Saturday, October 24, 2009

Aweekstweets October 18-25 2009

Aweekstweets October 18-25 2009

JK2---BI vendors are making true real-time updates, via complex event processing (CEP), one of their big themes for the coming year. I see this across the board, with a few exceptions who I believe will come around. In-memory clients with interactive visualization against very large local memory caches will keep it an “real-enough time” experience even when connectivity’s interrupted or throttles down.

  • Orphaned context-bereft "mention" responses in Twitter: even when try to find whatever tweet of mine may have prompted, half of time I can'tabout 3 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---The larger issue is that we’ve adopted Twitter as an interpersonal messaging medium when it’s not entirely adapted to that purpose. So we’ve introduced as much mess as messaging into this medium. But, then again, e-mail’s not an ideal messaging medium either, as anybody who ever tried to follow an overextended back-and-forth e-mail discussion thread will attest. We’ve adapted our habits and heads to extract as much signal as practical from the noise.

JK2---Actually, the Forrester resport, “BI Polishes Its Crystal Ball” (August 18, 2009) was co-authored by myself, Boris Evelson, and Leslie Owens. Here’s the executive summary: “Enterprise strategic, tactical and operational decision makers want to understand past and present activity, but also anticipate the future to avoid being blindsided by seemingly hidden events. How do companies build a competitive “crystal ball”? They use advanced analytics applications integrated into their business intelligence (BI) applications and enterprise data warehousing (EDW) platforms. Many enterprises deploy siloed traditional BI and advanced analytics environments through fragmented, departmental, and tactical initiatives. In addition, vendors typically offer spotty or non-existent integration among advanced analytics and BI solutions. But large BI vendors are pulling together deeper advanced analytics strategies – a trend strongly confirmed by IBM’s recently announced plan to acquire SPSS. Forrester believes this strategic trend will continue, and will benefit business process & application (BP&A) and information & knowledge management (I&KM) professionals looking to build integrated traditional and advanced (predictive) BI applications.”

  • I tend to growl at a ringing phone, IM dialogue box, pop-up Web ad, or any other tech contrivance that screams for my attention RIGHT NOW!about 12 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---By the way, I’m not naturally anti-social. I’m more anti-interruption. No, not that, I’m anti-distraction. The fact that I’m often in mid-thought and mid-task makes every distraction, interruption, and call to interact in real-time ever more annoying. More than that: injurious to my bread and butter. I’m paid to focus on complex, ever-changing stuff. Every interruption defocuses me and makes it harder to resume where I left off. But I suppose you’re in the same fix, since most information workers face this same dilemma. I’m good about processing my asynchronous message queues, and tend to do so with a smile on my face. Because it gives me maximum control over my throughput.

JK2---A lone unconnected social network is my favorite. One in which it’s just me and a few kindreds talking about stuff that rocks our world, regardless of what the world thinks. It’s not as if the more connected public social networks are our enemy. It’s just that peer groups are our soul.

  • Interesting. Only one-third of blogs from my 4-year-old OPML list have gone dark. Thought it would be more. People still feeding blogs.about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---I’ll bet there’s been a higher percentage of trade pubs going dark over that same period. Lots of people have found lots of approaches to keeping their blogs fresh with content. For example: my, mine, this.

  • Starting to explore the RSS feedreader in Internet Explorer. Far better than its sibling in Outlook. Think I'll default to the former.about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---My browser’s my portal to the world. Of course I’ll spend more time there if I can keep it fresh with content feeds that I personally choose.

JK2---We’re living more of our lives in public now. It’s almost trivial now to listen into all kinds of conversational threads everywhere all the time. A good analyst—and that’s what’s at the core of the CIA—can piece together a substantial amount of valuable intelligence without putting agents in the field, or in harm’s way.

JK2---Advertising may be a dying art. Word of mouth—through social networks—may be replacing it as the “hidden persuader.” Spread a buzz for your product through Twitter, Facebook, etc, and see demand grow, without having to spend a dime on traditional or even online advertising media. Use search engines—such as www.bing.com/twitter--to track your influence and tweak your campaign in real time. Before long, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo may find their search-socialnet-buzz services cannibalizing their search-keyword-ad revenues.

  • Windows 7. What's that? Microsoft counting years since I last paid attention to their next client OS? I have several OS versions. All's OK.about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---I never pay attention to Apple’s either. Much like I never pay attention to new models of cars. Or new fashions. Call me a slob. But I’ll use/drive/wear whatever’s current and in the stores. And I’ll hold onto it all until it absolutely physically wears out. I prefer to live my life rather than fuss over stuff that’s good enough for my purposes. I’ll make the most of whatever.

  • Spread spectrum. Code frequency & space division. Many paths for encoding scattering & segregating signals. My adaptive smart array on fritzabout 19 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---Just spacing out, thinking back to my mid-90s stint at LCC International, product manager making test equipment for cellular system engineers. Betcha didn’t know that about me. I got a good layman’s grounding in cellular radio-frequency engineering, and have not used that knowledge in any way since that time. Much like my college calculus.

