DBMS 2 : DataBase Management System Services » Software AG

Intelligent Enterprise’s list of 12/36/48 vendors

Curt Monash — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:21:54 +0000

I’m getting a flood of press releases today, because many of the companies I write about were selected to Intelligent Enterprise’s list of 12 most influential vendors plus 36 more to watch in the areas Intelligent Enterprise covers (which seems to be pretty much the analytics-related parts of what I write about here and on Text Technologies). It looks like a pretty reasonable list, although I think they forced the issue in some of the small analytics vendors they selected, and of course anybody can quibble with some of the omissions.

Among the companies they cited, you can find topical categories here for IBM (and Cognos), Informatica, Microsoft, Netezza, Oracle, SAP/Business Objects (both), SAS, and Teradata; QlikTech; Cast Iron, Coral8, DATAllegro, HP, ParAccel, and StreamBase; and Software AG. On Text Technologies you’ll find categories for some of the same vendors, plus Attensity, Clarabridge, and Google. There also are categories for some of these vendors on the Monash Report.

Status of Software AG’s Tamino

Curt Monash — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:32:11 +0000

Since I was researching Software AG anyway, I took the opportunity to ask about Software AG’s native XML DBMS Tamino, which certainly has some fans. Jim Fowler, Software AG’s Director of Market Development, Enterprise Transaction Systems, was kind enough to write up the following for me:

As you know, when Tamino was released in the late 1990s it was one of the first – if not the first – commercially available native XML database. We now have several hundred Tamino customers worldwide, and Software AG is fully committed to supporting our customers.

At the same time, we recognize that XML has matured and evolved in many different directions during the past decade; the technology underlying XML data management has progressed in ways the market could not have foreseen. In Software AG’s case, we have found that the most powerful implementation of Tamino has been as the core engine underlying our SOA Registry / Repository called CentraSite. It is in fact a testimony to the quality of Tamino that it was used as the foundation of one of the company’s flagship SOA products.

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Technorati Tags: Software AG, Tamino, XML database, native XMLl

Software AG – an Adablast from the Adapast

Curt Monash — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:22:34 +0000

The two oldest major software products companies may well both be German – SAP and Software AG. They’re both a little older than CA (which, directly, or indirectly, has bought most of the other pioneers), Information Builders, or SAS, none of which – if I recall correctly – was founded before 1975-6.

In its current configuration, Software AG is based in Germany, publicly traded, and divided into two divisions:

ETS (Enterprise Transaction Systems), perhaps better thought of as “Software AG Classic.” This is a 350 million Euros business, solidly profitable and still growing, albeit slowly.
WebMethods, a SOA/integration division named after the biggest of the acquisitions it’s built from. This is a 100 million Euros business growing Very Fast.

The ETS folks briefed me last week. Highlights follow. I also posted about Software AG’s history over on Software Memories, which may provide some useful detail and context.

Software AG’s ETS business is built around the venerable mainframe DBMS ADABAS and its associated application development tool, the fourth-generation language (4GL) Natural. ADABAS has over 2000 active, maintenance-paying users, 5-600 of which have “very large” databases. How large? Software AG thought 10s or even 100s of terabytes of user data were typical, but didn’t sound sure enough of particulars for me to emphatically attribute that claim to them. Why do customers keep using the product? Big databases; great uptime; and, as a negative factor, of course it’s tough to switch.

Software AG is still enjoying 8-10% revenue growth in the ETS division. Why? Two reasons, its seems. First, there are license fee increases as databases grow larger, which fuel both license and maintenance revenue. Second, add-on modules are a big business. A lot of now-standard DBMS features were separate modules in the old days. And Software AG has no incentive to switch to more modern practices, since it sold perpetual licenses to the core DBMS long ago. It’s also likely that some recent product releases have spurred uptake of new modules. Again, add-on modules spur both license and maintenance revenue. There’s a professional services component to revenue as well, but I have no particular theories about its rate of growth.

ADABAS is not as fully-featured as leading OLTP RDBMS, in terms of management tools, replication*, etc., but Software AG has been pushing hard to play catchup. Similar things can be said about Natural, which now boasts an Eclipse IDE and a lot of SOA-friendliness.

*Actually, Software AG had a deal with Magnuson to bring out replication-based high-availability systems back in the early 1980s, which fizzled. I guess some things just take a while …

One interesting technical point behind all this: ADABAS is an inverted-list DBMS. That means indexes have been at its core from the get-go. Inverted-list is also the architecture that dominates the text search world. Thus – notwithstanding my snark right above — many innovative ideas in modern data management have at least the potential of being retrofitted to ADABAS, should the payoff be sufficiently high.