• This is a list of Monash Advantage members.
• All our vendor clients are Monash Advantage members, unless …
• … we work with them primarily in their capacity as technology users. (A large fraction of our user clients happen to be SaaS vendors.)
• We do not usually disclose our user clients.
• We do not usually disclose our venture capital clients, nor those who invest in publicly-traded securities.
• Included in the list below are two expired Monash Advantage members who haven’t said they will renew, as mentioned in my recent post on analyst bias. (You can probably imagine a couple of reasons for that obfuscation.)

With that said, our vendor client disclosures at this time are:

• Aster Data
• Cloudera
• CodeFutures/dbShards
• Couchbase
• EMC/Greenplum
• Endeca
• IBM/Netezza
• Infobright
• Intel
• MarkLogic
• ParAccel
• QlikTech
• salesforce.com/database.com
• SAND Technology
• SAP/Sybase
• Schooner Information Technology
• Skytide
• Splunk
• Teradata
• Vertica

That list includes the two I’m obfuscating, plus one more who just emailed to say a signed renewal contract is arriving this week. It does not include others who, less concretely, have said they will sign up soon.

Also, I guess there’s a bit of a gray area for Tableau. As far as I’m concerned, I’m doing an upcoming co-sponsored webinar just for Monash Advantage member Aster Data. Indeed, I declined to contract with or bill Tableau directly for its share,  because I had no good way to do that paperwork. But even so, Tableau is a cosponsor, was involved in the planning discussions and, behind the scenes, is surely footing part of the bill.

First and foremost, the fourth annual New England Database Summit (nee “Day”) is next week, specifically Friday, January 28. As per my posts in previous years, I think well of the event, which has a friendly, gathering-of-the-clan flavor. Registration is free, but the organizers would prefer that you register online by the end of this week, if you would be so kind.

The two things potentially wrong with the New England Database Summit are parking and the rush hour drive home afterwards. I would listen with interest to any suggestions about dinner plans.

One thing I hope to figure out at the Summit or before is what the hell is going on on Vertica’s blog or, for that matter, at Vertica. The recent Mike Stonebraker post that spawned a lot of discussion and commentary has disappeared. Meanwhile, Vertica has had three consecutive heads of marketing leave the company since June, and I don’t know who to talk to there any more. 

Speaking of blog problems, we’ve had performance/reliability glitches here again. Melissa Bradshaw determined that the problem was an apparently activated WP Super Cache not actually caching anything. We should be OK now, so please let me know if there are further difficulties. One interesting step — it turns out that there’s a WordPress plug-in that does automatic EXPLAINs (if you’re the blog administrator).

Another interesting Mike Stonebraker post can be found (at least for now) over on the VoltDB blog. He continued his assault on the CAP Theorem, arguing that availability is an exaggerated concern when there are bug- or other human-error-driven kinds of outages, and also arguing that the concept of “partition tolerance” is misguided. Commenters pushed back, pointing out that in geographically distributed scenarios, the CAP Theorem sense of partitioning is quite a legitimate concern.

When I posted an expansive definition of machine-generated data a few weeks ago, Daniel Abadi shot back advocating a narrower one (see the comment thread, which includes a link to his thoughtful post). The disagreement boils down to conflicting intuitions as to whether the machine-data/true-human-data ratio will keep growing rapidly, in hybrid cases such as web logs or social gaming.

Dave McClure recently offered a survey of hot startup investing themes. High on his list were location-based services, which is a reminder to us all that geo-spatial data is becoming much more important. Ray Wang is savvy enough to understand the privacy dangers location-based services cause, but influential though Ray is, his view will probably remain in the minority. Machine-generated data and video each also make appearances on Dave’s list.

And wait! I have even more links for you!  Several are taken from Thomas Houston’s choices for The Best Tech Writing of 2010. He chose well. I recommend sampling his list further.

• In an article about new electronic exchanges, the New York Times shared some numbers — 56% of trading volume “high speed” in stocks, 1/3 or so when looking at domestic futures, .1 milliseconds to do a NASDAQ trade, 13 milliseconds for a trade that involves Chicago/NYC communication, 60 milliseconds for NYC/Frankfurt. Slashdot offers photos and other context.
• James Taylor caught up with once-hot KXEN, and evidently got the impression KXEN was focusing a lot of its efforts on the tedious, time-consuming data-preparation side of modeling.
• Richard Tibbetts is being pretty funny on his blog.
• (Slashdot) The Russian government seems to be getting into open source software in a big way. Well, PostgreSQL is already big in Russia (close to 1 million installations, I was once told), so this might conceivably add some energy to its development.
• In Drupal 7, Drupal now has “a built-in test environment, version upgrade manager, and a database abstraction layer for use with MariaDB, SQL Server, MongoDB, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.” That may explain how MongoDB can hope to further penetrate the Drupal market.
• The Boston Phoenix argues that government lacks the manpower, budget, and expertise to keep up with its responsibilities in preserving and exposing information. Fixing that problem sounds like a pretty worthy open source development effort to me.