  • Kinda nice to have influence over vendor doings. Kinda not nice. Cuz when I comment on what they do, I'm also obliquely commenting on myselfabout 21 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---When I say I have “influence,” it’s more along the lines of this or that vendor saying they’ve tweaked their go-to-market message based on something I told them or tweeted. When I say “obliquely commenting on myself,” it’s usually the feeling of being flattered combined with the feeling of being dissatisfied with those ideas. I’m always moving onto some new or larger topic, context, or perspective on it all.

JK2---Perfect example of larger context. The EDW, enriched through in-database analytics, is becoming an analytic application server, embedding inline predictive models in SOA applications. It’s also becoming a convergence point for analytic and transactional applications. To become an enterprise-grade app server, the massively parallel EDW grid will need to isolate app services from data services and provide tools for scaling, optimizing, securing, and administering these disparate services in an SOA framework. More on this in November.

  • Quite interested in hearing what IBM will discuss re SPSS roadmap at next week's IOD. Still not sure there's a concrete roadmap.about 21 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---Not at all sure. I don’t see much mention of SPSS in all the prebriefings.

JK2---Key takeaway: “Your organization should adopt Service-Oriented Analytics practices to dissolve silos that prevent maximum reuse of predictive analytic apps, modeling professionals, and best practices across business and application domains.”

JK2---Maturity is knowing when your current status is a permanent plateau—butte or rut—and being satisfied with the view. You’re going to have to make your peace with whatever level you’ve attained, even if you make every effort to, as Stevie Wonder put it, “reach my higher ground.”

  • Interesting flanking maneuver: vendor positioning of next-gen EDW as completely extensible partner-enabling analytic-app delivery platform.about 23 hours ago from TweetDeck

JK2---I figure that Netezza will have to go this route, unless they acquire BI, ETL, MDM, and other complementary vendors/solutions. Or add a consulting arm.

  • Interesting flanking maneuver: vendor positioning of next-gen EDW as something more: complete ready-to-deploy biz analytic app suite in box8:50 AM Oct 22nd from TweetDeck

JK2---I figure that Microsoft will have to go this route, if they wish to truly make headway selling SQL Server “Madison” appliances into the vast small-to-midsized business market.

  • Interesting flanking maneuver: vendor positioning of next-gen EDW as something more: OLTP/analytic app server. Exadata v2? Maybe, sorta.8:45 AM Oct 22nd from TweetDeck

JK2---I figure that Oracle will deepen their focus on this theme as they integrate their huge application portfolio with their hugely powerful new EDW platform.

  • In DW market, only deep-pocketed lo-cost players can survive $/TB trench war. Marketing blitzes can work. As can innovation-driven flanking8:40 AM Oct 22nd from TweetDeck

JK2---Deep-pocketed? Reasonably, that term can only apply to those huge vendors with significant scale economies and lucrative cash-cow products. It fits Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and HP. Who else?

  • In mature markets with huge legacies, competitive warfare mixes WW1 (trench), WW2 (blitz), Vietnam (guerilla), & Gulf (laser-guided) tactics8:32 AM Oct 22nd from TweetDeck

JK2---Guerilla tactics in the DW space? That’s FUD, right? Scaring the competitor’s legacy customers with end-of-life threats when a vendor rolls out a shiny new platform, and encouraging them (through special price breaks etc.) to migrate to your own product. Scaring an acquired vendor’s legacy customer with that same end-of-life bogeyman. Laser-guided? Acquiring the DW appliance competitor’s main hardware platform provider.

  • DW is a mature market. Even with all the startup activity and innovation, I'm struck by how many vendors & analysts have been at it forever.8:22 AM Oct 22nd from TweetDeck

JK2---Reading up on DW discussions from the 90s (Kimball vs. Inmon; OLAP best practices, etc.). Doesn’t feel all that different from today. And that’s good: stable body of time-proven practices that work for enterprise IT pros. Diverse schools of thought that debate perennial issues.

  • Another morning of glancing at my physical copies of WashPost & WSJ. Great journalism that can only be read in depth at night when exhausted6:38 AM Oct 22nd from TweetDeck

JK2---Old-style newspapers are becoming a bit like magazines: digests we read at leisure, rather than on the run. Most of the on-the-run consumption of news is online, mobile, social.

  • A week's delayed pondering on #OOW09. Oracle needs to ramp data mining strategy bigtime. Exadata v2's great promise is in-database analytics9:47 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

JK2---Oracle paid very little attention to data mining at OOW09. That’s unfortunate. They have a strong tool and a strong EDW for in-database analytics.

  • I prefer "business analytics" for its mouth feel: penultimate stress, saucy tongue-roll, redoubled short-i echoes, crunchy end-click.9:43 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

JK2---Reminds me. Here’s a triple-haiku I wrote extemporaneously for Kristina Kerr of Microsoft’s BI team last year at their show in downtown Seattle, over dinner, in response to my challenge to her to give me the seed word. She said “crunchy”:

CRUNCHY ANALYTIC

Thought is optional.
Have to have hands to grasp and
tear the text to bits.

