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 An overview of the Business Intelligence Solutions (BIS) group of HP was given by John
Santaferraro, Senior Director of Marketing Communication and Industry
Marketing, plus on the phone was Simone Burrows, Director of Health & Life Sciences
Solutions and
Rob Simonds, Director of Communications, Media, &
Entertainment. He talked about partnerships with Informatica to resell their products "on HP paper" and SAP with integration of NeoView with NetWeaver Business Warehouse. An overview of BIS is given here as a 4-page PDF. John was asked about the number of NeoView customers. Based it is HP's policy not to report customer numbers at the division level, he was not able to state numbers but mentioned the case of Woolies in Australia as an example of a large retail customer who is publicly pleased with NeoView. In January, HP & Microsoft announced that they have jointly allocated $250M to support joint activities for R&D, product development and go-to-market. These funds came from reallocation from other HP partnership that are of lower priorities (such as Oracle). Using the sensor technology in HP printers, HP is partnering with Shell Oil to apply that technology to high-resolution seismic data collection in drilling operations. As we discussed HP's professional service, the previous , in contrast to EDS whom is relatively independently operated. He then addressed HP's position for BIS. The key statement is... "." . John admitted that "it take time" citing the ups/downs of the Compaq acquisition. It is just very d  She remarked, "." The example of Blue Cross Blue Shield in Kansas City was cited.  During the break, Merv was jammin'. He is great! John continued with a status report on NeoView, which was mostly confidential. He " :) The greatest energy cost is cooling the data center, with the processor boards accounting for 13% of that cooling cost. A NeoView update is scheduled for mid year but the details are confidential. New hardware, in contrast to new software, is driving innovations data warehousing platforms and applications. John ended with several nuggets of futures for HP. It was mostly questions to ponder, not just from HP's perspective but from a entire industry perspective.
John Santaferraro is Director of Marketing Communications and Industry Marketing for HP and a long time industry leader has many friends in the industry and thats clearly illustrated by todays turnout at the BBBT. In attendance here in Boulder Claudia Imhoff, Lisa Reeves, Holli Arnett, Shawn Rogers, Richard Hackathorn, Dave Imhoff, Merv Adrian, Mark Madsen, Colin White, Steve Dine, Ron Powell and by phone Neil Raden, Jos Von Dongen, Dave Stoddard, Ronald Damhof, Mike Furguson and Mike Brooks. An awesome turnout for a great guy! John kicked things off covering the 3 pillars of the HP BI Solution strategy.
- Platform - Enterprise class analytics
- Solution - Industry specific, information focused
- Delivery - New cloud delivery models, onshore offshore delivery, new analytic offerings
2008 and 2009 have been all about change, reorg and moving forward for HP in October 2008 Kristina Robinson took the helm at HP BI and immediately reorganized consulting by industries the group now covers 13 industries with 5 solution managers in place. Additions have been made to the team that include Susan Cook New Sales Executive, the sales teams have been aligned by industry to parallel the investments made in the consulting reorganization and the industry solution managers.
HP seems to be more focused on partnering with companies like Informatica, SAP and Microsoft versus buying technology or building certain things from within. The question is can the pace of innovation within HP coupled with the strength of these partnerships put them back on the map with the big 4 Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and SAP in the business intelligence space. The companies mantra for 2010 is to be seen as a Complete provider of Enterprise Class industry-specific business intelligence solution. As John got into the details its clear that the message is aligned within the company and if they march to this plan HP can and probably will attain the level of notoriety they are striving for in 2010 and beyond.
Simone Burrows Worldwide Health and Life Sciences Marketing lead joined us by phone form Australia to talk about the BI in the healthcare market. The focus for her group is turning healthcare information into healthcare knowledge. The list of solutions for this vertical are impressive. The Blue Cross Blue Shield customer example saved the customer 2.5m annually along with other quantifiable successes. It a great example of applying domain expertise and technology to a problem to deliver real world,mission critical ROI.