Finally:

• Clay Shirky reminded us that modern machine learning is what replaced old-style AI.
• Nominally reviewing a book he obviously disdains, Garry Kasparov — in my opinion the most admirable world chess champion ever — surveyed computer chess in quick, nontechnical way. The whole thing is a bit wordy even so, so I’ll quote one part:

In 2005, the online chess-playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a “freestyle” chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other players or computers. … The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and “coaching” their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.

Last Monday night, Linda and I returned from Columbus, leaving behind an apartment that was hardly packed up at all. We have to go back the week of 12/6; then I’m going to see clients in California the week of 12/13, as I do about once per quarter; then of course come the holidays; there also is estate-related stuff to take care of even while we’re here; and by the way, year-end is when over half of all Monash Advantage members renew. So I surely will be on a limited blogging schedule for most of December as well.

I did, however, get a few posts done this weekend, finishing up one on MarkLogic that had been in the hopper for a while, and adding two rather substantive spin-off posts from that one as well. After the New Year, I would hope to be back up to full speed.

Naturally, when I get back to work, there will be a massive backlog. Highlights include:

• My quarterly trip to California, in this case to see clients both old and new.
• Catch-up blogging.
• A white paper/webinar project.
• Monash Advantage renewals.

To make things simple, 2011 Monash Advantage terms and conditions will be completely unchanged from 2010. That’s never been the case before; if nothing else, I’ve raised prices every year. But even if I’d had more time on my hands, I might have made only minor tweaks this time around, as the current version seems to be working well for vendor (that would be me) and clients alike. If I find the time, I’ll edit the contracts for typos and so on.* But what you get and what you pay will be exactly as they have been this year, except to the extent I can persuade you to make better use of what’s always been on offer to you.

*First two on the hit list: “Action, MA” should be “Acton, MA”, and some people dislike the actually sensible reference to the year 2019.

Obviously, various schedules I was trying to work to are no longer operative. But I really, really want to move forward promptly on the Privacy 3.0 project I mentioned to some of you. All the other stuff — post-print journalism and so on — can happen when it happens.

Is it?

Thanks!

• Both on this blog and Reddit, there’s been considerable pushback against my idea that web usage types of user profile data shouldn’t be cluttering up an ACID-compliant database. But there’s also been considerable support, e.g. from Dan Weinreb, who knows quite a lot about huge OLTP systems.
• Meanwhile, RJP supplied details about the JP Morgan Chase Oracle outage that my actual source didn’t know.
• For obvious reasons, IBM wasn’t in a position to talk a lot of IBM/Netezza detail when we happened to chat post-merger-announcement. But they did want to set me straight on SAS being kicked out for SPSS, pointing out that SAS runs in the DB2 database today (scoring, not modeling).
• Product marketer Stephanie McReynolds added on to my post about Aster Data nCluster 4.6 in exactly the way I wish all vendors would. She added information I had been unsure about when I did the post — or had simply left out — and she was fast in doing so. I encourage all vendors I write about to follow her example.
• The comments on my post about Pentaho’s ETL-for-HDFS made the product sound more appealing than the post itself did.
• My August 18 NoSQL post was tailor-made for people to add-on pitches for their own favorite products, NoSQL-oriented websites, etc. A number of interesting such additions showed up accordingly.
• There were many thoughtful responses to my question about how somebody should teach themselves database programming skills. Indeed, whole other blog posts were written and linked back. That’s a great resource if you ever get the question asked by a friend or acquaintance of you.
• The flame war that erupted in response to my comments on vendor and analyst ethics spawned a number of more productive discussions elsewhere.
• Jeff Hammerbacher has made various comments to the effect “Yes indeedy! Hadoop does that too!” (My wording, not his. )
• Alin Dobra reported on some tests suggesting sequential reads remain far faster than random reads even on Flash SSDs.
• Calpont has an ever-slicker website and yet another new marketing VP, but no customers that are easy to detect.
• My July 4 privacy post engendered thoughtful discussion from three of the smartest guys who comment here — Chris Bird, Michael McIntire, and Dan Weinreb.
• IBM and Netezza both added crunchy details to my post about their data compression strategies.
• And for those of you who don’t read my other blogs — last night’s post was a long and optimistic rumination on the future of investigative reporting.

