Data warehouse appliances
Analysis of data warehouse appliances – i.e., of hardware/software bundles optimized for fast query and analysis of large volumes of (usually) relational data. Related subjects include:
- Data warehousing
- Parallelization
- Netezza
- DATAllegro
- Teradata
- Kickfire
- (in The Monash Report) Computing appliances in multiple domains
Comments on the Gartner 2010/2011 Data Warehouse Database Management Systems Magic Quadrant
Edit: Comments on the February, 2012 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems — and on the companies reviewed in it — are now up.
The Gartner 2010 Data Warehouse Database Management Systems Magic Quadrant is out. I shall now comment, just as I did to varying degrees on the 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006 Gartner Data Warehouse Database Management System Magic Quadrants.
Note: Links to Gartner Magic Quadrants tend to be unstable. Please alert me if any problems arise; I’ll edit accordingly.
In my comments on the 2008 Gartner Data Warehouse Database Management Systems Magic Quadrant, I observed that Gartner’s “completeness of vision” scores were generally pretty reasonable, but their “ability to execute” rankings were somewhat bizarre; the same remains true this year. For example, Gartner ranks Ingres higher by that metric than Vertica, Aster Data, ParAccel, or Infobright. Yet each of those companies is growing nicely and delivering products that meet serious cutting-edge analytic DBMS needs, neither of which has been true of Ingres since about 1987. Read more
Exadata notes
It’s been a while since I penetrated Oracle’s tight message control and actually talked with them about Exadata. But Doug Henschen wrote a good article about Exadata based on an Andy Mendelsohn webcast. I agree with almost all of it. At first I was a little surprised that Exadata’s emphasis shift from data warehousing to OLTP/generic consolidation hasn’t gone more quickly, but on the other hand:
- On the data warehouse side Exadata can alleviate screaming pain points.
- In OLTP consolidation, Exadata mainly can save money. (Yes, I just said a product from Oracle can save customers money, and I meant it. You may stop laughing at any time.)
Doug did overstate when he said that columnar architectures give 100X or more compression. That doesn’t happen. Yes, columnar compression can be >10X in a variety of use cases, while pre-Exadata Oracle index bloat can approach 10X at times; but even if you’re counting that way I doubt there are many instances in which it actually multiplies out to >100.
In other Exadata news, the long-standing observation that Oracle doesn’t like to do on-site Exadata POCs still holds true. A couple of existing Oracle users — one rather well-known — recently told me that Oracle won’t let them text Exadata except on Oracle premises. In one case, this is a deal-breaker keeping Exadata from being considered for a purchase, and Oracle still won’t budge.
Finally, I’m pretty sure that this “new” Softbank Teradata replacement Oracle has been touting since September as competitive evidence — which Doug’s article also references — isn’t quite what it sounds like. I believe Teradata’s version of the story, which somewhat edited goes like this: Read more
| Categories: Benchmarks and POCs, Columnar database management, Data warehouse appliances, Database compression, Exadata, Oracle, Teradata | 26 Comments |
Sound bites on HP/Microsoft and Neoview
HP and Microsoft put out a press release. Three new appliances are being announced, and we’re being reminded of at least one past announcement. I wasn’t briefed, and wouldn’t want to comment on, say, price/performance or feature particulars. That said:
- HP Neoview seems pretty dead.
- I haven’t heard a single favorable reference to HP Neoview since I remarked in March, 2010 that “HP Neoview is reeling.”
- A reporter asked me “What went wrong?” Well, almost any new analytic DBMS/appliance product will compete mainly on two things in its early days — price/performance (or absolute performance), and just how (im)mature it initially is. (Aster Data may be the only prominent exception to that rule.) Presumably, HP Neoview did badly by those metrics.
- HP Neoview was widely conjectured to be a pet project of ousted former HP CEO Mark Hurd.