As always the upside of the BBBT is indepth briefing for those of us attending the down side is the NDA stuff so I can't share a lot about NeoView but can say that there is a significant upgrade coming down the pipe and from where I sit the upgrades and changes are some of what you would expect and some things that are very very interesting and unexpected.
I'm a believer that HP can make large strides this year both in real features and function and in perception from the market place. The industry alignment, executive management changes, integration of EDS and KnightsBridge Consulting and focus on business intelligence by Mark Hurd will all play a role in their success. HP needs to make sure that they share more about the Neoview platforms success so that they aren't slowed down by lack of information and poor perception.
Thanks John it was a great session!
 . Founded in 1990, SAP announced their intent to acquire BusinessObjects in October 2007. For details on the company history, see this Wikipedia entry.  Tom started with a high-level slides showing strategy versus execution, balancing risks and opportunities. In other words, it had little content. Next is an overview of the BusinessObjects portfolio: (a) Governance (b) Performance Mgt (c) Business Intelligence (d) Enterprise Information Mgt ... all of which is sitting upon (later integrated into) the Information Mgt Platform. Tom emphasized that there was no "hidden agenda" with SAP. Their products do not sneak the SAP ERP components into SAP BO accounts. There are parts of SAP BO that only cater to non-SAP vendors, like Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, etc. The improvements in version XI 3.x are: performance increases, administration tools, dependency analysis among data elements, trusted BI to track the validity of analysis values, refresh data will highlighted changed values, integration with Microsoft SharePoint and with Oracle E-Business Suite, etc. Tom remarked, "Our goal is to eventually scale our systems to touching one billion users per day ." Mike continued about their mid-term BI roadmap, which is mostly under NDA. They have not dropped support for any third-party tool or database. Tom emphasized that they integrate with anything that their customers have within their infrastructure. When Claudia asked about collaborative BI analysis tools, Mike mentioned their " 12 sprints" work. See a related blog by Shawn Roger. After the break, Mike shared the long-term "Intelligence Vision" most of which is under NDA. Interesting discussion on various future technologies and their impacts on future product offering. Byron finished with a short discussion of SAP executive shuffle and presented the perspective of Enterprise Information Management, which cuts across all SAP product lines (not just BusinessObjects).
ParAccel
On Friday, ParAccel
met with the BBBT to share with the members the latest information about their
company and products. Some of that
information is public and can be discussed here and some is confidential. Presenters were Kim Stanick, Vice
President of Marketing and Rick Glick, VP of Technology & Applications.
ParAccel has an impressive list of over 20 clients. Unfortunately, most of those clients
are not ready to be identified publicly, so I can’t name them here. However, customers and prospects can
probably learn the names of at least some of them from their sales rep. Also some can be found in the “Featured
Customers” section of ParAccel’s web site.
It was worth noting that no product is “right” for everyone. ParAccel seems to have accepted this
and is not trying to sell their solutions as panaceas for every data analysis
challenge. Instead, (taking page
from “Crossing
The Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore) they have been carefully screening prospects
to ensure that their capabilities are a good fit for their customers’
needs. This appears to be
resulting in their clients being very successful and very pleased.
ParAccel is being very pragmatic in their approach to the
market. Offering their solutions
as:
Software
only
An
appliance (i.e., hardware (EMC and Sun) and software fully integrated)
A
set of components
Comment: It will be
interesting to see what happens to the Sun relationship in the wake of Oracle’s
acquisition of Sun.
ParAccel’s real claim to fame is its blazing speed that
makes practical complex queries in very large databases. While such queries have been long been
“possible”, but only if you were willing to go out for a long, leisurely meal,
or perhaps an overdue vacation. It
makes such queries now possible in near real-time. Key to achieving this are the power of columnar databases,
query optimization, and compiled queries.
They are planning to make a “big splash” at TDWI later this
month, with a large floor presence, customers in their booth and a bundle of
announcements.
As part of getting ready for their move to the “next level”
of growth, they have strengthened their management team with the addition of a
new CEO (Mark Lockarff).
