September 19, 2009
Oracle gives a few customer database size examples
In its recent quarterly conference call, Oracle said (as per the Seeking Alpha transcript):
AC Neilsen, for instance, we deployed a 45-terabyte data [mart], they called it; Adidas, 13 terabytes; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 250 terabytes; and of course, some of our high-end ones that you have probably heard of in the past, AT&T, 250 terabytes; Yahoo!, 700 terabytes — just gives you an idea of the size of the databases that are out there and how they are growing, and that’s driving the need for greater throughput.
I don’t know what’s being counted there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those were legit user-data figures.
Some other notes:
- The Yahoo database is of course Yahoo’s first-generation data warehouse, which has been largely superseded by an internal system more than 10X that size. (Edit: Actually, Greg Rahn of Oracle says below that it’s a different database.)
- I’m keynoting the Netezza road show this month, and Nielsen is up there on stage touting Netezza. (Edit: Nielsen indeed does the overwhelming majority of its data warehousing on Netezza.)
- I’d be surprised if AT&T’s largest data warehouse were “only” 250 terabytes in size. (Edit: Actually, I am told the database in question is 310 TB of user data and growing. More later, hopefully.)
- Oracle didn’t exactly say that those were Exadata installations.
Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Exadata, Netezza, Oracle, Specific users, Telecommunications, Web analytics, Yahoo
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10 Responses to “Oracle gives a few customer database size examples”
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Note the weasel words (although comparing Oracle salespeople to weasels is highly insulting for the noble weasel). They’re just saying the clients in question have warehouses that size. Not that the said clients are happy.
Netezza explicitly claims Nielsen ditched their Oracle warehouse for a Netezza appliance, because ComScore (an Aster customer) was eating their lunch due to the poor performance of their existing Oracle and PL/SQL solution.
Unless Nielsen explicitly rescind their Oracle licenses and return them, something they would be crazy to do, Oracle can still claim with a straight face Nielsen is an Oracle customer.
Of couse, the proof in the pudding will be whether Nielsen pays Oracle its pound of flesh, a.k.a. maintenance contract, to keep future upgrade rights for licenses they no longer use…
No wonder Oracle software license sales are falling, and they are so desperate to jack up maintenance contract rates.
@Curt
I’m doubtful that your assertion is true. If the database mentioned from Yahoo! is the one that I believe it to be (one that I worked on), it is only a year or so old.
Greg,
Unfortunately, of the two meetings I had with Yahoo in August, the one about which I have not yet received clearance to post details is the one that discussed Yahoo’s three generations of data warehousing on the advertising side of the business.
@Curt
I confirmed that the Yahoo database mentioned on the call is indeed the one I thought it was and is not “Yahoo’s first-generation data warehouse, which has been largely superseded by an internal system more than 10X that size”. Also, the 700TB is a true “user data” number.
@Fazal
The Nielsen Company is a global company and most certainly has more than one data warehouse, probably even multiple data warehouses/marts per continent. I’m quite certain the 45 terabytes of Oracle datamarts is a current and active install somewhere in the world.
Updates above, as per comments here or in private.
@Greg — would you know whether all the databases cited are actually running on some version of Exadata?
@Curt
I don’t believe that any of the database systems mentioned there are live production on Exadata as of today.
Thanks, Greg.
Are they live production at all?
@Curt
I pretty sure that all the systems mentioned on the call are systems that have been live in production for at least a few years now.
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