Pulp's preferable.
Its immolation is a
blazing face of fire.

An unlocking of
energies that only hard
tedium can free.

Also reminds me, here, from 2000, is my first triple-haiku, which I wrote extemporaneously for no one, in my head, at an industry conference in downtown Atlanta, during my Burton Group days:

A RECONCILIATION OF FRIENDS

A hand on an arm
in the din of a disco
is without a doubt.

A gesture can close
the years and odd continents
we let intervene.

The touch of a hand
is a dove come home and
a world encircled.

BTW, I'll be in LV next week: Mon (IBM IOD), Tues (SAS M2009), Wed (SAP Inside Rpting). Will the roam the halls, meet you all, tweet it all.9:29 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

JK2---Tweeting has replaced versifying as my preferred mode of capturing the moment.

  • A day's delayed pondering on #TDPUG. Teradata needs to tout its innovations more forcefully. And go aggressive in industry price wars.9:25 PM Oct 21st from TweetDeck

JK2---Teradata continues to face account-erosion pressures. Their technical innovations are certainly impressive, especially those announced this past week. But that doesn’t change the DW industry competitive dynamic: a trench war over price-performance. They can lob these performance-related salvos all they want (cloud, all-SSD, virtual storage, etc.), but if they don’t withstand the steady attrition by neutralizing their opponents’ price advantages, they’ll be at a long-term strategic disadvantage.

JK2---Sure, the blogosphere has Wikipedia, Google, and the like. But it doesn’t have a multi-decade, uninterrupted, pre-aggregated, institutionally governed and brokered repository reportage and commentary.

JK2---I’m not much into co-presenting on topics not in my core coverage areas, or presenting virtually by teleconference to faceless throngs who don’t ask questions, or whom I can’t have drinks with afterward. I do love speaking in person and up close, in large rooms full of professionals who pay attention, have a keen interest in my research, and are not shy about engaging me afterward. This Teradata preso was me at my best, and the audience responded with great Q&A. One fellow (forgot his name, sorry) engaged me in an extended hallway conversation after the preso. I live for that stuff.

  • I like to use all my msging, social ntwking, and Web 2.0 media as notepads: recording my thoughts for later reference (by myself & others).5:54 AM Oct 20th from TweetDeck

JK2---This is a great medium for sharing and validating my thinking in real-time with interested parties.

  • Managing today's hypersaturated media diet requires knowing when your cup runneth over, recognizing superfluous commentary and not refilling5:49 AM Oct 20th from TweetDeck

JK2---Distinguishing astute from stupid commentary is a never-ending job. The former is like a magic elixir. The latter is the intellectual equivalent of second-hand smoke. Just because everybody smokes something and says it makes them smart, sexy, and with-it doesn’t make it so. Standing apart, you feel your innocent bystander lungs fill with fluid.

JK2---Every medium can be a burden if you don’t retool your life to make the most of it. Which reminds me, someone sent me a cool link to a YouTube video that’s a joke: Google Wave meets Pulp Fiction http://bit.ly/3Xa09E. It’s the profanity-laced homicidal-screaming Samuel L. Jackson audio from that Tarantino film, but rendered in Google Wave with full utilization of text, fonts, pics, video, etc. Not only is it incredibly funny, but it’s an awesomely powerful adaptation of that scene for the new comms medium called Google Wave. Stretching the expressive possibilities of any medium or genre is the greatest thrill. E-mail isn’t dead. But the muscular infant called Google Wave hasn’t even begun to emerge fully from its promising cradle.

  • Microsoft has new name for forthcoming BI mashup solution (fka "Project Gemini")": Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel. A bit wordy.4:52 PM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---“PowerPivot” is s cool name, by itself, uninflected, though.

JK2---What’s most interesting about their MapReduce/Hadoop implementation is how well they’re defining alternative deployment scenarios, in order to optimize MapReduce/Hadoop for diverse customer apps across the Teradata DW product family. Also, they’re not treating this as some big trade secret. This is a link to a published set of docs on their website.

  • Teradata has a strong MapReduce and Hadoop story. They haven't emphasized it at Partners, but it's deep. Stay tuned. #tdpug4:48 PM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Teradata’s in-database analytics story is much more than simply the SAS partnership.

  • Teradata nu all-SSD "Blur" DW racks consume much less power/floorspace than rotating-disk DWs. SSD more expensive upfront, but excellent TCO3:38 PM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Potentially, that is. Excellent TCO potentially. Talk about price-performance shooting wars. As soon as SSD prices drop by 50% or more, in the next 1-2 years, expect to see every DW appliance product everywhere incorporate them, and quickly obsolete and end-of-life the legacy rotating-disk DW platforms.