ParAccel seems poised to aggressively attack the
market. They appear to be well
funded (details not provided), have a solid product and a strong management
team. Add to those, a well
developed marketing plan and you have a company that should be able to make an
impact.
 Today, ParAccel presented to the BBBT. There were several main components to the discussion with Rick Glick, VP of Technology and Applications and Kim Stanick, VP Marketing:
- Enabling Technology
- Applications to Business Analytics
Enabling Technology
One of the key aspects to the ParAccel message is that traditional enterprise data warehouses (EDWs) have always had the ability to build analytical logical models. But it was moving those analytical models to the physical implementation that cause issues for traditional row-based DBMS applications.
Now with ParAccel’s “software appliance” architecture for columnar-based DBMSs, EDWs can grow from the theoretical into the actual because now those models are possible due to the power and speed of the ParAccel database.
The particular area that I enjoyed was the ability to provide PCI compliance for implementations in finance and in particular telecommunications. In the past, I have seen IT departments “encourage” (read demand) PCI compliant level encryption for entire data tables based on the need to have a single column encrypted. ParAccel offers that ability on a column by column basis which allows for EDW implementers to make better decisions on where they would like to allocate their DBMS resources both in terms of disk space and processing power.
NOTE – I would liked to have seen/heard more about specific size/speed metrics from customer implementations on the PCI compliant encryption, but the answers I received provided comfort that the answers weren’t simply theoretical.
Business Analytical Applications
One of the topics brought up both “in the room” and “in the twitter-sphere” was about how it was entirely possible that the Voltaire quote, often often attributed to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, had direct application to perceived success of traditional EDWs:
 The perfect is the enemy of the good. 
This quote implies that many EDWs in striving to be “perfect” in terms of data model design and being able to understand everything from “the things we know we know” all the way to the “unknowns we don’t know” often missed the opportunity to provide a very specific analytical ‘services’ to the business stakeholders of the EDW.
ParAccel aims to correct that issue with EDWs by using their enabling technology to solve some of the analytical issues facing businesses today whether that be associated with the EDW or the operational platforms that hold the raw data.
Again, a telecommunications application caught my eye. LatiNode’s Communications used ParAccel technology to prove out an active analytical business model for optimization in telecom network routing selections.
NOTE – In the interest of full disclosure… Despite LatiNode’s compelling application of telecom route optimization analytics, it appears that at least some of their success at telecom network optimization came via unscrupulous routes ( …no pun intended… ) and is now longer operating.
The ParAccel featured customer page provides more information on other specific analytical applications.
In Summary
ParAccel, in my humble opinion, is approaching the data analytics market in the right way. They are cautious in their customer “selection” and their product development. They aren’t necessarily attacking the ‘big boys’ of the DBMS world, but rather providing a clear alternative in particular areas to build their reputation and qualifications.
I look forward to hearing more about the customer successes of ParAccel and the “impossible” tasks that ParAccel enables as many industries move from traditional EDW implementations to more targeted, and potentially operational system oriented, analytical applications.
 ParAccel joins the BBBT this morning to discuss their work in analytical databases. Conducting the discussion are Kim Stanick, VP Marketing and Rick Glick, VP of Technology and Applications. Unfortunately much of the discussion below is confidential, but watch for announcements from ParAccel in the near future. Kim reviewed their market and current 20+ customers. Some customers are using ParAccel to provide analytic apps as stand-alone and SaaS. Customers can buy ParAccel as a software package, or as a fully configured hardware/software appliance, or as kit of components. They are positioning their ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB) as an analytical application platform, rather than a data warehouse platform. See An interesting issue emerging from their customer experiences is the interaction with the traditional enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and agile analytic applications. So, what is not working with EDW? - We are burdened with all the baggage of EDW infrastructure, politics, etc.
