It’s On: IBM To Acquire SPSS

With one stroke, IBM has signalled that it believes itself ready to redraw the BI map. After a multi-year, multi-billion dollar spending spree, IBM has assembled the product portfolio, marketing and sales organization, and a 4000-person services army to launch a full-scale assault. It’s a lucrative opportunity: Mary Weier at InfoWeek quotes IDC to the effectContinue reading “It’s On: IBM To Acquire SPSS”

Sybase’s DBMS Business Shows Sea Legs – But Challenges Lay Ahead

Sybase has rolled out a good Q2 in difficult times, reflecting once again the steady, effective management that has characterized the past few years. All-time highs in margins, earnings, and cash flow – coming at the bottom (one hopes) of the current recession – are nothing to sneeze at. The first highlighted item in chairmanContinue reading “Sybase’s DBMS Business Shows Sea Legs – But Challenges Lay Ahead”

IBM’s Smart Analytics System: More Than An Appliance?

When is an appliance not an appliance? When it’s more. On July 28, IBM’s Software Group and Systems and Technology Group (i.e., the hardware folks) hosted an analyst event to introduce the Smart Analytics System.The discussion began with a series of conversations about the value of “workload optimization,” or the effective tuning of processors, storage, memory andContinue reading “IBM’s Smart Analytics System: More Than An Appliance?”

GoldenGate Software Buy a Win for Oracle

Oracle today announced it is buying GoldenGate Software for an undisclosed sum, likely a couple of hundred million dollars. To revisit some facts from an earlier post, Goldengate had been in business 15 years, with some 500 customers, 4000 solutions deployed, and strong partnerships with Oracle, Teradata and Ingres on the database side, and MicrostrategyContinue reading “GoldenGate Software Buy a Win for Oracle”

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”

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”

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”