  • Teradata public (Amazon EC2) and private (VMWare) DW cloud offerings in beta. Their private (Agile Analytic) cloud DW available now. #TDPUG3:33 PM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Teradata Agile Analytic Cloud (private cloud) similar in high-level respects to Greenplum Enterprise Data Cloud. Teradata’s entire cloud offerings/strategy (private and public) similar in high-level respects to Aster Data’s offerings/direction. Of the seven vendors in my Feb 2009 Forrester EDW Platforms Wave, Teradata’s the only one (so far) with a (more than) credible cloud story. But t hey certainly won’t be the last.

  • McDonald says Teradata has customer wins on very-hi-scale 1555 platform, and will discuss later. But 5555 remains core DW platform. #TDPUG11:58 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---I’m still waiting to hear how Teradata will position the (40 petabytes max! count ‘em) 1555 going forward. As a massively parallel EDW cloud platform for deployment by public cloud partners? By Web 2.0 pure-play app/service providers?

  • Asked Teradata re response to ORCL/NZ in DW price war. McDonald ackn price-perf weakness, but confident innovation will drive customer wins11:57 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---That’s assuming, of course, that competitors won’t be announcing and rolling out similar innovations in the coming 6-12 months. Teradata needs to get aggressive with first-mover (or close to first mover) value prop in DW cloud, SSD, virtual storage, and the like.

  • Gnau: new Teradata all-SSD 4555 "Blur" DW appli. #TDPUG. Alternative to in-mem & CEP engines. Loads 7TB/hr. Hyper-analytics. Demo on floor.11:49 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---I’m surprised they didn’t announce a petabyte-scale distributed in-memory offering as well. That would make perfect sense as the next generation of their Active Enterprise Intelligence strategy.

JK2---But Oracle Exadata v2, announced a few weeks prior to OOW09, was substantial enough for now. Considering that it is now in primary upgrade path for DW/BI deployments of Oracle market-leading RDBMS, and considering how scaleable and flexible it is to support OLTP/DW integration, we should not underestimate its impact.

JK2---Virtualization of the DW into the “cloud” (public and/or private). Plan to do a Forrester report on that topic in early 2010.

  • Teradata Agile Analytic Cloud. #TDPUG. Internal priv cloud, ease of mart provis, Elastic Mart Builder w actv wkld mg, prof svcs: free/GA now11:40 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Elastic Mart Builder. That tool is the most noteworthy new element in Teradata’s cloud/virtualization story. The underlying self-service mart provisioning capabilities have been in the vendor’s DW platform(s) for some time.

  • Teradata's Scott Gnau on cloud. #TDPUG. Internal analytic clouds for POC, power user sandbox, testing, dependent virtual marts.11:37 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Teradata’s now in major POC mode with customers on its Agile Analytic Cloud capabilities leveraging Elastic Mart Builder. A big ongoing customer outreach, education, and demonstration exercise. Energizing the sales force in this direction.

  • Teradata Virtual Storage: automated data placement on disk with multi-temperature storage. #TDPUG. Key DW cost-reduction tools for customers11:34 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---This is the most fundamental bread-and-butter enhancement announced at Teradata Partners this year: controlling and reducing storage costs. Teradata customers are always looking to make their deployments more efficient on the storage side.

JK2---Teradata could easily take a more thorough solution-oriented packaging focus, a la IBM Smart Analytic Systems, if they wished.

  • Teradata/SAS "350" claim reference engagements where in-db analytics "rising business priority." #TDPUG. Yeah, vague, but clear implication11:31 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---The fact is: most joint Teradata-SAS customers have made significant investments in a DW (Teradata) and predictive analytics and data mining suite (SAS). Hence, it’s safe to assume the majority of those 350 joint customers are looking to leverage, extend, and integrate those investments. Hence, in-database analytics (for which there are many ROI points to consider, per my upcoming Forrester report: “In-Database Analytics: Heart of the Predictive Enterprise.”

  • Teradata CMO Darryl McDonald: alluded to competitor 10x claims re their respective new platforms: "as if we all don't do that."11:28 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Yeah. DW appliance vendors’ default “10x” claims are as meaningful as detergent vendors’ tendency to slap ‘new and improved” on their boxes. They all claim it. Let the customer decide whether in fact their queries indeed come out faster, and whether their whites come out whiter than white.

JK2---BTW, I plan to update the Forrester EDW Platforms Wave in 2010. There have been so many new products and announcements in the EDW market since I published that one (just 8 months ago), that it will be high time by this time next year.

JK2---Hmmm....maybe we need to distinguish between a database server, cluster, grid, and cloud in terms of number of distinct (physical and/or logical, processing and storage) nodes in a massively parallel deployment. Maybe the term “cluster” can max at 64 nodes, grid at 1000 nodes, and cloud for more than 1000 nodes. In that case, it makes no sense to refer to a single node of anything as a “cloud.” I can’t see any scenario in which a dataset as small as 1TB would be persisted and managed by 1000 or more server nodes (unless we’re talking virtual servers, and, even then, the overhead of maintaining that many virtual servers to manage the processing of so little data would be cost-prohibitive).

JK2---Vertica has many innovative approaches in R&D from what I can see.