- Business demands extreme agility in deployment new analytic applications
- EDW trends to shift power away from end users, creating tension
Rick argued that the analytic ecosystem is . Kim outlined their future messaging on: - Intrinsic speed of the technology is now supporting any thinking style
- Analytic capabilities allow us to ask the 'unaskable' questions
- Elastic scalability ensures full scope of required infrastructure
We discussed Kim's plan for "Going Big at TDWI". Fun stuff! Getting traction in media mentions. Mark Lockarff recently became CEO to take the company to the next level. Founder Barry Zane remains as CTO. My Take... ParAccel has good people who are pursuing a solid vision using a set of exploding technologies. In the large corporations, their success depends on opportunities driven by business requirements for analytic application, relative to IT requirements for a common enterprise DW with a standard infrastructure. For the rest of the industry, ParAccel will do well with the numerous business initiatives within smaller and emerging companies.
Wow! big turn out this morning, representatives from the BBBT are tuning in from France, The Netherlands, UK and South Africa not to mention 14 of us here in Boulder and the US. Rick Glick VP of Technology and Architecture and Kim Stanick VP of Marketing have joined us today to help bring us up to date on the new things around ParAccel. For those of you not familiar with ParAccel they are a columnar based MPP database for data warehousing and analytics.
Kim is kicking things off with an impressive list of clients (sorry NDA can't share the list) The cases and stories are intriguing and include government, big retail, pharma and financial services. The solution is available as software only and totally configured appliance or you can purchase and build it yourself. 75% of ParAccel's clients are either purchasing the software or doing the "build your own" type of appliance approach.
Version 2.5 of ParAccel is due in the coming months and offers some pretty cool upgrades (sorry NDA again) ParAccel sees that speed continues to lead the way with client needs and opens the door to more innovative analytics. They leverage query optimization, compiled queries, shared nothing MPP and the power of the columnar database to serve these needs. The company is growing, and has added personnel during the last quarter.
To continue the companies growth Mark Lockareff is now in place as the new CEO of ParAccel. Mark's job is to take the company to the next level and beyond the late stage startup phase. I think this is a a big positive for ParAccel and this type of leadership will help them in what has become a very fast moving and competitive market segment.
It seems that ParAccel is at a tipping point, combined with a new CEO they have a new aggressive marketing campaign staged and ready to go in late February. I think this too is important and a positive for the company because in the past competitors in this segment have made a lot more noise and carried a stronger if not louder message to the market. The next couple of business quarters will tell the story for ParAccel it seems they are well armed for the battle and ready to start the next stage in the companies maturity.
Today's conversation was animated and brisk proof of this can be seen on Twitter under the #BBBT hash tag where we set a record today for the BBBT with over 170 tweets!
Recently, I was asked via twitter if a particular technology or set of technologies was still relevant. My response was that the technologies were in fact relevant... however, my question was which problems were they solving....?
Often times software companies have a solution in search of a problem or an elegant solution that "only" really works on the fringes of business problems. The recent presentation from Composite Software to the BBBT showed me that Composite is not only elegant technology but relevant to direct business issues.
Out of the Gate
Composite brought one of their clients - Compassion International - to present ( note i believe that this was a first for the BBBT .... ). What Compassion International has been able to accomplish in a two year timeframe with Composite for their BI/DW needs is really amazing. It shows what happens when you remove the "empire building" from the usual Business Unit vs Business Unit; Business vs IT; Everyone vs Finance games that usually cripple the current era of IT implementations... not just BI/DW. I highly recommend that any organization take a look at what they can do when they stop thinking about protecting org charts or budgets and start thinking about what the company is around to do... in this case helping as many children as possible with the available funds.
Composite's solution allows Compassion International to perform some very elegant technology solutions that solve direct business issues. And again, this is accomplished without much of the turf wars of who owns what data, where and how...
Sizzle... and Steak
The initial aspects of the Composite presentation from Compassion were almost too good to be true. Great combination of client and technology.... The second half of the presentation told the BBBT crowd more about what Composite was doing for solutions that may not have been as tailor made... And Composite ( ... in my humble opinion... ) did not disappoint.
