Database vendor Ingres and business-intelligence software maker Pentaho announced that they have formed a technology partnership to ensure ongoing integration of their open-source product lines.

In addition, the companies said they would offer customer support and conduct joint sales and marketing activities. The partnership is in response to customer demand for analysis and reporting on data locked away in operational databases. BI is among the fastest growing software segments, experts say.

"The breadth of Pentaho's offering is very attractive to our customers and prospects, and users will know through this partnership that we are committed to their ongoing success with open source BI," Fred Gallagher, VP of business development for Ingres, said.

Pentaho's reporting capabilities, for example, could be run against Ingres-based operational systems, the companies said. For organizations with multiple business systems, Pentaho's extract, transform and load capabilities could be used to gather data into a data warehouse running the Ingres database.

Open source BI projects, such as the Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT), JasperForge and the Pentaho BI Project are maturing, experts say. A Ventana Research study found that companies have a strong interest in open source BI software, and reducing the cost of large deployments was a major reason for adopting open source tools.