SAND Technology
Analysis of SAND Technology and its products, such as SAND/DNA. Related subjects include:
Merv Adrian on SAND Technology
Merv Adrian blogged about SAND Technology, casting significant doubt on SAND’s business prospects. At this point, I can’t say I disagree. On the other hand, SAND does have public, audited financial statements showing it generating more revenue than a lot of other analytic DBMS or archiving vendors probably make. Columnar DBMS vendors doing better than SAND are Sybase, Vertica, maybe Infobright — and who else?
| Categories: Archiving and information preservation, Columnar database management, Data warehousing, SAND Technology | 1 Comment |
Draft slides on how to select an analytic DBMS
I need to finalize an already-too-long slide deck on how to select an analytic DBMS by late Thursday night. Anybody see something I’m overlooking, or just plain got wrong?
Edit: The slides have now been finalized.
Gartner’s 2008 data warehouse database management system Magic Quadrant is out
February, 2011 edit: I’ve now commented on Gartner’s 2010 Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrant as well.
Gartner’s annual Magic Quadrant for data warehouse DBMS is out. Thankfully, vendors don’t seem to be taking it as seriously as usual, so I didn’t immediately hear about it. (I finally noticed it in a Greenplum pay-per-click ad.) Links to Gartner MQs tend to come and go, but as of now here are two working links to the 2008 Gartner Data Warehouse Database Management System MQ. My posts on the 2007 and 2006 MQs have also been updated with working links. Read more
Database archiving and information preservation
Two similar companies reached out to me recently – SAND Technology and Clearpace. Their current market focus is somewhat different: Clearpace talks mainly of archiving, and sells first and foremost into the compliance market, while SAND has the most traction providing “near-line” storage for SAP databases.* But both stories boil down to pretty much the same thing: Cheap, trustworthy data storage with good-enough query capabilities. E.g., I think both companies would agree the following is a not-too-misleading first-approximation characterization of their respective products:
- Fully functional relational DBMS.
- Claims of fast query performance, but that’s not how they’re sold.
- Huge compression.
- Careful attention to time-stamping and auditability.
| Categories: Archiving and information preservation, Database compression, Rainstor, SAND Technology | 3 Comments |
Introduction to SAND Technology
SAND Technology has a confused history. For example:
- SAND has been around in some form or other since 1982, starting out as a Hitachi reseller in Canada.
- In 1992 SAND acquired a columnar DBMS product called Nucleus, which originally was integrated with hardware (in the form of a card). Notwithstanding what development chief Richard Grodin views as various advantages vs. Sybase IQ, SAND has only had limited success in that market.
- Thus, SAND introduced a second, similarly-named product, which could also be viewed as a columnar DBMS. (As best I can tell, both are called SAND/DNA.) But it’s actually focused on archiving, aka the clunkily named “near-line storage.” And it’s evidently not the same code line; e.g., the newer product isn’t bit-mapped, while the older one is.
- The near-line product was originally focused on the SAP market. Now it’s moving beyond.
- Canada-based SAND had offices in Germany and the UK before it did in the US. This leads to an oddity – SAND is less focused on the SAP aftermarket in Germany than it still is in the US.
SAND is publicly traded, so its numbers are on display. It turns out to be doing $7 million in annual revenue, and losing money.
OK. I just wanted to get all that out of the way. My main thoughts about the DBMS archiving market are in a separate post.