Teradata
Analysis of data warehousing giant Teradata. Related subjects include:
Teradata integrates in solid-state storage
For once, I think Teradata’s annual hardware refresh is pretty interesting, because of the integration of flash storage into its high-end “active enterprise data warehouse” product line. The essence of the announcement is:
- Teradata is rolling out a new appliance,* the 6680, which combines hard-disk and solid-state drives, relying on Teradata Virtual Storage.
- Teradata is also rolling out a hard-disk-based appliance,* the 6650, in a more routine annual refresh.
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Pricing, Solid-state memory, Teradata | 3 Comments |
Teradata, Aster Data, and Teradata/Aster
Teradata is acquiring Aster Data. Naturally, the deal is being presented with a Treaty of Tordesillas kind of positioning — Teradata does X, Aster Data does Y, and everybody looks forward to having X and Y in the same product portfolio. That said, my initial positioning and product strategy thoughts on the Teradata/Aster combination go something like this. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Aster Data, Columnar database management, Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Database compression, RDF and graphs, Specific users, Teradata | 9 Comments |
Updating our vendor client disclosures
Edit: This disclosure has been superseded by a March, 2012 version.
From time to time, I disclose our vendor client lists. Another iteration is below. To be clear:
- This is a list of Monash Advantage members.
- All our vendor clients are Monash Advantage members, unless …
- … we work with them primarily in their capacity as technology users. (A large fraction of our user clients happen to be SaaS vendors.)
- We do not usually disclose our user clients.
- We do not usually disclose our venture capital clients, nor those who invest in publicly-traded securities.
- Included in the list below are two expired Monash Advantage members who haven’t said they will renew, as mentioned in my recent post on analyst bias. (You can probably imagine a couple of reasons for that obfuscation.)
With that said, our vendor client disclosures at this time are:
- Aster Data
- Cloudera
- CodeFutures/dbShards
- Couchbase
- EMC/Greenplum
- Endeca
- IBM/Netezza
- Infobright
- Intel
- MarkLogic
- ParAccel
- QlikTech
- salesforce.com/database.com
- SAND Technology
- SAP/Sybase
- Schooner Information Technology
- Skytide
- Splunk
- Teradata
- Vertica
Comments on the 2011 Forrester Wave for Enterprise Data Warehouse Platforms
The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Data Warehouse Platforms, Q1 2011 is now out,* hot on the heels of the Gartner Magic Quadrant. Unfortunately, this particular Forrester Wave is riddled with inaccuracy. Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Columnar database management, Data warehousing, EMC, Exadata, Greenplum, Netezza, Oracle, Pricing, SAP AG, Sybase, Teradata, Vertica Systems | 8 Comments |
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 |
Teradata announcements made very simple
For reasons of health,* I very regretfully canceled my trip to what is the first conference to go on my schedule every year — Teradata Partners. From afar, I’m not plugged into the details of Teradata’s announcement/embargo schedule. But what you need to know starts with this:
- Teradata signaled a year ago that its software focus was on adding analytic functionality, including specifically in the temporal area.
- Teradata likes to refresh its hardware annually, with a 50%+ price/performance improvement. (This year Teradata is going to 6-core Xeon processors.)
*Just a cough, but I’m both exhausted and potentially contagious, and this wasn’t a trip on which I had any truly urgent obligations (speeches, packed-room consulting sessions, whatever).
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Data warehousing, Teradata | Leave a Comment |
Notes and links October 22, 2010
A number of recent posts have had good comments. This time, I won’t call them out individually.
Evidently Mike Olson of Cloudera is still telling the machine-generated data story, exactly as he should be. The Information Arbitrage/IA Ventures folks said something similar, focusing specifically on “sensor data” …
… and, even better, went on to say: Read more
eBay followup — Greenplum out, Teradata > 10 petabytes, Hadoop has some value, and more
I chatted with Oliver Ratzesberger of eBay around a Stanford picnic table yesterday (the XLDB 4 conference is being held at Jacek Becla’s home base of SLAC, which used to stand for “Stanford Linear Accelerator Center”). Todd Walter of Teradata also sat in on the latter part of the conversation. Things I learned included: Read more
| Categories: Data warehousing, Derived data, eBay, Greenplum, Hadoop, HBase, Log analysis, Petabyte-scale data management, Teradata | 30 Comments |
Notes and links October 3 2010
Some notes, follow-up, and links before I head out to California: Read more
| Categories: GIS and geospatial, Google, HP and Neoview, Humor, Kickfire, Netezza, Solid-state memory, Teradata, Web analytics | 3 Comments |