March 2, 2009

Closing the book on the DATAllegro customer base

I’m prepared to call an end to the “Guess DATAllegro’s customers” game.  Bottom line is that there are three in all, two of which are TEOCO and Dell, and the third of which is a semi-open secret.  I wrote last week:

The number of DATAllegro production references is expected to double imminently, from one to two. Few will be surprised at the identity of the second reference. I imagine the number will then stay at two, as DATAllegro technology is no longer being sold, and the third known production user has never been reputed to be particularly pleased with it.

Dell did indeed disclose at TDWI that it was a large DATAllegro user, notwithstanding that Dell is a huge Teradata user as well.  No doubt, Dell is gearing up to be a big user of Madison too.

Also at TDWI, I talked with some former DATAllegro employees who now work for rival vendors. None thinks DATAllegro has more than three customers.  Neither do I.

Edit: Subsequently, the DATAllegro customer count declined to 1.

Comments

10 Responses to “Closing the book on the DATAllegro customer base”

  1. anonymous on March 2nd, 2009 8:40 pm

    Four
    NPD Group
    http://www.datallegro.com/pr/2_16_06_npd.asp

    Sears Holding
    http://www.datallegro.com/pr/5_23_06_sears.asp

    But are they still operating? Did either ever reach production?

  2. Curt Monash on March 2nd, 2009 9:21 pm

    Well, technically, the identity of the third one is NDA.

    But anyhow, I’ve never heard anything about NPD. I haven’t even heard it identified as the DATAllegro customer that sent its DATAllegro system back.

    I guess I should have searched for press releases a bit more carefully. 😉

  3. anonymous on March 3rd, 2009 10:56 am

    See this July 2006 article by Krishna Roy for The451.com
    http://www.datallegro.com/pdf/451_coverage_july2006.pdf
    “Executives report that it now has between 15 and 20 customers.”

    Press release, October 25 2007
    http://www.datallegro.com/pr/10_25_07_growth.asp
    “DATALLEGRO ANNOUNCES 330% GROWTH…”

    Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2007” dated October 10, 2007:
    “Growth has been consistent, and the company currently has about 15 to 20 customers.”

  4. Curt Monash on March 3rd, 2009 3:55 pm

    Thank you Anonymous, but:

    A. DATAllegro never gave me any such figures.
    B. DATAllegro never gave me any such references.
    C. Neither I nor anybody else I know of in the industry has ever identified any but those three customers.
    D. One big sale can suffice for large revenue growth.

    Frankly, I used to believe that DATAllegro had more customers too. Other analysts obviously shared my error.

  5. Curt Monash on March 3rd, 2009 4:15 pm

    By the way, Anonymous, since you evidently work for a company that also made a sale to the unnamed third user on my DATAllegro list — how’s the DATAllegro installation going there? How’s yours? How’s the third analytic DBMS startup vendors’ who sold there, if you know which part of the company they’re in?

    (This assumes, of course, that I’m keeping my anonymous commenters straight …)

  6. Jerome Pineau on March 5th, 2009 3:03 am

    Honestly, if they managed to get MSFT to cash them out with only 3 customers, that’s a pretty neat trick 🙂

  7. DW Consultant on March 7th, 2009 7:47 pm

    No Questions about that it is indeed very neat for the marketing and CEO (who convinced MSFT) to buy this technology is. At the same time you can even say how foolish was MSFT not to even look under the hood. This gives us inidcation that MSFT is no more innovative company, it just relies on easy way out.

  8. eBay’s two enormous data warehouses | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services on April 30th, 2009 10:56 am

    […] To a probably lesser extent, the same is now also true of Dell. […]

  9. Facts and rumors | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services on September 30th, 2009 2:21 am

    […] sources have told me that the DATAllegro system is being thrown out of Dell, so evidently Dell is telling this to one and all. If that goes through, this would presumably […]

  10. Company metrics you have to disclose | Strategic Messaging on November 29th, 2012 6:02 am

    […] other metric that the community pretty much forces out of vendors is customer count. DATAllegro managed to fool people into thinking they had more customers than they did, and parlayed that all […]

Leave a Reply




Feed: DBMS (database management system), DW (data warehousing), BI (business intelligence), and analytics technology Subscribe to the Monash Research feed via RSS or email:

Login

Search our blogs and white papers

Monash Research blogs

User consulting

Building a short list? Refining your strategic plan? We can help.

Vendor advisory

We tell vendors what's happening -- and, more important, what they should do about it.

Monash Research highlights

Learn about white papers, webcasts, and blog highlights, by RSS or email.