Michael Whitehead, CEO and founder,
Mark Budzinski, VP/General Manager, and
Chuck Kelley, Senior Data Warehouse Architect, all from
WhereScape USA. Also attending is
Scott Humphrey, CEO of Humphrey Strategic Communications. They are seeking advice on positioning, market segments to target, and future directions.
On a
faded piece of paper posted on the office wall, Michael listed the questions that he NEVER wants to hear from customers. This is a nice way of institutionalizing the company's mission statement!
Michael reviewed the company history transitioning from a consulting firm to a software product company in 2004. Focused on SQL Server, then Teradata, Oracle, and recently IBM DB2. Currently, WhereScape has approximately 350 customer of which 150 in the US. Average cost of purchasing the WS product is around $75,000, which is roughly set at one FTE. So, the business justification is trading off hiring an extra employee or consultant.
Michael continued with their
architecture slide, showing how they fit with the vendor's DW components. WhereScape focuses on customers who have no time and no money for building a data warehouse, as characterized in this
segmentation slide.
Unrelated historical note: 1840 is considered a watershed year in the history of New Zealand: The Treaty of Waitangi is signed, British sovereignty over New Zealand is proclaimed, organized European settlement begins, and Auckland and Wellington are both founded.
Michael covered several customer situations: Subway, City of Lakewood Colorado, Vodafone, and Ross Systems. And then, Cluck started the demo of WhereScape Red into adding a State column to an existing table. Impressive in the level of detail and in the ability to escape from the tool's suggestions. We then immersed into a discussion of product futures and market directions, all under NDA.
My Take... WhereScape has an established product that can build DW quickly. However, it is apparent that the user must have reasonable data analysis skills. And if true, this tool is definitely a productivity enhancer.
There is an opportunity for WhereScape to embody "best practices" in DW development. They do have a
Community forum to assist customers in their learning and to contribute to the community's best practices. Then, WhereScape can take advantage of this evolving best practice as ideas for future product enhancements.
