June 30, 2009

Is Expressor Software accomplishing anything?

Expressor Software is putting out a ton of press releases to the effect that it has signed up another reseller/systems integration partner or, in some cases, sponsored a webinar.  Less clear is whether Expressor is selling much of anything, delivering product people care about, and so on.  The one time I visited, Expressor told me that user interface was its strength, then showed me something very primitive and explained — as the famed joke* would have it — how good it was going to be.

*That would be the Thrice-Married Virgin, although I’ve recently seen versions in which the poor unfortunate was married 12 times. The last husband on the list is always a computer or software salesman, who keeps telling her how good it is going to be. I first heard the joke from Flip Filipowski. I decided it must not be too terribly sexist after hearing Sandy Kurtzig tell it to a group of stock analysts.

Am I missing anything major?

Edit: I emailed the company on May 8, asking what Expressor had in the way of customers. There has been no response.

Comments

9 Responses to “Is Expressor Software accomplishing anything?”

  1. Anonymous on June 30th, 2009 6:39 pm

    how true

  2. Jerome Pineau on June 30th, 2009 7:13 pm

    I would note in their “defense” that they are hiring an SE and UX expert according to their website 🙂

  3. Todd Fin on June 30th, 2009 8:47 pm

    This is funny. I was paid attention to that as well. Many wish the private company with institutional funding would be obligated to disclose at least the revenue figures.
    Tomorrow we might hear a full blown press release about Expressor company sponsored latte (or espresso) for everyone at company summer picnic 🙂

  4. Michael Waclawiczek on July 1st, 2009 2:27 pm

    To answer the question posed in the headline of your latest blog post, yes, expressor is accomplishing quite a few things. In fact, the numerous partner press releases you mentioned are a reflection of our success building an indirect sales and support channel. expressor’s go-to-market strategy is built on reseller and system integrator partners leading our selling efforts in Europe and to a lesser extent in the US — as we have chosen to invest our dollars in the product, not a large consulting force. This is one of main reasons expressor can offer a high-end data integration solution with much more affordable TCO than the traditional DI vendors, whose high licensing and maintenance costs are supported by a direct/enterprise sales and support model. FYI, since October ‘08 we have conducted five multi-day partner product training courses and trained more than 50 consultants thus far, which is paying off in great progress building pipeline and engaging new accounts.

    As for your questions whether we’re selling anything or offering anything the market cares about – the answer is yes, in both cases. I alluded to our customer acquisition momentum last time we talked (in February at TDWI in Las Vegas) and we are progressing very nicely on that trajectory. In fact, several of our customers are acting as private references and were interviewed by Gartner as part of the research that resulted in expressor being recognized as a 2009 Cool Vendor in data management and integration.

    You haven’t seen any customer announcements from expressor for two main reasons. First, most of our customers are G2000 accounts with one or more entrenched ETL/DI vendors already in place. And as expected, they are not inclined to upset their existing vendor relationships yet as they rely on these vendors to support their deployed applications. Second, as you know, many large companies have stringent PR policies in place making it difficult to receive public endorsements, particularly for a startup like expressor. We are fully aware of the importance of customer announcements and are working to share our successes with you and other industry watchers ASAP.

    As for the value of what we’re offering, I can say that customers, prospects and partners have told us they believe the key benefits of our solution are data processing performance, our ability to efficiently process complex data, our new and innovative approach to semantic data integration, and the fact that we are 60 – 80% less expensive than their incumbent DI solutions. We are definitely being “invited to the party,” and are working on a dozen or so POC engagements at the moment. But you don’t need to just take my word for it. Earlier this week, in response to a blog he posted about next-generation DI solution vendors like expressor making gains against the established vendors, analyst Philip Howard of Bloor Research said that he had received a private comment about his article from a major organization looking to move from Ab Initio to expressor (http://www.it-director.com/technology/data_mgmt/content.php?cid=11366).

    Finally, regarding our user interface, we believe that our role-based UI approach is a major strength, and we are rapidly evolving our tools and platform based on end-user and partner feedback. We’ve just released expressor 2.0, and have received very positive feedback on it from analysts across the industry (http://www.expressor-software.com/bloor-report-on-expressor-v2.htm).

    So I would say that we definitely are accomplishing something!

    Dr. Michael Waclawiczek
    VP of Marketing
    expressor software

  5. Roger Smyth on July 1st, 2009 2:55 pm

    Sir,

    As far as Expressor is concerned, tt would seem they have a different execution model that seems to be partner driven, probably a reason why they are announcing partners. Their partners do seem to be high quality and are specific to the space they intend to go after.

    My company looked at Expressor, and continue to watch them, it has a lot of potential. We may not be ready to move forward now, we just paid a full years maintenance with our current ETL vendor, but we thought it was certainly a vendor to watch and will engage again with them later in the year.

    Sir, do you have anything positive to say about any of the vendors you write about? You seem to be very misinformed about a lot of the companies you have covered and their representatives seem to be correcting you. Perhaps the negativity is a consequence if these vendors have retained you or not!

    Roger

  6. Todd Fin on July 1st, 2009 9:07 pm

    We might hear another press release for Expressor soon: “someone at dbms.com commented they looked into Expressor and have passed. However there was a very strong promise to look again next year.”
    I am joking of course, but the official response above really looks as desperate to me. Guess you guys came out to the market with such message too early or the message is wrong and confusing. It is very easy to burn (as you just did here). Your engineers and sales need to deliver a better results before you can start claiming superiority over established products on the market.
    By the way, Curt is doing a good job covering the space. He can see what others are not capable to see or don’t want to see after getting a check from vendor.

  7. Curt Monash on July 1st, 2009 9:45 pm

    Roger,

    You obviously haven’t read much in this blog.

    You also obviously haven’t read Justin Swanhart of Kickfire’s suggestion that I get out of the industry due to what he perceived as my negativity about Kickfire, or else you haven’t read my multiple mentions of the fact that Kickfire is a client.

    Indeed, it would be hard for you to find a client I write about regularly I don’t from time to time say negative things about. Of the top of my head, for example, I can recall things I’ve written disagreeing with marketing messages from Netezza, Microsoft, Greenplum, Aster, and Vertica, all of whom are clients.

    But thank you for mentioning that your company, whoever they are, is interested in further discussions with Expressor at some point down the road.

  8. I have a some presentations upcoming (all on October Thursdays) | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services on October 9th, 2009 8:11 am

    […] focused in that area; it might be hard to spend 45 minutes on cloud computing without sounding like the software salesman who keeps repeating how good it’s going to be. Categories: Analytic technologies, Aster Data, Cloud computing, MapReduce, Presentations  […]

  9. QlikTech bought Expressor | DBMS 2 : DataBase Management System Services on June 13th, 2012 12:02 am

    […] Expressor never got much traction. This seems confirmed by the “more than 20″ figure for headcount mentioned in the acquisition press release. […]

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