  • Teradata CEO said "lowest cost possible" customer DW requirement. But didn't say if/how they'll match Oracle/Netezza $20K/TB pricing. #TDPUG10:34 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Clearly, Teradata is aware of what they’re up against.

JK2---This is the most important groundbreaking announcement from Teradata this fall, just as Exadata v2 was from Oracle and TwinFin was from Netezza. Big difference among these announcements though: Netezza’s new platform is GA and shipping; Oracle’s is on the verge; Teradata’s is coming in a few months (see next Aweekstweet item).

  • Teradata's new all-SSD DW platform, "Blur" (aka "4555"), available Q1 10, one-ups Oracle Exadata (SAS/SATA) on storage. At what price?#tdpug9:59 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Yes, inquiring analysts want to know. Oracle says Exadata v2 at $20K/TB. Teradata hasn’t indicated what multiple of that they’ll sell the 4555 at.

JK2---But Greenplum has a more mature MapReduce implementation.

JK2—Of course, this is just for POCs. As Teradata proves out its cloud offerings with actual customers, that capacity limit will surely grow.

  • Found Koehler's keynote at #tdpug disappointing. He rushed out actual news at tail-end. Spent too much time on EDW applepie/motherhood.9:35 AM Oct 19th from TweetDeck

JK2---Why is Teradata so shy about making bold announcements? This market is full of companies that have innovative stories being sold by brash, visionary product teams.

JK2---All of these announcements were for products that are either available now, or in GA in the next 3 months or so.

  • MapReduce is all about mining data/info at rest. Need a superset to mine info at rest and in motion. In other words, in-stream CEP mining.2:57 PM Oct 18th from TweetDeck

JK2---See my Teradata conf preso on in-database/inline analytics; my recent Forrester teleconference on same, and my soon-to-publish Forrester doc on same. I call this new paradigm “comprehensive cloud analytics.” Check out IBM’s InfoSphere Streams as key pioneer in in-stream CEP mining.

JK2---Check out Curt’s recent webinar with Aster Data. Good discussion.

  • Microsoft's first live Windows Azure SQL Data Services won't support cloud DW. Not for another 1-2 years they say. They'll be late to market1:50 PM Oct 18th from TweetDeck

JK2---I’m dismayed that Microsoft is totally dropping the ball on this. I’m hopeful for SQL Server “Madison,” but don’t understand what that and Azure SQL Data Services are stovepipe efforts. Clearly, Teradata isn’t stovepiping any of this.

  • Press release headlines, viewed in chronological sequence, tell interesting story: ratio of vendor meaty accomplishments to empty boasts.9:17 PM Oct 17th from TweetDeck

JK2---Each individual press release is a concoction of marketing communications and product management pros. But the sequence of press releases, and the number of fluff releases (e.g., our CEO spoke at this or that forum) shows whether the individual announcements add up to a significant strategic thrust or just scattered efforts without clear corporate-driven business direction.

  • A social network without a core of true friends is just anomie exacerbated via anonymity afforded by excessive connectivity. Not a community8:44 PM Oct 17th from TweetDeck

JK2---Social networks can be a very lonely crowd.

  • When vendor enhances platform more than once a year, don't know whether to laud them for innovation or dis 'em for ditching legacy customers1:08 PM Oct 16th from TweetDeck

JK2---Or dis ‘em, if they’re new, for innovating so desperately that potential customers never get a clear sense of who they are, where they’re going, whether they will last.

  • When vendor says haven't enhanced their platform for several years, don't know whether to laud them for stability or dis 'em for stagnating12:48 PM Oct 16th from TweetDeck

JK2---Or dis’ em, if they’re established, for resting on their laurels long after anybody cares. “We were pioneers 20 years ago in this market.” Yeah, but what have you done for customers lately?

  • Social media users segmenting: those nailed to single community vs. ones toggling btwn several vs. ones who aggregate for single experience12:12 PM Oct 16th from TweetDeck

JK2---No, I haven’t yet tried Google Wave. Sitting on the fence. Perhaps some Tarantino-esque cold-blooded threats from Samuel L. Jackson might be necessary to convince me.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

