IBM’s IOD Showcases DB2, Informix, InfoSphere. Now, About Marketing….

It was hard to decide where to look first in Las Vegas this year at IBM’s flagship information management event. Coming as it did on the heels of a massive, sprawling Oracle Open World, it was also overwhelming, but distinguished itself immediately by its focus. Whereas Oracle has smashed together hardware systems, apps, middleware, javaContinue reading “IBM’s IOD Showcases DB2, Informix, InfoSphere. Now, About Marketing….”

Oracle’s Exadata Refresh Ups Ante on Technology and Selling Strategy

The Exadata marketing story is unrelenting, and Oracle backed it with plenty of happy customers for analysts to query at Open World this year. The stories were compelling; I’ll mention a few below. In the analyst pitch, we were shown a couple of dozen logos – good for a still relatively new high-end, long salesContinue reading “Oracle’s Exadata Refresh Ups Ante on Technology and Selling Strategy”

Calpont’s InfiniDB – Another ADBMS Insurgent Arises

Calpont, rapidly emerging as yet another contender in the ADBMS sweepstakes, has announced version 2.0 of InfiniDB, its columnar MPP offering over shared storage. The value proposition hits now-familiar themes: high-performance query, fast data loading, data compression, and parallelized user defined functions (UDFs), all of which are becoming key checkoff capabilities. InfiniDB also hits hardContinue reading “Calpont’s InfiniDB – Another ADBMS Insurgent Arises”

Aster Data Adds Columnar Storage, Puts Stake in Ground for Hybrid Multistores

Aster Data has announced its new version, nCluster 4.6, which now includes a column data store, staking a claim as the first ADBMS to combine SQL and MapReduce on a hybrid row and column MPP system. While its R&D has hitherto been focused on enabling advanced in-database analytic processing in its flagship “Data-Analytics Server, ”Continue reading “Aster Data Adds Columnar Storage, Puts Stake in Ground for Hybrid Multistores”

IBM Gets Feisty — Mobilizes Analytics for Oracle Battle

In July 2009, IBM announced the Smart Analytics System 7600, a workload-optimized, pre-integrated bundle of hardware and software targeted at the business analytics market. Included in that package are an IBM POWER 550 running AIX, storage, plus InfoSphere Warehouse Enterprise Edition (which consists of DB2, Warehouse design and management tools + Cubing, Data Mining andContinue reading “IBM Gets Feisty — Mobilizes Analytics for Oracle Battle”

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?”

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”

Sand Technology a Risky Bet

It’s a shame that Sand Technology isn’t doing better, because the technology is apparently quite good and has been for years. Decades, indeed, but after all that time, Sand is a US$7M firm. Why is that? Their June visit to the Boulder BI Braintrust (BBBT) offered some clues. And some followup into public filings paints an unattractiveContinue reading “Sand Technology a Risky Bet”

What To Expect at Sapphire? Breya Hints At BO-BWA Connection

IT Market Strategy recently sat down with Marge Breya, Executive Vice President & GM Intelligence Platform & NetWeaver of SAP BusinessObjects, to discuss the first full year of life within SAP after being acquired at the beginning of 2008. Breya oversees full product line responsibility for BI and information management  solutions, as well as theContinue reading “What To Expect at Sapphire? Breya Hints At BO-BWA Connection”

DB2 9.7 Focuses on Costs, Simpler Management

IBM has announced, a bit earlier than originally planned, DB2 9.7 as well as InfoSphere Warehouse 9.7 (we’ll cover the latter in another post). A steady 3rd place in the DBMS market behind Oracle and Microsoft, DB2 nonetheless continues to make gains. IBM claims that its non-mainframe (IBM calls it “distributed”) DB2 revenue grew at aContinue reading “DB2 9.7 Focuses on Costs, Simpler Management”