The VAR Guy

Pentaho, the open source business intelligence company, generated record results in 1Q 2010, according to VP of Marketing Joe McGonnell. Pentaho attributes much of its performance to a growing channel partner program. Here’s a closer look at Pentaho’s momentum.

Hmmm… It’s always difficult to quantify and confirm a privately held software company’s performance. After all, Pentaho doesn’t need to disclose its financial records. But Pentaho did participate in The VAR Guy’s second annual Open Source 50 survey, which tracks the top open source channel partner programs (results to be announced May 24).

And in an email to The VAR Guy, McGonnell offered up a few nuggets worth nothing noting:

• McGonnell claims Q1 was “the most successful quarter in the company’s history…for the second quarter in a row.”
• Pentaho won business from nine new customers that are part of the Global 2000.
• The company expects to grow more than 100 percent in 2010, and Pentaho is “ahead of plan” after wrapping up Q1. “It’s quite possible we will grow more than 150% for the year,” he added.
• On the channel front, Pentaho signed two major global Systems Integrator deals in Q4, and the company is working thru the final details of a third such partnership now.
• New end-user customers sold by the Pentaho resellers increased more than 5X during 2009, and Q1 2010 was well above target as well.
• Roughly 250 partners are expected to attend Pentaho’s Second Annual Partner Summit, scheduled for San Francisco in early June.

McGonnell is fairly new to Pentaho, but he’s quite familiar with the open source industry. One prime example: He ran marketing for JBoss, the open source middleware platform, from early stage through Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss.

Notes McGonnell: “Pentaho is the first open source company I have joined in earnest since JBoss, mainly because I see the same elements necessary for success: strong community momentum, solid management team, dedication to the channel, and delivering the sales numbers month after month.”

Sounds impressive. But Pentaho certainly isn’t alone in the open source BI market. The company competes with Jaspersoft and a range of traditional BI software providers.

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