- Nobody tells me of competing with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Parallel Data Warehouse either (i.e. Madison/DATallegro). Thus, in particular, I haven’t heard any reason to believe there’s anything good about the technology, especially now that the ever-upbeat Stuart Frost has left Microsoft. I’m conjecturing that Parallel Data Warehouse is focused heavily on the existing Microsoft installed base.
- Speaking of Aster — even under NDA, they won’t tell me or give me any useful hints as to who their undisclosed strategic investor is. Well, HP has a long history of investing in sometimes-competing DBMS vendors (back to Oracle and Informix), and a good reason to keep quiet (reluctance to admit the end of Neoview). Hmm …
- The consolidation appliance in the HP/Microsoft announcement is a clear response to Oracle’s Exadata strategy, or (which is probably more accurate) to the same market opportunity Oracle identified.
- I couldn’t quite figure out whether the cheap data warehouse appliance included Microsoft PowerPivot support, but that would make sense if it did.
| Categories: Aster Data, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, HP and Neoview, Microsoft and SQL*Server | 3 Comments |
Notes on data warehouse appliance prices
I’m not terribly motivated to do a detailed analysis of data warehouse appliance list prices, in part because:
- Everybody knows that in practice data warehouse appliances tend to be deeply discounted from list price.
- The only realistic metric to use for pricing data warehouse appliances is price-per-terabyte, and people have gotten pretty sick of that one.
That said, here are some notes on data warehouse appliance prices. Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Database compression, EMC, Exadata, Greenplum, Netezza, Oracle, Pricing | 8 Comments |
Soundbites about Mark Hurd joining Oracle
I’m on “vacation”, so I don’t know how timely I’ll be in getting back to reporters with quotes on Mark Hurd’s new job at Oracle. I put “vacation” in quotes because my father has been in a coma for over a week back in Ohio; I’m getting stonewalled for information about his and especially about my senile mother’s condition (while there’s a support structure making sure nothing too ridiculous happens, the whole thing has been even harder to block out for a while than if a full set of medical ethics were being used); Linda arrived here with an injury that has largely wrecked the vacation for her (if we had confidence in the local doctors we’d be seeing them for sure, and may yet see them anyway); and the mix of lesser factors is otherwise normal — great place, I took way too much work with me and had clients demanding more, connectivity was deplorable and is still unreliable (this post has been spread out over several hours by yet another connectivity outage), and weather has been a pleasant surprise to date (but clearly I’m benefiting from it a lot less than usual).
My thoughts on Mark Hurd (who I’ve never met) joining Oracle include:
- Mark Hurd is one of the least successful leaders in the modern history of the DBMS industry.
- Mark Hurd presided over Teradata while Teradata allowed a bunch of smaller competitors to grow up.
- Mark Hurd was said to be the prime mover behind HP Neoview, which has been an epic failure.
- Mark Hurd was in charge of HP when HP lost the Exadata business to Sun, and it’s not clear that the loss was just because Oracle bought Sun.
- Mark Hurd seems to have done poorly running services businesses at HP as well, at least in terms of their reputations.
- None of this means that Mark Hurd can’t do a good job on the volume-hardware side of Oracle. Nor does it seem likely that Hurd would get the power to gut Oracle’s R&D the way he is reputed to have gutted HP’s. And by the way, the investment in the HP Neoview fiasco shows that Hurd didn’t COMPLETELY gut R&D at HP either.
- The Mark Hurd hire is a signal that Oracle is very serious about hardware/software integration. Notwithstanding any of the foregoing, Hurd can surely talk the hardware/software integration game. And one can reasonably spin Hurd’s HP Neoview failure as a high-desire, low-odds attempt to get into the database software/hardware stack business.
- The time to assess whether Oracle will continue with the hardware/software integration emphasis will be when Mark Hurd leaves. Just as Ray Lane’s departure coincided with a reversal of the software/services integration strategy he so successfully championed, Hurd’s eventual departure could signal a backing off from emphasizing a software/hardware stack.
