Comments on Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — evaluations
To my taste, the most glaring mis-rankings in the 2012/2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management are that it is too positive on Kognitio and too negative on Infobright. Secondarily, it is too negative on HP Vertica, and too positive on ParAccel and Actian/VectorWise. So let’s consider those vendors first.
Gartner seems confused about Kognitio’s products and history alike.
- Gartner calls Kognitio an “in-memory” DBMS, which is not accurate.
- Gartner doesn’t remark on Kognitio’s worst-in-class* compression.
- Gartner gives Kognitio oddly high marks for a late, me-too Hadoop integration strategy.
- Gartner writes as if Kognitio’s next attempt at the US market will be the first one, which is not the case.
- Gartner says that Kognitio pioneered data warehouse SaaS (Software as a Service), which actually has existed since the pre-relational 1970s.
Gartner is correct, however, to note that Kognitio doesn’t sell much stuff overall.
* non-existent
In the cases of HP Vertica, Infobright, ParAccel, and Actian/VectorWise, the 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management’s facts are fairly accurate, but I dispute Gartner’s evaluation. When it comes to Vertica:
- I think HP’s troubles are less relevant to HP Vertica than Gartner does.
- In particular, Vertica’s lack of integration with Autonomy isn’t a big deal. Many relational DBMS vendors don’t even own a text search engine to not-integrate with, and the number of vendors with seriously effective analytic RDBMS/text search integration strategies is zero.
- Gartner is correct to note that Vertica’s integration with the rest of HP, for example the hardware side, has been slow — but again, so what?
- Gartner correctly praises Vertica’s analytic platform capabilities, but then seems to criticize Vertica’s capabilities in user-defined functions — notwithstanding that Vertica’s analytic platform capabilities are implemented via UDFs.
- Gartner seems to criticize Vertica’s “volume credentials”, even though Vertica’s number of petabyte-scale analytic RDBMS customers may be second only to Teradata’s.
That said, I defer to Gartner’s opinion that HP Vertica’s sales momentum has disappointed, even if against higher expectations than one might have for vendors with 1/10 of Vertica’s installed base.
2 years ago, I simply said “What Gartner said in connection with Ingres is too inaccurate to deserve detailed attention.” This year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management isn’t that bad on the subject of Actian,* but it’s not great either. Writing mainly about Actian’s VectorWise, Gartner dings it for both features and bugginess, and correctly notes that VectorWise is only suitable for fairly small data warehouses. But Gartner gives VectorWise higher marks than Exasol even so. Gartner also writes that VectorWise has a “long tradition of having loyal supporters”, notwithstanding that VectorWise’s initial release was less than 3 years ago.
*Ingres’ new name, in honor of a 2011 pivot that seems to already have been deprecated
What the 2012/2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management says about ParAccel isn’t too different on the facts from what I wrote in December, but Gartner is more enthused than I am. Basically:
- ParAccel is playing catch-up in features and company stability, and Gartner somehow sees that as a strength.
- Gartner dings ParAccel for a variety of product weaknesses.
- Gartner is breathless about ParAccel being used on a MicroStrategy SaaS site. (Hint: Deals like that go to vendors willing to accept very low prices.)
- Gartner is also impressed with ParAccel’s Amazon involvement. (Deals like that aren’t lucrative either, except insofar as Amazon bought some ParAccel stock.)
That Gartner ranks ParAccel ahead of HP Vertica baffles me. Perhaps Gartner views benchmarks as more significant than I do, or is otherwise judging ParAccel to have an important advantage in performance.
I also am in substantial agreement with the 2012/2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management about Infobright facts, but this time I’m the one with the more favorable interpretation. I agree that Infobright is a bit limited in features, in the areas Gartner cites and in analytic platform capabilities as well. Even so, Infobright is far ahead of VectorWise in — also low-priced — sales, and ahead in product stability and features too. Yet Gartner gives Infobright vastly lower marks than Actian. I suspect that the essence of our disagreement is that Gartner sees Infobright’s focus on machine-generated data as something that “limits market expansion”, while I see machine-generated data as something that is by every measure* growing to be a majority of the whole.
*By raw volume that’s been true for a while. But if we adjust for value and so on, the crossover is arguably still a way off.
I’ll run through the other vendors cited in the 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management more quickly, in approximate declining order of Gartner’s rankings.
- Gartner loves Teradata, but has some concerns over TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). Makes sense to me.
- Gartner is more impressed with Oracle’s technology than I am. I find it hard to take seriously a data warehouse RDBMS vendor that can’t deliver a true columnar storage option.
- Gartner’s write-up of IBM gets lost in IBM’s vast sea of products. I sympathize.
- Gartner’s discussion of SAP/Sybase IQ was overly brief. But given my own difficulties staying up to speed on my clients over there, I sympathize. Please stay tuned.
- Gartner’s discussion of Microsoft gets overly caught up in “logical data warehouse” foofarah, but basically it makes sense. Pending some promised briefings, I’m more optimistic about Microsoft’s analytic DBMS offerings than I’ve been for a long time. Please stay tuned.
- Gartner notes difficulties validating EMC Greenplum’s customer claims. I sympathize. Gartner also notes a bunch of product issues that make me wonder why EMC Greenplum’s overall rating isn’t even lower.
- Gartner’s view of Exasol seems similar to mine.
- I’d evaluate 1010data on the basis of its spreadsheet-like analytic tools, not its DBMS technology.
- Gartner seems to have difficulty finding non-trivial “Strengths” for Calpont. I sympathize.
- Gartner notes difficulties contacting SAND. I sympathize, since SAND’s senior management resigned en masse during the July, 2012 quarter. (Page 30 of that link.)
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6 Responses to “Comments on Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — evaluations”
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[…] The 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems is out. I’ll split my comments into two posts — this one on concepts, and a companion on specific vendor evaluations. […]
Regarding Calpont, I couldn’t find whether it has intra-query parallelism on SMP machines. I did find in Infobright’s doc that it does not have intra-query parallelism, so this might be a non-trivial advantage.
Curt, your vitriol knows no bounds. While I may defend your right to free speech, the diatribe you spout sometimes is beyond belief. Is it any wonder that the BI/DW vendor community believes that you only write favorably about those who are paying for your so-called advisory services, while others who refuse to sign up are left to be on the receiving end of an acerbic and cussid tongue?
There are better ways to represent one’s opinions, but pushing out blog posts of this ever-so over-the-top negative nature is not the way. Regards.
Eli,
I think you’re underestimating the intelligence of the industry. They know better than to make the mistake you’re accusing them of.
Particularly immune to that error, I’d think, are the non-clients about whom I write favorably and the clients who I criticize. 😉 And those groups, taken together, comprise most of the industry, as there are few companies about which I write uniformly negatively or positively.
I am disappointed with Vertica’s low rating. I represent that customer which Gartner mentions (one respondent’s organization, located in a country without technical support personnel at the time of deployment, set up its system entirely unaided). And after one year of using it I can say with confidence that we made right decision among several pretenders from top right part of the Magic Quadrant. Vertica is the best!
[…] Comments on Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — evalu…: To my taste, the most glaring mis-rankings in the 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management are that it is too positive on Kognitio and too negative on Infobright. Secondarily, it is too negative on HP Vertica, and too positive on ParAccel and Actian/VectorWise. […]