Dive Deeper into Gartner’s 2023 Cloud DBMS Magic Quadrant: Key Takeaways and Beyond

I recently collaborated with my colleague Sanjeev Mohan on our first joint written piece since leaving Gartner. We picked a favorite topic – Database Management Systems. These are our views, and should not be construed as Gartner’s position. Gartner’s 2023 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, published in December 2023 based on vendor evaluationsContinue reading “Dive Deeper into Gartner’s 2023 Cloud DBMS Magic Quadrant: Key Takeaways and Beyond”

IBM and Ahana – A Lakehouse Down Payment

IBM has taken another open source technology provider into its portfolio, acquiring Ahana, one of the leading vendors behind the massively parallel distributed in-memory SQL query engine Presto. Presto, first created and still actively developed at Meta, has attracted a broad array of open source contributors, and is championed by several vendors. It has alsoContinue reading “IBM and Ahana – A Lakehouse Down Payment”

Symposium Notes – Day Four Returns to Data Security, and to Hadoop

Thursday, the final day, reinforced a theme for the week: data security is heating up, and organizations are not ready. It came up in half of today’s final 10 meetings. “Is my data more secure, or less, in the cloud?” “Does using open source software for data management compromise how well I can protect it?”Continue reading “Symposium Notes – Day Four Returns to Data Security, and to Hadoop”

Symposium Notes – Day Three Features Data Assembly

With 24 meetings under my belt from the first two days at Orlando Symposium, Wednesday’s 13 (and a presentation) didn’t look quite as daunting. It began well, with enough time for a muffin and some tea at 730 AM in the analyst workroom near to the cubicle I’d spend the day in. Then I launched rightContinue reading “Symposium Notes – Day Three Features Data Assembly”

Symposium Notes – Day Two Jumps in the (Data) Lake

My second day of Symposium 1:1 meetings continued the “security of big data” theme (4 of the day’s 15 conversations – usually, but not always, about HDFS-based data), with a data lake flavor. The concerns were retroactive – often driven by an internal audit. “We built it, now how do we secure it?” is aContinue reading “Symposium Notes – Day Two Jumps in the (Data) Lake”

Prediction Is Hard – Especially About the Future

OK, I admit it – I stole the title from a much smarter man. I thought that man was Yogi Berra, but maybe not – more about that at the end of this post. Every year, Gartner issues a series of Predicts documents. This year I had the pleasure of doing one for my teamContinue reading “Prediction Is Hard – Especially About the Future”

Hadoop Investments Continue: Teradata, HP Jockey For Position

Interest from the leading players continues to drive investment in the Hadoop marketplace. This week Teradata made two acquisitions – Revelytix and Hadapt – that enrich its already sophisticated big data portfolio, while HP made a $50M investment in, and joined the board of, Hortonworks. These moves continue the ongoing effort by leading players. 4 ofContinue reading “Hadoop Investments Continue: Teradata, HP Jockey For Position”

Hadoop Summit Recap Part Two – SELECT FROM hdfs WHERE bigdatavendor USING SQL

Probably the most widespread, and commercially imminent, theme at the Summit was “SQL on Hadoop.” Since last year, many offerings have been touted, debated, and some have even shipped. In this post, I offer a brief look at where things stood at the Summit and how we got there. To net it out: offerings todayContinue reading “Hadoop Summit Recap Part Two – SELECT FROM hdfs WHERE bigdatavendor USING SQL”

That Exciting New Stuff? Yeah… Wait Till It Ships.

A brief rant here: I am asked with great frequency how this RDBMS will hold off that big data play, how data warehouses will survive in a world where Hadoop exists, or whether Apple is done now that Android is doing well. There is a fundamental fallacy implicit in these questions. –more–

Diary of an Asian Swing: Day 3

This was a day of transition. No meetings in Hong Kong, so after a leisurely breakfast and a look at the news, I settled down for a rare session of uninterrupted writing. It was still Sunday back home, so the email was relatively caught up and I could focus. Finished first drafts of some GartnerContinue reading “Diary of an Asian Swing: Day 3”