August 25, 2009

Sybase IQ business notes

As specialized analytic DBMS go, Sybase is near the top of the charts both in age (Sybase IQ was first introduced in the mid 1990s) and adoption. That’s even more true, of course, if we restrict the discussion strictly to columnar DBMS, aka column stores. Basic Sybase IQ adoption claims include:

Note that 98% of Sybase IQ installations are under 5 terabytes; the heart of Sybase IQ’s business is the sub-terabyte data warehouse market.*

*Unlike most other analytic DBMS startups, Kickfire seems to be increasingly pursuing. that market too.

Sybase IQ was traditionally sold mainly to users of Sybase’s core Adaptive Server Enterprise DBMS (whether or not they ran other DBMS such as Oracle as well). Sybase recently has become more aggressive about selling IQ into non-Sybase shops. More generally, Sybase seems to have repositioned IQ in 2005, decided it liked the results, and ramped up investment in Sybase IQ as of 2006.

The way Sybase breaks down its different target markets is somewhat confusing, but so far as I can tell:

Sybase IQ pricing is traditionally complicated; perhaps one of these months Sybase will clarify it for me. The latest iteration appears to be mainly per-core, but I don’t have a good sense for what kinds of workloads can be handled by what number of cores.

Related links

Comments

3 Responses to “Sybase IQ business notes”

  1. Sybase IQ technical highlights | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services on August 25th, 2009 5:16 am

    […] Sybase IQ business notes Categories: Analytic technologies, Columnar database management, Data warehousing, Database compression, EAI, EII, ETL, ELT, ETLT, Sybase, Theory and architecture  Subscribe to our complete feed! […]

  2. Dan Jewett on August 27th, 2009 11:50 am

    Curt, can you add some clarity to the installations and users numbers. I can’t be understanding it correctly – they have between 2.1-2.5 users per installation? Does that mean for each IQ that is sold, there are 2 individuals that run queries against the system?

  3. Curt Monash on August 27th, 2009 12:39 pm

    Dan,

    A. Read “customer” for “user”
    B. Read the ratio the correct way around

    Hopefully, that will make things clearer. 🙂

    Best,

    CAM

Leave a Reply




Feed: DBMS (database management system), DW (data warehousing), BI (business intelligence), and analytics technology Subscribe to the Monash Research feed via RSS or email:

Login

Search our blogs and white papers

Monash Research blogs

User consulting

Building a short list? Refining your strategic plan? We can help.

Vendor advisory

We tell vendors what's happening -- and, more important, what they should do about it.

Monash Research highlights

Learn about white papers, webcasts, and blog highlights, by RSS or email.