Xkoto’s Database Virtualization Expands Cloud Opportunities

Xkoto, the database virtualization pioneer, has generated substantial interest since its first deployments in 2006. Still privately held and in investment mode, Xkoto sees profitability on the horizon, but offers no target date, and appears in no hurry. Its progress has been steady: in early 2008, a B round of financing led by GrandBanks Capital allowed a step up toContinue reading “Xkoto’s Database Virtualization Expands Cloud Opportunities”

Rimini Street Slashes Maintenance Costs For Big Apps

Many SAP and Oracle apps customers would rather leave stable products alone than continually change, or “upgrade,” as it is called. For these customers, the cost of maintenance, also known as “buying it all over again every 4 years,” seems excessive. The slow pace of innovation from the mammoth firms, and the even slower uptake of those innovations,Continue reading “Rimini Street Slashes Maintenance Costs For Big Apps”

Oracle Touts Cost Savings With New RAC, Storage Features

Oracle has high expectations for its newest release (Oracle Database 11g R2.) “We expect 45-50% adoption of R2 by next year,” said Mark Townsend, Vice President of Product Management, at the database analyst day during Oracle Open World recently. Such a rate would be unprecedented, but Oracle has good reasons for its optimism. Many new featuresContinue reading “Oracle Touts Cost Savings With New RAC, Storage Features”

IBM Showcases Software Vision and Hadoop Research

At IBM’s 8th annual Connect meeting with analysts, Steve Mills, Senior VP and Group Executive, had much to crow about. Software is the engine driving IBM’s profitability, anchoring its customer relationships, and enabling the vaulting ambition to drive the company’s Smarter Planet theme into the boardroom. Mills’ assets are formidable: 36 labs worldwide have more than 100Continue reading “IBM Showcases Software Vision and Hadoop Research”

Teradata Transition On Course in Steady Quarter, With Exciting New Offerings Ahead

How good was Teradata’s Q3? Not bad, but no improvement over a so far lackluster year, which nonetheless has seen the stock  price rise steadily. In 2008,  the striking rise in Teradata’s Linux revenue growth was matched only by the corresponding drop in its Unix revenue, and that “steady as she goes” performance continues through its stillContinue reading “Teradata Transition On Course in Steady Quarter, With Exciting New Offerings Ahead”

Oracle on Database: It’s On. And They’re Not Kidding.

Oracle is the company that led the industry into making RDBMS the data persistence vehicle of choice, and though its flagship is still Number One, many other topics floated around as 35,000 people attended Oracle Open World (OOW) in San Francisco recently. The spotlight stayed firmly planted: “What will Larry say about clouds/IBM/Fusion apps?”; Marc Benioff and Larry; Arnold and Larry. ButContinue reading “Oracle on Database: It’s On. And They’re Not Kidding.”

Will AEP Replace RDBMS? A Dialogue With Charles Brett

Analytic Event Processing (AEP) is hot. But does it mean RDBMS begins to decline in importance? Charles Brett of C3B Consulting and I recently had a quick dialogue about it and came up with different conclusions. That conversation is reproduced here. It’s only the beginning – l hope you will weigh in with your thoughts.

More From The Low End: DynamoDB is the New Lucid

LucidDB (aka “the best database for BI you don’t know about”) has a commercial version on the way at last. Nick Goodman, a longtime user active in the Eigenbase and other related open source communities, has stepped in. Nick has a consulting practice that builds BI implementations (many using Lucid and Pentaho), and he’s nowContinue reading “More From The Low End: DynamoDB is the New Lucid”

Meanwhile, At The Low End, Infobright is in Transition

I’ve been busy with the big boys for the past few weeks, but open-source offerings are in the news and demand comment. Open source DW software provider  Infobright has a new CEO, Mark Burton  and though he’s an “interim,” he’s hands-on and has the pedigree to help get some traction.

A Tale Of Three Cities, and Oracle, Teradata and IBM Databases

It was the best of times; it was (sometimes) the worst of times. The month of October has for years been data management analysts’ busy season. Oracle, Teradata and IBM hold major conferences, and for customers, prospects, partners, journalists as well as analysts, the recent past, near future and plans for the long term areContinue reading “A Tale Of Three Cities, and Oracle, Teradata and IBM Databases”