Richard Hackathorn: August 2008 Archives

Dataupia presented their current offerings and future plans, along with a few personal tidbits (which will not be disclosed). The Dataupia group consisted of John O'Brien, CTO, Samantha Stone, VP Marketing, and Lis Strenger, Director Product Marketing.

Founded in 2005. Launch was about a year ago with the Satori Server (meaning deep enlightenment from Zen Buddhism - cute!). 58 employees now, with about 100 persons overall. New executives in slots for VP Sales and VP Client Delivery (post-sales field engineering). Partnerships with IBM Cognos (as technology partner) and Tableau. Customers are publicly five named accounts, ranging from 4 TB to 150 TB. Most are in telcomm with movement into retail, emphasizing data retention/compliance and operational efficiency.

We discussed the five workload types that depend on the business requirements for user profile and analytic tools, as shown below.
It is interesting to compare these types with traditional workload types (like short, long-run...). Data loading was missing from this figure, but it was discussed later and is a strong feature of the Satori Server. A question to ponder is how these business requirements drive the need for various kinds of data loading.

An Aberdeen Group study indicated that companies who are 'best-in-class' tend to adopt DW appliances. The implication seems to be, if you are smart, you should buy a DW appliance. This begs the question as to whether the company needs a DW appliance based on their business requirements. But, it is fair to say that smart companies consider DW appliances as a choice meriting attention.
 
The feature that I like is the transparency of the Satori Server, as shown below. Essentially, the business user and business application does not know about (or impacted by) the Satori Service because it is hidden behind the primary database to enhance its capabilities. This lessen the rip-and-replace damage to the IT architecture.

Another point discussed was the shortening the time-to-analysis, which enhances business value by supporting additional types of business users, as shown below.

This slide conveys an important point. It is not about shortening query time; it is all about delivering value to a wider range of users.

We spent time looking at specific industry and their specific pain points. This is a sign of maturity for Dataupia as they move their focus from the technology to the business. The challenge is to mature their customer-facing personnel (sales reps).

TUSC from Lakewood Colorado presented to the BBBT about their new directions. Brad Brown, CTO, Steve Parsons, Senior Consultant, and Laura Sprowls, Product Coordinator, presented to us. Acquired by ROLTA, TUSC has established a reputation in professional services for Oracle. Brad is launching a product initiative focusing on tools for creating an 'instant SOA' infrastructure by 'simplifying complexity'. More information is given here.

One of the traditions of the BBBT is to serve coffee in mugs labeled by companies who are no longer. If you have a mug sitting around gathering dust and if the mug logo has historic IT value, please send it to Claudia Imhoff at Intelligent Solutions, PO Box 4587, Boulder, CO 80306.

We will forever be indebted to you!
...as we sip our coffee and contemplate the future of yet another IT company.

(Title is courtesy of Claudia Imhoff)

Joe Foley, Chief Architect, and Kirsten Chapman, VP Marketing, of i-lluminate Solutions presented their company background, product offerings and and strategy directions. They are positioning their technology as a value-based architecture in contrast with row-based or column-based one.

Their focus is "ad hoc analysis," which Joe defined as the discovery of information for a business requirement that is rapid, flexible, and effective. Joe pointed out that 'ad hoc' really means 'for the particular end or case at hand without consideration of wider application' (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary), which was a surprise to me. My prior was that 'ad hoc' implied random, undefined, unexpected and so on. As an IT profession, we have so distorted the original definition. Over the last several decades, we have shifted perspectives from a business user (done for a specific purpose) to an technical one (tough to implement).

A major marketing point is that i-lluminate enables a lower time-to-value by rapidly delivering data to a business user for a specific business need. The figure show the timelines for a traditional data warehouse development cycle (bottom) as compared to the i-lluminate development cycle (top). I question their claims that there is no need for data modeling and user requirements, but I am intrigued by their technology that works bottom-up and delivers quick business value.
My opinion is that i-lluminate's product set (iLuminate, iProfile, iAnalysis) fits into two niches. First, it can be an enabler for exploratory data marts within an enterprise architecture. Second, it can be a pre-warehouse tool to quickly capitalize on business data value and to understand the important business relationships, as a first step toward a traditional data warehouse.

The best way to understand i-lluminate's solutions is to take them up on their POC Challenge. Ship them a few hundred gigabytes from several sources, and see what you get. Do you see business insights that you did not know? Do you see data gliches that cause you some pain? Do you see new potential queries that would aid your business users? If you ask positively, then investigate this vendor further.

For a limited time and for NO CHARGE (except for your staff time), they are offering ten large-scale POC trials for enterprise-level data warehouses. If you engage in either offer from i-lluminate, please email me or comment on this blog item about your experiences.