- Mark Hurd’s sexual harassment problems sound similar to Al Gore’s:
- He got services of the sort that are often a euphemism (massage in Gore’s case, escort in Hurd’s).
- The provider(s) just wanted to provide the real thing, not the euphemistic part as well.
- Unpleasantness ensued.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Exadata, HP and Neoview, Oracle, Teradata | 12 Comments |
Teradata’s future product strategy
I think Teradata’s future product strategy is coming into focus. I’ll start by outlining some particular aspects, and then show how I think it all ties together.
Read more
| Categories: Business intelligence, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Kickfire, MicroStrategy, Solid-state memory, Storage, Teradata | 5 Comments |
Links and observations
I’m back from a trip to the SF Bay area, with a lot of writing ahead of me. I’ll dive in with some quick comments here, then write at greater length about some of these points when I can. From my trip: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Aster Data, Calpont, Cassandra, Couchbase, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, EMC, Exadata, Facebook, Greenplum, HP and Neoview, Kickfire, NoSQL, OLTP, ParAccel, Sybase, XtremeData | 1 Comment |
Advice for some non-clients
Edit: Any further anonymous comments to this post will be deleted. Signed comments are permitted as always.
Most of what I get paid for is in some form or other consulting. (The same would be true for many other analysts.) And so I can be a bit stingy with my advice toward non-clients. But my non-clients are a distinguished and powerful group, including in their number Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and most of the BI vendors. So here’s a bit of advice for them too.
Oracle. On the plus side, you guys have been making progress against your reputation for untruthfulness. Oh, I’ve dinged you for some past slip-ups, but on the whole they’ve been no worse than other vendors.’ But recently you pulled a doozy. The analyst reports section of your website fails to distinguish between unsponsored and sponsored work.* That is a horrible ethical stumble. Fix it fast. Then put processes in place to ensure nothing that dishonest happens again for a good long time.
*Merv Adrian’s “report” listed high on that page is actually a sponsored white paper. That Merv himself screwed up by not labeling it clearly as such in no way exonerates Oracle. Besides, I’m sure Merv won’t soon repeat the error — but for Oracle, this represents a whole pattern of behavior.
Oracle. And while I’m at it, outright dishonesty isn’t your only unnecessary credibility problem. You’re also playing too many games in analyst relations.
HP. Neoview will never succeed. Admit it to yourselves. Go buy something that can. Read more
Kickfire unlikely to survive
Following up on a previous report of Kickfire’s troubles — a Kickfire customer tipped me off that Kickfire told him they’re selling their IP and engineers, and the Kickfire products will be discontinued.
At this time, I have no idea who the lucky buyer is.
Edit: We now know it’s Teradata.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Kickfire, Teradata | 12 Comments |
More on Greenplum and EMC
I talked with Ben Werther of Greenplum for about 40 minutes, which was my first post-merger Greenplum/EMC briefing. “Historical” highlights include:
- Ben says Greenplum wasn’t being shopped, by which he means Greenplum was out raising more capital and the fund-raising was going well. Note: Half or so of Greenplum’s deals were subscription-priced, so it had weaker cash flow than it would have if it were doing equally well selling perpetual licenses.
- However, joint engineering was also going well with, e.g., Greenplum CTO Luke Lonergan spending time at EMC facilities in Cork, Ireland. And one thing led to another …
- Greenplum has ~ 140 customers, vs. ~65 five quarters ago, 100+ at year-end, and an acquisition rate of 12-15/quarter last fall.
- A typical “small” paying customer for Greenplum starts with 10-20 TB of data.
- Greenplum Chorus isn’t generally available yet, with rollout energy being focused on Greenplum 4.0. Note: As important as it is for overall industry direction, Greenplum Chorus is a product which won’t be a terribly big deal in Release 1 anyway.
Highlights looking forward include: Read more