Netezza overseas
22% of Netezza’s revenue comes from outside the US, at least if we use last quarter’s figures as a guide. At first blush, that doesn’t sound like much. Indeed, percentage-wise it surely lags behind Teradata, Greenplum (which has sold a lot in Asia/Pacific under Netezza’s former head of that region), and a few smaller competitors headquartered outside the US. But a few conversations I had today suggest a rosier view. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Kognitio, Market share and customer counts, Netezza, Teradata | Leave a Comment |
Microsoft/DATAllegro time frame announced
Edit: Actually, an email did eventually wend its way to me about a day later, which evidently had run into major congestion somewhere in the intertubes.
My resolve to eschew scathing sarcasm is being sorely tested tonight. The lastest trial is my discovery that nobody thought to so much as email me a press release, let alone brief me, on Microsoft’s announcement of a timetable for DATAllegro/SQL Server integration. Per Ina Fried — with a hat tip to anonymous commenter L.J. — Microsoft says:
The final version of that product is slated for the first half of 2010, though Microsoft said it will begin giving customers and partners access to early “community technology preview” releases within the next 12 months.
| Categories: Data warehousing, DATAllegro, Microsoft and SQL*Server | Leave a Comment |
Netezza application areas
I’m at the Netezza “Enzee” user conference in Orlando. So one or more Netezza posts are in order.
One theme of the brief analyst meeting was Netezza’s increasing business focus on vertical markets. In particular, Netezza is hiring managers for a range of vertical markets. The commercial ones cited (at various levels of maturity) included: Read more
| Categories: Application areas, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Market share and customer counts, Netezza, Telecommunications | Leave a Comment |
More mysteries regarding Oracle CDR load speed
Last spring, DATAllegro user John Devolites of TEOCO told me of troubles his firm had had loading CDRs (Call Detail Records) into Oracle, and how those had been instrumental in his eventual adoption of DATAllegro. That claim was contemptously challenged in a couple of comment threads.
Well, tonight at the Netezza user conference, Netezza gave awards to its first customers. The very first to accept was Jim Hayden, who’d bought Netezza for a company called Vibrant Solutions, which coincidentally was later acquired by TEOCO itself. In front of hundreds of people, he talked about how, back in 2003, it had taken 23 hours to load 400 million CDRs into Oracle on Nextel’s behalf, but only 40 minutes on Netezza.
And I’ll erase the rest of what I’d drafted here, as it was dripping in sarcasm …
| Categories: Data warehousing, Netezza, Oracle, Telecommunications, TEOCO | 2 Comments |
How will the NYC quant community evolve?
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures put up a post suggesting that quants hit by the troubles on Wall Street should go to tech firms instead. What really caught my eye was (emphasis mine): Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies | Leave a Comment |
Is Oracle11g V2 going to have shared-nothing aspects?
One of my favorite DBMS reporters:
- Uncovered convincing rumors that Oracle 11g V2, to be announced next week, will have clustering or “grid” enhancements.
- Uncovered unconvincing rumors that some of these enhancements will address Oracle’s well-known and problematic lack of shared-nothing capabilities.
- Pointed me at a couple of posts that went up and were quickly taken back down from Don Burleson’s site.
More precisely, he pointed me at the Google cache versions of same, which are here and here; obviously, those links will expire at some point. And so I’m reproducing the key parts below, namely: Read more
| Categories: Oracle | 5 Comments |
Teradata sound bites
In connection with Teradata’s attempt to get into the Netezza news cycle with an appliance product announcement, I’ve whipped up a few Teradata-related sound bites suitable for quoting.
- Teradata has been in the data warehouse appliance business since 1984. I’m glad they’re finally admitting it.
- Teradata’s users love them. The users’ bosses, who sign the checks, aren’t as thrilled. Price competition is a big issue for Teradata.
- Teradata pricing has caused some real resistance, and even anger. Price is the big reason some startups are growing so much faster than Teradata. Ease of installation is sometimes a second factor.
- Teradata isn’t going to win many price-per-terabyte shootouts. (Note: I mean price per terabyte of user data.)
- The 5-10X+ performance advantage isn’t as crazy as it sounds, at least for some use cases. Teradata does still get a lot of business, and wins some price/performance shootouts to get it.
- Many Teradata customers are buying newer analytic DBMS as well. But they aren’t throwing out Teradata. Most stories of Teradata replacements are misunderstandings.
- The analytic DBMS startups all still do most of their business supporting data marts. If you have a high-concurrency workload, you usually need more mature technology. That’s where Teradata shines.
- That said, the very largest data warehouses are usually really data marts. High-concurrency BI is usually run against somewhat smaller databases.
- The upper limit for data warehouse sizes is skyrocketing. In 18 months, we’re seeing the largest known production systems go from under 1 petabyte of user data to multiple petabytes.
- Teradata has more competition for the very largest databases than it used to, which are now being found in relatively young web companies even more than in old-line telcos, retailers, or banks.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Teradata | Leave a Comment |
Teradata decides to compete head-on as a data warehouse appliance vendor
In a press release today that is surely timed to impinge on the Netezza user conference news cycle, Teradata has come out swinging. Highlights include:
- Teradata, which long avoided the “appliance” term, now says it sells both “data warehouse appliances” and “data mart appliances.” Indeed, it claims to have “invented the original appliance” — which is pretty close to being true.*
- Teradata claims its “new appliance easily delivers up to 5 to 10 times performance improvement over competitors’ appliances,” at $119,000 per terabyte US list price.
- Teradata claims a 150% faster “scan rate” than competitors. Teradata is surely thinking of Netezza when saying that.
- Teradata claims 10X performance improvement on “selected queries” vs. the “competition.”
- Teradata thinks its geospatial data management capability is better than competitors’, and that this is an important indicator of Teradata’s general overall greater sophistication.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, GIS and geospatial, Netezza, Teradata | 4 Comments |
Infobright update
In connection with the announcements that:
- Infobright is open sourcing its analytical DBMS product (which is a really good idea)
- Infobright raised a $10 million VC round, with Sun as a new investor
I got my first real Infobright update since January. Highlights included: Read more
| Categories: Data warehousing, Infobright, MySQL, Open source | 2 Comments |
Infobright’s open source move has a lot of potential
Infobright announced today that it’s going full-bore into open source – specifically in the MySQL ecosystem — with the licensing approach, pricing, distribution strategy, and VC money from Sun that such a move naturally entails. I think this is a great idea, for a number of reasons: Read more
| Categories: Columnar database management, Data warehousing, Infobright, MySQL, Open source | 4 Comments |