Informatica Re-Factors the Value Chain for the Cloud

Informatica’s cloud ambitions continue and deepen with each new release. In the years since its 2006 launch, Informatica Cloud, the strategic initiative launched to bring Informatica’s data integration assets to the cloud,  has won salesforce.com’s Best of AppExchange award for 2008 and 2009, added other cloud-based applications as targets, and most significant, signed up 650Continue reading “Informatica Re-Factors the Value Chain for the Cloud”

Is Microsoft the New Safe Harbor?

The following is a guest post from Ray Wang of Altimeter Group. I wrote a different title, but otherwise this is as it appears on his blog. Clients Now See Microsoft As The Neutral Vendor, Hence All The Questions Just less than 3 years ago, Microsoft was still perceived as part of the “evil” empire. Continue reading “Is Microsoft the New Safe Harbor?”

SapphireNow Day Two – Pump It Up

Bill McDermott began the day for Orlando attendees of SapphireNow by demonstrating that there is no charisma deficit at SAP these days, and his co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe was right there behind him to make the case that commitment and strategy are not lacking either. They welcomed Sybase, hailed the new ByDesign release about toContinue reading “SapphireNow Day Two – Pump It Up”

SapphireNow Day One – Getting Virtual Events Right, And More

I got some great messages today from people who enjoyed my tweets “from” SapphireNow in Orlando – although I wasn’t there. That’s a tribute – not to me; we’re only talking tweets, for goodness’ sake – to SAP for pulling off a two-continent, video-streaming, full-on collaborative event I was able to participate in meaningfully fromContinue reading “SapphireNow Day One – Getting Virtual Events Right, And More”

Will Tiered Content Strategies Crack the IT Research PayWall?

There are two content models in the IT research world: the PayWall and the freely available. In the former model, the business assumption is that the firm’s revenue stream is largely driven by content subscriptions.  The latter treats content as the best advertising of the firm’s real value: its people and the advice they canContinue reading “Will Tiered Content Strategies Crack the IT Research PayWall?”

Sybase Database Value to SAP – Long Term and Short

It’s not what you think – the hidden jewel for the near term may just be SQL Anywhere. Read on. Disclosure: I worked at Sybase in the last millennium, when it hit the wall at $1B the first time and bounced. Over the next few years, Oracle dramatically outdistanced itself, in large part, as itContinue reading “Sybase Database Value to SAP – Long Term and Short”

SAP – Sybase: Synergies? Suspect So.

SAP announced today that it will acquire Sybase for $65.00 per share, representing an enterprise value of approximately $5.8 billion. The announcement says that “customers will be able to better harness today’s explosion of data and deliver information and insight in real time to business consumers wherever they work so they can make faster, moreContinue reading “SAP – Sybase: Synergies? Suspect So.”

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”

Oracle Ups EPM Ante

After a 2 year wait, Oracle is rolling out some fruits of its daunting integration efforts in enterprise performance applications. New suite bundles, an Essbase connector and Hyperion uplift are highlights of its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 11.1.2 release. The numbering scheme, evidently constrained by the overall Oracle level 11 nomenclature, drove the understated “11.1.2”Continue reading “Oracle Ups EPM Ante”

SAP Signals Changes At Insider Event – Vaguely

SAP took the wraps off planned updates to its data warehousing, data integration and on-demand BI plans a bit at the  SAP Insider BI and Portals event in Orlando in late March. There were some modest surprises: the unexpected absence of Marge Breya, who was in Walldorf apparently getting a broader set of responsibilities (aContinue reading “SAP Signals Changes At Insider Event – Vaguely”