Open-source BI platform lets organizations run conversational analytics on their own infrastructure, addressing data security and privacy concerns around AI
HYDERABAD, India– Organizations that handle patient records, financial transactions or restricted information have been cautious about AI-powered analytics, and for good reason. Helical Insight, an open-source BI platform that installs on-premises, now supports locally hosted language models, including those served through Ollama, so teams can adopt conversational analytics without handing data to an outside AI service.
The problem: AI that sends data elsewhere
Conversational BI works by passing a user’s question, schema details, context and sometimes result data to a language model. If that model is run by an external provider, the information travels beyond the company’s walls. For regulated sectors, that raises concerns about privacy, data residency and audit readiness.
The solution: bring your own model
Helical Insight’s AI analytics module lets customers choose and host their own model. Paired with an on-premises installation, the full path from question to answer can stay within the organization’s network.
Because the model sits on the customer’s own servers, the AI feature can also work in locked-down environments, including networks with no route to public AI services. Hospitals, banks and public-sector teams can test it first on a small machine and move to GPU hardware as usage grows.
Key facts
- Works with self-hosted models, including Ollama running on CPU or GPU servers
- Installs on-premises, in private cloud or in hybrid setups, including Docker and Kubernetes
- Role-based access, row-level security, SSO and multi-tenancy for controlled data access
- AI semantic layer for consistent business definitions
- Dashboards, paginated reports and embedded analytics in the same platform
- Full-featured Community Edition with source code on GitHub, so security teams can inspect it
“Our users in healthcare, finance and public-sector environments told us the same thing: they want AI analytics, but the data cannot leave,” said Nikhilesh Tiwari, Co-founder, Helical Insight. “With a local model and an on-premises platform, they no longer have to choose between modern analytics and their security requirements.”
Security remains a shared responsibility
Helical Insight advises customers to pair local AI with sound controls: read-only database accounts, row-level permissions, encrypted logs with defined retention, and testing against prompt injection. Teams should also expect that smaller local models can be less accurate than the largest hosted ones, which is why Helical Insight recommends a semantic layer and testing with real questions before launch.
Getting started
The Community Edition is free and includes the all the full feature set as enterprise edition, minus the enterprise support and attribution.. Teams can download community edition from Github or try the enterprise version.
About Helical Insight
Helical Insight is an open-source business intelligence and embedded analytics platform with AI-assisted analytics, self-service BI, pixel-perfect reporting and a framework driven by APIs. Organizations use it on-premises, in the cloud or in hybrid environments. Visit www.helicalinsight.com.
Media Contact
Nikhilesh Tiwari
