Sybase Rolls On – Make Some Noise!

Sybase has announced yet another record revenue result for the third quarter of 2009.  Like other leading data management firms, its database business demonstrated continuing vitality in a difficult economic period. With 32% growth in database licensing revenues against a strong year over year comparison, the venerable DBMS provider continued a string of recent strong results.

 

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 still unevenly applied OS transition. In Q3, revenues were down a little (3%) year over year, and margin was flat (down 0.6%). YTD product revenues are down 11%.  Service revenues were up 5% for the quarter but only 2% YTD.  Still, net income rose 5%, in part because of strong expense controls. Since early 2008, Teradata has lost a little momentum through a difficult economy compared to its rivals at Oracle and IBM. Its next transition – after independence from NCR and the OS shift – is a product portfolio change catalyzed by the growth of appliance competitors like Netezza. So far, Teradata has managed to drive the product changes into the market well, claiming 65% of its appliance sales are new names. The hot new all-SSD Extreme Performance Appliance is now coming onstream, and will create a new category advantage if, as Teradata believes, there are customers willing to pay for its spectacular performance.

 

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. But if there’s anything Larry Ellison is passionate about, even as he sets his sights on IBM (hardware) and SAP (apps) – his two most important competitors, he said at the Churchill Club recently – it’s database, and he’s energized by the appliance opportunity. Andy Mendelsohn, SVP of Database Server Technologies put it simply in a conversation: “the only product Larry has spoken of in the last 3 earnings calls is Exadata.” He is more involved than in recent years, and that means one thing: everyone else had better watch out. What analysts learned about the new release makes that very clear: Oracle has been busy, and there is a lot of exciting new technology coming.

 

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

Lucid DB (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 now spun out a firm called Dynamo Business Intelligence to issue and support a product to be called DynamoDB. He often  found his BI clients asking what to use for a database – the default was MySQL, but he loves Lucid’s features and performance, and so it seemed like time. Nick’s blog can be found here.

 

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 are on display. How vendors use this opportunity to position themselves has always been instructive, and 2009 was no exception. In brief: Oracle took shots at IBM; Teradata put its successful customers on display; and IBM proposed ways to change the world for the better.

 

Tech Marketers Need Friends With Benefits. No, Not That Kind

Every software product developer, and product manager, and sales rep, needs friends in marketing. And they need to be friends with benefits – benefit statements. Clear. Explicit. Specific for a particular stakeholder. Sound obvious? Based on the last month of briefings I have taken, it’s clearly not.

 

Illuminate May be Gaining Traction

I’ve talked about Illuminate in two posts already this year, and for a small firm with little North American footprint, they continue to drive a surprising number of questions I receive. I had a quick chat with Andrew Fletcher, the VP responsible for building out the partner network, and he’s upbeat about the firm’s progress.

 

My Best Decision Today: Skipping Larry’s Fusion Speech

It’s been a good Oracle Open World so far, unless you wanted some exciting news about Fusion Apps. All the cyberworld was a-twitter (pun intended) about that during the runup to the event. If that’s what you wanted, sorry – the payoff couldn’t have been flatter if the Governator had run over it with one of his Hummers. (More likely his wife would have done it while illegally talking on her cell phone.) There was a great theme this year: “Come With Questions. Leave With Answers.” Yup. And the answer was: “Wait till next year.”