Aweekstweets October 11-18 2009

Aweekstweets October 11-18 2009

  • Oh, that's right, a Twitter phish hack screwed us royally at mid-day. Almost forgot. Cool how quickly a social network responds, moves on.about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—With Twitter down (for me), I circulated (via Facebook) a (too late for me) link to an article in the trade press warning Twitter users not to reset their passwords. We (me and some other analysts) used e-mail to back-and-forth a status on the hack, and what we could do. I was (physically) sitting in an analyst summit room (in a plush hotel) at Oracle OpenWorld (in downtown San Francisco) with a bunch of other impacted Twitter-using analysts, and we pool notes on the whole thing. And we kept paying attention and asking probing (non-Twitter-related) questions to (physically in front of us) Oracle. We survived, and socialized through the whole thing. We even joked about it all.
  • RT @rwang0 @destinationCRM: "All interfaces are BI-driven. No need to buy a BI add-on #oow09" JK--Whither stand-alone BI for ORCL app shops?about 11 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Embedded BI features in forthcoming Oracle Fusion App suite, per Larry Ellison preso at Oracle OpenWorld. Stand-alone BI will still be a necessity for many Oracle app shops. The BI that’s been embedded in Siebel etc for years is rarely any user’s preferred tool, and I suspect it will be the same for Oracle Fusion apps users. Besides, Oracle Fusion apps won’t necessarily be the whole app story for many users, given that commitments to many Oracle pre-Fusion apps will endure, as will usage of various SAP and other non-Oracle apps. And Oracle certainly won’t slack off trying to sell users on its own stand-alone Oracle BI Enterprise Edition suite.
  • RT @williammcknight: "[ORCL]..$10M challenge..ibm..for app..1/2 as fast as on exadata2"#oow09:JK--Bucks for DW bang: ORCL bets rival fizzlesabout 11 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Gutsy, bold, classic Ellison stunt. Would be even gutsier if Oracle made it a continuing program. In other words, why not give any customer (not just one lucky customer) some specific discount on Sun Oracle Database Machine if they can prove that some deployed instance of the DW appliance of any rival (not just IBM) can perform at least half as well (on handling both mixed-query and data-ingest workloads) as an equivalently configured (as CPUs, cores, blades, memory, disk, I/O bandwidth) Oracle system. But Ellison didn’t break it down to these sorts of meaningful details. Besides, he knows he’d pay through the nose for that. If he knew what I know’s coming along, he’d watch his wallet closely.
  • #OOW09: Ellison going laser-sharp on Netezza as key rival. Netezza much smaller, of course. But Netezza has DW momentum that Oracle covets.about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Ellison and crew have done a good job of building and sustaining their own momentum around the Oracle Database Machine/Exadata product family. I suspect that the reason they announced Exadata v2 a month before this year’s OpenWorld (rather than at the show) was to keep the industry focus on Oracle’s progress in this market, and to shift attention from their frustrating, protracted, regulatory-stymied attempt to acquire Sun. In fact, last month’s Exadata v2 announcement was a pre-announcement: Oracle’s not yet shipping any units of the new machine, and they didn’t give any clear GA dates at the show either, though all indications are it will ship in the coming month. Ellison was hardselling near-futures, not an actual product that customers can take possession of now. BTW, Netezza is actually shipping TwinFin units, and has been since the product was announced a couple of months ago.
  • Ellison focusing on Oracle as provider of complete systems, in 1960s model of IBM's TJ Watson. IBM? Yep, but Larry not channeling Palmisano.about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Funny. Ellison’s pooh-poohing Lou Gerstner’s transformation of IBM into a professional services powerhouse, and Palmisano’s efforts to shift the company toward more of a verticalized, solution-focused vendor, and away from being the Big Blue that was primarily known for hawking Big Boxes. In this analyst’s humble opinion, the new IBM’s services and solutions focus is the key to sustained profitability in a market where the big-box integrated systems of yore (which Exadata machines sorta resemble) will be undercut by lean, low-cost commoditized competitors galore. Larry talks a good talk though.
  • At #OOW09, as at #OOW08, Oracle's biggest advantage is that CEO is laser-focused on this strategy tech, and doing relentless hardsell.about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Don’t underestimate the power of hardselling. Though I found the late TV-shouter Billy Mays hyper-annoying, he was beloved by his clients, who said he had an unparalled ability to move units en masse with his motormouth.
  • No doubt, Larry, that Exadata v2 is fast, scalable, HA and that flash cache is disruptive. But let's see yr "faster than IBM" proof. #OOW09about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—He offered plenty of numbers and assertions. I think that “proof” is too open-shut a conversation-ending term when discussing performance of something as complex as a DW appliance. By the way, in the track session on Oracle Enhanced Hybrid Columnar Compression (a core feature of Exadata v2), the Oracle person on stage said (rapidly, in passing) that this new storage layer, in speeding queries, must of necessity put a performance hit on loads, slowing them down. I forget the exact technical reason (I’m reviewing my notes and their slides), but there you go. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Larry didn’t mention this little, er, inconvenient truth in his preso. And it’s nowhere to be found in any of the marketing collateral.
