Closing the book on the DATAllegro customer base
I’m prepared to call an end to the “Guess DATAllegro’s customers” game. Bottom line is that there are three in all, two of which are TEOCO and Dell, and the third of which is a semi-open secret. I wrote last week:
The number of DATAllegro production references is expected to double imminently, from one to two. Few will be surprised at the identity of the second reference. I imagine the number will then stay at two, as DATAllegro technology is no longer being sold, and the third known production user has never been reputed to be particularly pleased with it.
Dell did indeed disclose at TDWI that it was a large DATAllegro user, notwithstanding that Dell is a huge Teradata user as well. No doubt, Dell is gearing up to be a big user of Madison too.
Also at TDWI, I talked with some former DATAllegro employees who now work for rival vendors. None thinks DATAllegro has more than three customers. Neither do I.
Edit: Subsequently, the DATAllegro customer count declined to 1.
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10 Responses to “Closing the book on the DATAllegro customer base”
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NPD Group
http://www.datallegro.com/pr/2_16_06_npd.asp
Sears Holding
http://www.datallegro.com/pr/5_23_06_sears.asp
But are they still operating? Did either ever reach production?
Well, technically, the identity of the third one is NDA.
But anyhow, I’ve never heard anything about NPD. I haven’t even heard it identified as the DATAllegro customer that sent its DATAllegro system back.
I guess I should have searched for press releases a bit more carefully. 😉
See this July 2006 article by Krishna Roy for The451.com
http://www.datallegro.com/pdf/451_coverage_july2006.pdf
“Executives report that it now has between 15 and 20 customers.”
Press release, October 25 2007
http://www.datallegro.com/pr/10_25_07_growth.asp
“DATALLEGRO ANNOUNCES 330% GROWTH…”
Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2007” dated October 10, 2007:
“Growth has been consistent, and the company currently has about 15 to 20 customers.”
Thank you Anonymous, but:
A. DATAllegro never gave me any such figures.
B. DATAllegro never gave me any such references.
C. Neither I nor anybody else I know of in the industry has ever identified any but those three customers.
D. One big sale can suffice for large revenue growth.
Frankly, I used to believe that DATAllegro had more customers too. Other analysts obviously shared my error.
By the way, Anonymous, since you evidently work for a company that also made a sale to the unnamed third user on my DATAllegro list — how’s the DATAllegro installation going there? How’s yours? How’s the third analytic DBMS startup vendors’ who sold there, if you know which part of the company they’re in?
(This assumes, of course, that I’m keeping my anonymous commenters straight …)
Honestly, if they managed to get MSFT to cash them out with only 3 customers, that’s a pretty neat trick 🙂
No Questions about that it is indeed very neat for the marketing and CEO (who convinced MSFT) to buy this technology is. At the same time you can even say how foolish was MSFT not to even look under the hood. This gives us inidcation that MSFT is no more innovative company, it just relies on easy way out.
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