One moral in all this is that it is a VERY good idea for the elderly to live in the same metropolitan area as their children. When I’m with my father, I can rein in his overconfidence about muddling through episodes of weakness. When I’m not, bad things happen.

Still, things are moving forward. A long, slow rehab will be very unpleasant for my parents, but at least there’s good hope we won’t have too many more near-term urgent crises. Communication and coordination among my parents’ support structure is better, even in the case of Friendship Village. And Linda seems sufficiently able to fend for herself that I’ll keep my plans to go to the SF Bay area the week of October 4, albeit being very careful to stock the house with food  beforehand.

I’ve kept up client service through all this, cutting relatively few corners, and that won’t change. Of course, the clients may change. After all, my biggest client is being acquired by IBM,  my 2nd-largest was acquired by EMC, a small one was acquired by SAP, and another small one folded and was scavenged by Teradata. And there seem to be ever more new ones, still concentrated primarily in the database area. (Other kinds include database-interested tech vendors, analytic technology vendors, and users who care about the whole analytic technology stack.)

One area where I have indeed cut a few corners is blogging. Some of the catch-up posts I wanted to do will never happen, at least not until I talk with the various vendors again. Rather, I’m trying to move forward on new subjects, as per recent coverage of JPMorgan Chase/Oracle, IBM/Netezza, or ACID/NoSQL issues in general.

What’s suffered most are some cool new projects still in stealth mode. A month ago, I was pushing forward on about four fronts at once, trying to help shape what analysis and journalism would look like in the future. That entrepreneurial energy drained away as the crises started piling up. For those of you with whom I’ve left discussions hanging, I’m sorry — and I am NOT giving up the efforts. Indeed, I hope to take at least some small steps forward on a couple of them this week.

Thank you all for your understanding and support. You’ve been great.

You might conjecture, on reading the above, that Friendship Village of Dublin has valid legal reasons for withholding the information. However, the sequence of events is:

• For months, the Friendship Village of Dublin Health Center has communicated with me, apparently freely, about my parents’ medical condition and treatment. My father in particular kept directing their attention to specific emails I wrote to FVD Health Center staff – including to Director of Nursing Connie Robertson — to make sure they took note.
• Friendship Village of Dublin suddenly discovered (?) a years-old document that in their opinion meant they should not share information with me.
• Friendship Village of Dublin was asked what additional documents they needed to countermand the first one.
• Friendship Village of Dublin was faxed the documents it asked for.
• Friendship Village of Dublin subsequently emailed me terse information about my mother, in apparent recognition of the validity of the new documents.
• Friendship Village of Dublin still is refusing to give me the information about my father that I requested.

Thus, I see no excuse for whatever permanent harm or temporary suffering Friendship Village of Dublin is causing my father, by its withholding of information that could be useful in his care. In particular:

• Whether or not Friendship Village of Dublin was at any point correct in withholding information from me, they were wrong from start to finish in also withholding it from other concerned parties.
• If Friendship Village of Dublin was at any point correct in withholding information from me, then it was wrong many times before in providing it.

I could go on in that vein, but there’s little point.

No doubt Friendship Village of Dublin will eventually reverse course, accompanied by some combination of comments along the lines of:

• “HIPAA made us do it” (Health Information Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) – as noted above, that would be false in many particulars.
• “Omigod – we didn’t get those messages!” – implausible, and even if true not an excuse.
• “So sorry – it was all a big misunderstanding” – heckuva persistent misunderstanding, in the face of many efforts to set FVD straight.

But even if Friendship Village of Dublin comes clean tomorrow, it still will have taken much, much too long to be forthcoming with important and time-sensitive medical information.

Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around, along with specifics I’m not mentioning. Of those contributing factors, I’d like to highlight one:

In a system where medical records were handled more sensibly, there would be less opportunity for Friendship Village of Dublin to behave this badly.

More on that in a companion post on health records, privacy, and elder care.