  • Ellison and customers attest to 10-50x Exadata v1 accel vs. previous Oracle DWs; Jobs @ Apple said 60x. Exadata v2 v. v1: how much faster?about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Clearly, Oracle is most comfortable presenting the advantages of its latest DW platform (Exadata v2 this year, v1 last year) vis-à-vis previous generation of its own products. It even has Larry’s friends vouching for the same. Though clearly Ellison went to town with benchmarking v2 against rival offerings as well, these comparisons are highly, er, problematic, as evidenced by Oracle’s recent run-in with TPCC, under which Oracle had to withdraw published IBM comparisons, which of course put IBM in a sorry light but weren’t audited by an independent third-party benchmarking firm.
  • Oracle's rich saturated red color scheme is pure energy. The Sun logo is calmer blue. Exadata machine a steely light gray. Larry is coffee.about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Highly distinctive blend of primary and monochrome hues in corporate branding, extending to CEO attire and hot now hardware product. Bravo!
  • Here's the downlow from #OOW09, Oracle has circled back to DBMS/DW focus, but apps, middleware, virtualization, and platforms drive the showabout 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Ellison’s detailed discussion of Oracle Fusion Apps was just as important (actually, potentially way more important) as Exadata in future revenue contribution. But far more boring, of necessity. SAP’s conferences revolve around this sort of stuff, which is of keen interest to various vertical-market customers, as it digs deep into the heart of their operational requirements. But few of these industry-specific or function-deep discussions will play in the Wall Street Journal.
  • Oracle did good analyst summit today at #OOW09. Had been prebriefed on most details. But they clearly have value-prop, customers, momentum.about 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—They had a half-dozen Exadata customers doing in-person testimonials. Showed logos of 20 Exadata customers. Hinted at much longer list of customers in production or on the verge (for v1) and strong interest in v2. My independent assessment, taking CTO- and DBA-level inquiries at one of the leading IT-analyst firms, is that Oracle isn’t exaggerating any of this. Exadata’s a hit. It’s the out-of-the-box success that HP wishes Neoview (on the market for 3+ years, in with which 1-year-old Oracle Exadata has approximately equal number of production customers) were.
  • Re this phish attack, I was a Twit, I admit. In my defense, @jpmorgenthal is to blame for leading me down the click-strewn path to perditionabout 13 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Way too much coffee that morning. I was breathlessly clicking every stupid link in sight. Should have shut my f***ing laptop while listening to Oracle.
  • Oracle Exadata customers generally report in the vicinity of 10x acceleration vs. prior Oracle DW. #OOW09about 15 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—This is borne out by the many Forrester customers who are Oracle shops and have evaluated, and in some cases deployed, Exadata (v1 only, so far).
  • George Lumpkin says Oracle's done 100s of Exadata demos, wkshps, POCs, benchmarks around world. Plenty of eval units out there. #OOW09about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—For sure. Every enterprise DW POC these days seems to include Exadata (v1, so far), and usually in a short list of no more than 3 vendors. Netezza even more often. Greenplum well-represented too.
  • George Lumpkin says Oracle has v1 customer wins, mostly in FY Q3 & Q4. Not giving out specific numbers. Showing slide with 20 logos. #OOW09about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Yes. It’s a fairly long sales cycle for Exadata, due to a) the technical eval complexity, b) the price tag, c) the weak economy, and d) soft IT budgets.
  • George Lumpkin discussing the many fundamental improvements in Exadata v2 over v1. #OOW09about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—BTW, George is head of DW product management at Oracle. As I’ve said elsewhere, Exadata v2 has so many fundamental performance-enhancing improvements—including hybrid columnar compression, comprehensive in-database analytics and OLTP, and SSD/flash cache—that it’s even more significant than v1 for Oracle’s longterm differentiation in this arena.
  • Parallelize a query, or paralyze it? Query optimization with mixed workload mgt and dynamic resource governance makes all the difference.about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Parallelize queries across Exadata storage cells in conjunction with parallelizing them across extraordinarily fast flash cache—unbeatable combination. Expect competitors to introduce very similar fundamental improvements in the next 1-2 years.
  • Oracle 11g w/ Exadata as "foundation and infrastructure for applications," per ORCL's George Lumpkin, DW analyst summit. #OOW09.about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Intelligent parallel persistence (storage/cache) layer with comprehensive in-database analytic and transactional pushdown optimization: key to transforming DW into the new analytic app server platform. See my forthcoming Forrester report on this fundamental game-changing industry development. Other DW vendors have similar roadmap to Oracle. Some of them will announce some of these roadmaps, and new platforms, very soon. Stay tuned.
  • Proof is in the pudding, or proof is in the put-on? Slippery world of DW vendor performance claims, and what if anything is "proof." #OOW09about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Stop using that word in this context. Only mathematicians, logicians, and lawyers speak of “proof” in the classic “summary judgment” sense of the term. Everybody else, including computer scientists and engineers, speak of demonstrations. Show me. If someone can show me faster, even better.
  • Per Loaiza, Oracle "Beehive" (email, calendar etc.) on Exadata w/OLTP. Internally, ORCL biggest DBMS. Is Exadata becoming app server? #OOW09about 17 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Very interesting “eat your own dogfood” story from Oracle. See note above about DW becoming analytic app server. As you add OLTP-ish apps to it, DW becomes key component of “transalytic” app server (I just made that one up).
