Unpacking the EMC Greenplum Q1 sales disaster rumors
A well-connected tipster believes:
- EMC Greenplum’s* revenue target for Q1 had been $35 million.
- Actual EMC Greenplum revenue for Q1 was $3 million, or maybe it was $8 million.
- EMC Greenplum had 75 sales teams trying to generate this revenue.
In the past I might have called Greenplum for clarification, but they’re not knocking themselves out to inform me these days, nor to inspire me with confidence in what they say.
*I’m in the large majority that refers to the EMC Data Computing Division as “Greenplum” or “EMC Greenplum.”
Let’s unpack that a bit.
First, it makes a huge difference whether we’re talking about:
- All EMC sales Greenplum can be said to influence.
- All Greenplum software and appliance hardware.
- New Greenplum software and subscription recognized revenue also.
Indeed, pre-EMC Greenplum got a considerable fraction of its revenue on a subscription basis. One implication is that “license revenue” and “new-sale license revenue” aren’t the same figure. Another is that the difference in immediate revenue between an appliance sale and a software-only subscription is drastic (8X alone for the difference between quarterly subscription and perpetual license fee, times another factor for the inclusion of hardware).
I’m also having a bit of trouble swallowing that supposed $35 million target. If we recall that the quota for the sum is always less than the sum of the quotas, we’re talking about perhaps a $5-600K quota per team. That could be reasonable or even low for a fully productive team that’s selling hardware and software together (even in a Q1). But if there really are anywhere near that many Greenplum sales teams, then a large majority are really new. And data warehouse appliances (more so than just analytic DBMS) have long sales cycles.
Bottom line: I haven’t heard anything that suggests EMC Greenplum’s storage-vs.-DBMS strategic war is going well. But I also wouldn’t assume things are quite as grim as rumors suggest.
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