Netezza
Analysis of Netezza and its data warehouse appliances. Related subjects include:
Notes on a spate of Netezza-related blog posts
Fearing that last year’s tight travel budgets would hamper attendance, Netezza – like a number of other vendors – decided to forgo a traditional user conference. Instead, it took its Enzee Universe show on the road, essentially spreading the conference across eight cities. I was asked to keynote six of the installments.
After the first one, Netezza Marketing VP Tim Young took me aside for two pieces of constructive criticism. The surprising one* was that he felt I had been INSUFFICIENTLY critical of Netezza. Since then, every other conversation we’ve had about content creation has also featured ringing reassurances that Tim truly wants independent, non-pandering work.
*The unsurprising one was that I’d rushed. Well, duh. After months of telling me I had a 1 hour slot, Netezza cut me to ½ hour a few days beforehand. And my talk had been designed to be high-speed even in the longer time slot …
As a result, I accepted a subsequent gig from Netezza that I would barely consider from most other vendors. Namely, for this year’s Enzee Universe – June 21-23, aka Monday-Wednesday of this week, at the Westin Waterfront Hotel in Boston – I would do some contemporaneous blogging. The parameters we agreed on included: Read more
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Netezza, Presentations | 3 Comments |
Best practices for analytic DBMS POCs
When you are selecting an analytic DBMS or appliance, most of the evaluation boils down to two questions:
- How quickly and cost-effectively does it execute SQL?
- What analytic functionality, SQL or otherwise, does it do a good job of executing?
And so, in undertaking such a selection, you need to start by addressing three issues:
- What does “speed” mean to you?
- What does “cost” mean to you?
- What analytic functionality do you need anyway?
| Categories: Benchmarks and POCs, Data warehousing, Exadata, Netezza, ParAccel, Teradata | 7 Comments |
Various quick notes
As you might imagine, there are a lot of blog posts I’d like to write I never seem to get around to, or things I’d like to comment on that I don’t want to bother ever writing a full post about. In some cases I just tweet a comment or link and leave it at that.
And it’s not going to get any better. Next week = the oft-postponed elder care trip. Then I’m back for a short week. Then I’m off on my quarterly visit to the SF area. Soon thereafter I’ve have a lot to do in connection with Enzee Universe. And at that point another month will have gone by.
Anyhow: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Business intelligence, Data warehousing, Exadata, GIS and geospatial, Google, IBM and DB2, Netezza, Oracle, Parallelization, SAP AG, SAS Institute | 3 Comments |
Further clarifying in-database MPP SAS
My recent post about SAS’ MPP/in-database efforts was based on a discussion in a shared ride to the airport, and was correspondingly rough. SAS’ Shannon Heath was kind enough to write in with clarifications, and to allow me to post same. Read more
| Categories: Aster Data, Netezza, Parallelization, Predictive modeling and advanced analytics, SAS Institute | 4 Comments |
Clarifying the state of MPP in-database SAS
I routinely am briefed way in advance of products’ introductions. For that reason and others, it can be hard for me to keep straight what’s been officially announced, introduced for test, introduced for general availability, vaguely planned for the indefinite future, and so on. Perhaps nothing has confused me more in that regard than the SAS Institute’s multi-year effort to get SAS integrated into various MPP DBMS, specifically Teradata, Netezza Twinfin(i), and Aster Data nCluster.
However, I chatted briefly Thursday with Michelle Wilkie, who is the SAS product manager overseeing all this (and also some other stuff, like SAS running on grids without being integrated into a DBMS). As best I understood, the story is: Read more
| Categories: Aster Data, Data warehouse appliances, MapReduce, Netezza, Parallelization, Predictive modeling and advanced analytics, SAS Institute, Specific users, Teradata | 11 Comments |
Story of an analytic DBMS evaluation
One of our readers was kind enough to walk me through his analytic DBMS evaluation process. The story is:
- The X Company (XCo) has a <1 TB database.
- 100s of XCo’s customers log in at once to run reports. 50-200 concurrent queries is a good target number.
- XCo had been “suffering” with Oracle and wanted to upgrade.
- XCo didn’t have a lot of money to spend. Netezza pulled out of the sales cycle early due to budget (and this was recently enough that Netezza Skimmer could have been bid).
- Greenplum didn’t offer any references that approached the desired number of concurrent users.
- Ultimately the evaluation came down to Vertica and ParAccel.
- Vertica won.
Notes on the Vertica vs. ParAccel selection include: Read more
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Benchmarks and POCs, Buying processes, Data warehousing, Greenplum, Netezza, Oracle, ParAccel, Vertica Systems | 7 Comments |
Netezza nails April Fool’s Day
Netezza has nailed April Fool’s Day this year. 🙂 (Their site will revert to normal after April 1, so I may later edit this post accordingly.)
Related links
| Categories: Data warehouse appliances, Data warehousing, Fun stuff, Humor, Netezza | Leave a Comment |
XtremeData update
I talked with Geno Valente of XtremeData tonight. Highlights included:
- XtremeData still hasn’t sold any dbX stuff (they’ve had a side business in generic FPGA-based boards paying the bills for years). Well, there may have been some paid POCs (proofs of concept) or something, but real sales haven’t come through yet.
- XtremeData does have three prospects who have said “Yes”, and expects one order to come through this month.
- XtremeData continues to believe it shines when:
- Data models are complex
- In particular, there are complex joins
- In particular, two large tables have to be joined with each other, under circumstances where no product can avoid doing vast data redistribution
- XtremeData insists that all the nice things Bill Inmon – including in webinars — has said about it has not been for pay or other similar business compensation. That’s quite unusual.
- XtremeData is coming out with a new product, codenamed the Personal Data Warehouse (PDW), which:
- Is ready to go into beta test
- Should be launched in a month and a half or so
- Will have a different name when it is launched
Naming aside, Read more
February 2010 data warehouse DBMS news roundup
February is usually a busy month for data warehouse DBMS product releases, product announcements, and other real or contrived data warehouse DBMS news, and it can get pretty confusing trying to keep those categories of “news” apart.* This year is no exception, although several vendors – including Teradata and Netezza – are taking “rolling thunder” approaches, doing some of their announcements this month while holding others back for March or April.
*I probably have it worse than most people in that regard, because my clients run tentative feature lists and announcement schedules by me well in advance, which may get changed multiple times before the final dates roll around. I also occasionally miss some detail, if it wasn’t in a pre-briefing but gets added at the end.
Anyhow, the three big themes of this month’s announcements are probably:
- Integrating different kinds of analytic processing into databases and DBMS.
- Taking advantage of hardware advances.
- Playing catchup in areas where small vendors’ products weren’t mature yet.
| Categories: Analytic technologies, Aster Data, Data warehousing, Netezza, Teradata, Vertica Systems | Leave a Comment |
TwinFin(i) – Netezza’s version of a parallel analytic platform
Much like Aster Data did in Aster 4.0 and now Aster 4.5, Netezza is announcing a general parallel big data analytic platform strategy. It is called Netezza TwinFin(i), it is a chargeable option for the Netezza TwinFin appliance, and many announced details are on the vague side, with Netezza promising more clarity at or before its Enzee Universe conference in June. At a high level, the Aster and Netezza approaches compare/contrast as follows: Read more