past couple of months, notes Lars Nordwall, senior VP of worldwide sales at Pentaho.

“We have two very large consulting firms entering into formal partnerships with us this quarter, we continue to make customer success story announcements with our partners such as OTTO International (by gold reseller BrainChild in Hong Kong),” says Nordwall. “Expect a few more customer announcements by the Gold Resellers shortly. Two of the new Gold Resellers have already finalized customer deals with one of the largest telcos in the world respectively one of the largest financial institutes in the world (expect announcements later this year).”

True believers include Levementum, which positions itself as an open source system integrator. The Chandler, Ariz.-based company this month inked a partnership with Pentaho, empowering Levementum to offer open source BI solutions to its enterprise customers.

Levementum is making a strong name for itself as a next-generation solutions provider. In addition to the Pentaho deal, Levementum has also deployed Compiere‘s Open Source ERP platform and SugarCRM in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for customers.

Competition Looms

Meanwhile, Pentaho isn’t the only open source BI game in the channel. Rival Jaspersoft has been building a channel for its own open source BI tools. Both Pentaho and Jaspersoft landed on The Open Source 50, a 2008-2009 report tracking the most promising open source channel partner programs.

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