Actuate's BIRT open source business intelligence (BI) offering has been recognized as a leader in a report entitled The Forrester Wave: Open Source Business Intelligence (BI), Q3 2010.
Forrester's appraisal method consists of rolling up scores to high-level aggregates, providing customizable weights to each evaluation criteria and drawing a clear distinction between community and commercial editions. Using 157 criteria to assess the different vendors, "Actuate BIRT led the pack because of richness of reporting functionality," according to the report, adding that "Actuate BIRT reports can be used for mass (millions) report distribution and for highly complex (with scalability and load balancing challenges) BI applications like interactive online customer statements."
Although Forrester's evaluation process requires some study, the analyst firm says that is aimed to produce as close to an 'apples-to-apples' comparison as possible between the Open Source BI solutions it evaluated.
Since BIRT is part of the Eclipse project, the product may also be attractive to developers currently using the Eclipse IDE.
