Enterprise Headlines and Highlights, 2012-07-22
Highlights of enterprise software and solutions news from the past week: Two IPOs come out strongly after Facebook IPO disappointment – Kayak and Palo Alto Networks. Google Nexus 7, with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, is becoming the first general purpose worthy competitor to the Apple iPad. Workday files for IPO, using JOBS Act to avoid […]
Microsoft Leaps Late, Lags with SQL Server PDW
Microsoft chose a user group meeting, Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), for the rollout of its long-awaited, and late, SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (note, yet again, how foolish it is for vendors to trap themselves with dates in product names.) PDW is late to market; there are other MPP DBMS players […]
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, java […]
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 sales […]
Database Benchmarks – The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Yes, I know – not everyone believes database benchmarks are useful. My position is that there is value in benchmarks’ role in helping engineers wring out bottlenecks, bugs and performance impediments in their products. In a conversation I recently had with Berni Schiefer, Distinguished Engineer and manager of the DB2 UDB Performance and Advanced Technology […]
Microsoft’s Parallel DW – Still Waiting
Microsoft’s SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse (PDW) has been eagerly awaited for a long time. It still is. Though much of the news at the BI Conference running in parallel with TechEd in New Orleans (discussed here) was generally quite good, the PDW story was much less so. It’s late, and it’s not all there. […]
Oracle Exadata: Early Signs Promising
Exadata is looking good. In the past few months, I’ve had the chance to talk to several early adopters of Oracle Exadata V2, some in connection with a sponsored white paper Oracle has just published. It’s still early, but I see this product as a milestone, regardless of its commercial success. That is still to […]
Microsoft Plays Where’s Waldo? With BI – Good Idea
In April, I was critical of the BI messaging I heard from Microsoft – as told, it was long on benefit adjectives and short on architectural clarity. But things have changed since then, and the Combined Tech Ed/Business Intelligence Conference made that very clear. Do I see more clarity because I now know more of […]
Event Report: Top 10 Questions To Ask At The Microsoft TechEd/STB Analyst Summit
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. Business leaders worried about the complicated and expensive licensing and pricing structures. IT leaders bemoaned the lock-in and proprietary and often buggy software. But in a reversal […]
