Informatica, Strong Through Tough Times, Looks Ahead

Not everyone in the software industry is suffering. Informatica Q2 revenues were $117.3 million, up 3% year over year, and license revenues for the second quarter were $48.7 million, relatively flat. That makes 19 quarters in a row – very impressive. Informatica added 65 customers in the quarter and now claims nearly 3800, with wins inContinue reading “Informatica, Strong Through Tough Times, Looks Ahead”

Aster Appliance Elevates MapReduce Chatter, ADBMS Visibility

Since my last post about Aster, the analytic DBMS (ADBMS) vendor has added another arrow to its quiver. Its new MapReduce Data Warehouse Appliance Express Edition starts at $50,000, and includes Aster nCluster on Dell hardware and a copy of MicroStrategy BI software for up to 1 Tb of user data, which Aster clearly sees as a sweet spot.Continue reading “Aster Appliance Elevates MapReduce Chatter, ADBMS Visibility”

Infobright Bids to Anchor An Open Source DW Ecosystem

I recently sat down for a talk with Miriam Tuerk, CEO of Infobright – an open source, commodity hardware-based analytic database (ADBMS) vendor focused on the data warehousing market. Infobright is another of the leaders in the open source information management wave IT Market Strategy has been tracking. Founded in 2006, Infobright has assembled aContinue reading “Infobright Bids to Anchor An Open Source DW Ecosystem”

QlikView: Bet Big, Time Right And Become A Disruptive BI Leader

The near-decapitation (by acquisition) of the BI space in 2007-8 was perfectly timed for QlikTech, whose QlikView is rapidly becoming one of the leading independent products. This is hardly new; since its founding in Sweden in 1993, the company’s timing has been unerring. Years of slow growth – “From 1993 to ‘99 we had aContinue reading “QlikView: Bet Big, Time Right And Become A Disruptive BI Leader”

Illuminate Update – Not Closed, or Static

I had a few comments on my recent piece on Illuminate, which deserve a quick reply. This will be brief. Several correspondents said they felt that an insistence on their own front end made iLuminate a bad choice – and it would if that were true. In fact, the database supports tools that can useContinue reading “Illuminate Update – Not Closed, or Static”

Civilized Discourse and the Blog

Jon Reed, a consultant in the SAP world, recently posted a blog entry about  some lessons he learned years ago from Hampshire College President Gregory Price.  John feels, and I agree, that these principles of discourse are a model of behavior and belief that we bloggers would do well to emulate. I rarely post about “stuffContinue reading “Civilized Discourse and the Blog”

ParAccel Secures $22 Million – The Game’s Afoot

Recently, ParAccel published a TPC-H benchmark, and I said here that it was a coup that ought to get them significant attention. The blizzard of discussion that ensued was no doubt gratifying for ParAccel – Google reported 182 hits for “the past week” for them as of 6/28. Now, Google hits – and visibility in generalContinue reading “ParAccel Secures $22 Million – The Game’s Afoot”

iPhone, Wi-Fi, and MAC Address Filtering

Bet that title drove everyone away. But this is really pretty simple. I use media access card (MAC) address filtering on my home Wi-Fi network (Talked about it here.) And now I have a shiny new iPhone and I want to use WI-Fi for it (especially for Skype international calls, of course.) Only problem – couldn’tContinue reading “iPhone, Wi-Fi, and MAC Address Filtering”

3 Months of Blogging: What I’ve Learned

I just had my 10,000th visit. Way cool – my first post was nearly 17 weeks ago, and for the first couple of weeks not much was happening. It was important to me that I generate content and find readers; I was a newly independent analyst and consultant, and I began with the belief thatContinue reading “3 Months of Blogging: What I’ve Learned”