Returning now to a more personal note – I thank many of you for your kind comments, whether on this blog or via Twitter or in email or in phone conversation. It seems I’m going to be occupied with family health over the next couple of days, dealing with my parents’ situation and taking Linda to various doctor appointments. After that – well, we’ll see, but I’m going to try to get back into the flow of work as soon as possible. My most immediate blogging plans include:

• Even though the posts won’t be up to my usual standards of detail, I’d like to write SOMETHING more based on the various conversations I had in support of my forthcoming NoSQL article.
• As Merv Adrian recently noted on Twitter, Aster has some news coming up.

• Are concise.
• Are priced in terms units of work, yet do not require me to meter services at precise hourly or daily rates.
• Have a minimum scope that allows me to feel comfortable I’m spending enough time with a client to do good work.
• Extend over time, mimicking the subscription model of analyst services.*
• Do not contain any concept of “work for hire,” transfer of intellectual property, or “we own your brain.”
• Don’t have any other features that are stunningly inappropriate for our business.

By way of contrast, the user services portion of our site is only a few lines long, and that’s beginning to hurt. When users do ask for consulting services, I have to define each project from scratch. I just suffered through a painful process in which a user insisted on writing their own contract. Even worse, I suspect that I’m missing out on a lot of potential user relationships I could have if I were a little more encouraging of them.

So I want to fix things. Most of the principles above carry over just fine to the user case, but there’s one big difference. While the “extended over time” aspect is great for vendors because:

• There’s always another release to plan and position
• They’re used to paying analysts out of subscription-oriented budget lines anyway

users — at least the ones I see — seem more focused on particular projects, generally along the lines of a once-every-several-years rearchitecting.  More specifically, when users approach me for advice, they generally are:

• Looking to significantly upgrade their analytic capabilities.
• Looking to adopt a new brand of analytic DBMS.
• Looking for architectural advice too.
• Interested in advice on BI and/or predictive analytics strategies as well.
• Correctly anticipating that, once the project is underway, we’ll probably uncover issues and opportunities (not always in the analytics area) they didn’t know they had.

The model I’ve come up with to address all this is to define everything in terms of …

… Service Units, of which there are three kinds:

• Session Units. A Session Unit comprises a meeting, telephone or in person, of 1 ½ – 2 hours, plus appropriate preparation (commonly preliminary phone calls and reading to acquaint us with specifics of your situation and needs).
• Document Review Units. When you are preparing a planning document of some kind (for example, technical architecture or vendor short list), a Document Review Unit consists of our feedback and advice through several iterations, starting from your initial draft.
• Retainer Units. A Retainer Unit allows unmetered quick inquiries for a period of time, typically 1 ½ – 3 months.

Our minimum project size is two Service Units – a Session Unit to start off and a Retainer Unit to help address follow-on and ancillary issues. This lets us advise you with the care and insight you expect. Beyond that minimum, project structure is flexible, and can be tailored to your specific needs, working style, and budget.

While on first reading that’s somewhat vague, it’s as concrete as I know how to get while maintaining the flexibility to:

• Reflect clients’ preferred ways of working.
• Adapt to surprises as the project unfolds.
• Volunteer advice and tangential thoughts without worrying about racking up fees for things the client didn’t actually ask for.

The price per Service Unit is $5,000, which means minimum project size is $10,000, with an approximate target of $25,000 per phase.

This kind of pricing — which has been validated in several recent user contacts and engagements — reflects my position at an extreme end of the freemium spectrum, in that I:

• Spend a large majority of my time doing research and giving it away for free.
• Charge high rates for the time I do actually sell.

One last thing — I like to talk to users, and hence want to have a low-priced, single-conversation offering as well. My current thinking about that part is:

• One hour phone call.
• Limited email follow-on afterwards, along the lines of:
  • “Are you SURE you were right to say Product X doesn’t have Feature Y?”
  • “Please remind me — why were you opposed to Product Z?”
  • “Yes, we’d love an email introduction to a marketing exec at Company W.”

The price for this low-end offering would be $1,995, limit 1/customer/year. I.e., it’s a bargain version of the Session Unit described above.  And there would be a special simplicity rule — absolutely, positively no paperwork except our standard NDA agreement, an invoice, and perhaps a W-9 form. If I can do 10 of those a year — well, it would pay like one medium-sized vendor relationship, and it would give me the opportunity to talk with 10 more users who are interested in talking with me.

And so we finally get to the question that is my reason for making this post:

Do the plans outlined above match the way users want to buy analyst consulting services such as ours?

Opinions and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.