 Presenting for Composite Software are: Robert Eve, EVP Marketing, and David Besemer, CTO along with customers from Compassion International (CI), based in Colorado Springs, represented by Kenny Sargent, Product Manager, and Steve Horne, Project Manager.  We started with the Compassion Intl talk by Kenny. He presented the overview mission and activities of their ministry. Then, Steve took us into the IT architecture, shown on the right. (click for hi res) Note the lower right labeled Kitchen using the metaphor of Ratatouille movie. Data customers in the dining room should stay out of the data kitchen! Don't watch the sausage being made!  We touched on several critical success factors to CI, such as when is a sponsor is 'pass due' or when is a sponsor continuing sponsorship of a new child. CI is using Composite in three ways: - Simple data federation among a diverse of sources
- Extension or augmentation of data that is mostly in their enterprise DW
- Sharing or distribution of enterprise DW, especially in Web2.0 compatible formats
We continued by drilling into the Composite business. Robert argued that there are two tipping points. First, EDW are definitely necessary, but they are not sufficient for satisfying all the business requirements. Second, data virtualization (or federation) is becoming mainstream. ...driven by pragmatic business reasons. Composite is trying to be the technology leader within this area.  Where does Composite compete? Using the framework of Ted Friedman of Gartner, Robert positioned the company in the center of the figure to the right. (click for hi res) That is, they are not doing CDC on the left or messaging on the right. David continued by explaining the product suite as shown in this figure. The blue boxes are included as part of the Composite Info Server, while the red boxes are optional add-ons. David then explained a detail pieces to the server in this figure. Robert lead a good discussion into five patterns of data virtualization.: simple data federation,
My Take... The feeling that I got from the Composite briefing is that they are NOT focusing on Business Intelligence but on Data Integration, which is part of BI and other IT functions. If you accept the argument that EDW is necessary but not sufficient, then the functionality like Composite becomes a key component in a BI architecture. Final thought... This discussion has the flavor of stimulating business innovation because the Composite products allows easy tittering of data integration possibilities for various business use cases. Final suggestion... Sponsor a child through Compassion International! http://www.compassion.com/
A warm welcome to Composite Software and their customer Compassion International.This is a first for the BBBT to have a customer join us and we are pleased to have Kenny Sargent, Product Manager and Steve Horn, Project Manager here to present on behalf of Compassion International today. Founded in 1952 the ministry is dedicated to children advocacy. In 2009 the ministry celebrated sponsoring 1,000,000 children worldwide, addressing health, economic, spiritual, educational, social and environmental needs. Today they are helping 65,000 children in Haiti with as many as 5,000 in Port-au-Prince.
The Ministry Information Library (MIL) acts as the companies data warehouse. The MIL is all things enterprise data they are addressing data management and governance and have built a strong technology architecture with Composite, Kalido, Initiate Systems, Informatica. Just like all companies Compassion is challenged by the same information issues as any other enterprise. And are fighting a huge growth curve of users and "customers".
Compassion has a master data hub and operational data/reporting hub and a standard data warehouse. Composite helps them create a Data Virtualization Layer that federates data from all the sources nessesary to serve the end user needs. They are also using Composite to combine EDW information along with operational data to serve portal needs on the client side.The system they have created is very sophisticated for a company that has only been focusing on the problem for two years. The executive team at compassion has made technology a a focus.
The composite solution has enabled the technology team to "stage quickly" new projects without the standard costs involved physically building out custom architectures. The virtualized data can then support new ideas and innovation without the time and cost investment you might normally see for new projects. Bottom line, Compassion International is off to a fast start and has created a foundation that will enable them to grow and done it all in a time frame (2 years) that is faster than most.
Composite's virtual consolidation and federation abilities enables them to address a wide scope of data challenges. The solution has evolved into an end to end platform that includes a studio, designer, manager, server, discovery and monitor modules. They have competition in some of these areas but it appears that they stand alone with the full scope of the platform. And Composite has always differentiated itself by how well it optimizes queries.
It was great to have them at the BBBT today and especially nice to hear from their customer and explore the real-world use examples.
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