  • RT @bwerther "GP's Polymorphic Data Storage: @CurtMonash http://bit.ly/1ymHMg http://bit.ly/W1zIL: JK--Is lo-footprint DW "ectomorphic"?about 17 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—GP = Greenplum. Polymorphic = similar in key respects to Oracle’s enhanced hybrid columnar compression scheme. Leading-edge DW vendors are gong this hybrid route. Pure-columnar and pure-row-based DW/DBMS vendors: take note. Combine storage/persistence approaches in distributed, role-optimized DW fabric: you’ll get better performance with more flexibility.
  • RT @CurtMonash "No risk in getting paid maintenance by customer ..otherwise get $0 rev from." JK--Yep: clear overlap with open-source model.about 17 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—If a DW vendor demonstrates the promised order-of-magnitude superior performance in the customer’s actual production environment, or in a realistic testbed environment, they should be able to charge a premium upfront on the hardware/software combo. If they don’t demonstrate up to promise, the vendor should sell at deep discount to list, or, extreme case, give to customer “free,” but with minimum customer commitment to premium maintenance contract. In other words, the open-source model syncs up with value-based pricing of DW appliances based on actual realized performance.
  • RT @Intelligentform @rschmelzer "analyst biz relic of..when info was limited in...availability" JK--No: analyst value is actionable contextabout 17 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Nobody has ever turned to analysts for pure information. IT pros have always had plenty of ready sources for info. They’ve always paid a premium for expert people who can put 2 and 2 together, bring in integral calculus and advanced stats, and then use it to assess the tensile strength of whatever software/hardware/network superstructure you want them to help you lash together. That’s actionable context. The customers already knows basic arithmetic, and enough of the higher-order stuff to determine whether the hired analyst/consultant is a true wizard or a wan wannabe.
  • RT @CurtMonash "ParAccel challenge...If they fail challenge, "free" isn't valuable." JK--Agree, but DW vendor bears fair share of risk.about 17 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—DW vendors would think twice about blithely claiming “10x” query performance enhancement if they had to cut their price one 10 percent for every “x” they couldn’t deliver in the field. No extra “x”s from our new DW appliance? Then no charge! “Yikes!” (say the vendor’s shareholders). “Yippee! (for now—see what the competitor offers),” say customers.
  • RT @JeromePineau "ORCL...what will do with MySQL...Larry has no clue" JK--Disagree: Larry has clues crammed in vestpocket, keeps poker faceabout 17 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Has anybody who’s ever observed Mr. Ellison, even casually from a distance, mistaken him for an innocent bystander?
  • Juan Loiaza on Exadata v2, at DBMS/DW analyst summit, #OOW09. Game-changing: full in-db analytic pushdown + flash/cache. Will go all-flash.about 18 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Seriously important: the future all-virtualized, all-cloud, all-memory, all-latency, all-info, all-app DW platform. Stay tuned (to Oracle and many of its visionary competitors). Not a deep future prognostication. A 2009-2010 “coming soon” to a DW near you” story.
  • JK thoughts re "bang4budget" DW appl pricing: $/TB-usable sets "budget" baseline + premium for POC-customer-site vdr-demo 10x+ accel "bang"about 18 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Let’s say the DW industry “budget baseline” settles for the time being at $20K/TB per the core DW appliance stack delivering some baseline query, load, and concurrency performance. If, dear DW appliance vendor, you can demonstrate , in the customer’s environment with their data/loads, an order-of-magnitude superior performance over that baseline, you can justify a higher per-TB price. If you can’t, see note above: extreme case of “same ol’ same ol’” performance means you give your DW appliance to the customer for “free,” but with customer lock-in to a multi-year maintenance and support contract. That’s clear DW “bang for budget.”
  • Oracle can't say anything on what will do with MySQL. This analyst's hunch: midmarket lo-cap lo-cost DW appl on Sun hw: MSFT-killer #OOW09about 18 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Oracle is really and truly mum on this issue. Good for them. Their team was disciplined and circumspect to a person re this issue, at this year’s OpenWorld.
  • RT @nyuhanna: "I'll be presenting at #OOW09 today at Noon on how to develop a security plan..." JK--DBMS security. DW pros tend to overlook.about 18 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Frankly, I’m surprised nobody addresses DW security under the broad heading of “data governance.” I was having this same discussion with Roxana from Oracle.
  • RT @raesmaa: Stress vs productivity during a work day [infographic] http://bit.ly/eICZt: JK--Productivity calms me, inertia unnerves.about 18 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—The post-productivity inertia calms me even more.
  • For Oracle 11g R2 RAC deploys, 8-node are customer "sweet spot," says Mark Townsend, w/ some on 16-node. Larger clusters uncommon. #OOW09about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Mark’s also high up in Oracle’s DW product organization (sorry I can’t recall anybody’s actual job title at this moment). BTW, as Oracle customers seek to scale out to petabytes in cloud environments, they’ll almost certainly expand to 100s and 1000s of parallel nodes in shared-nothing MPP grids. Hey Oracle: consider that a suggestion from this analyst for the inevitable “Exadata v3” (no, dear blog readers, Oracle has not announced, discussed, or even hinted at a v3—yet—awfully premature).
  • Oracle has no clear strategy for Exadata-based analytic appliances. Have componentry (DW, BI, LDMs, etc.) but no solution packaging. #OOW09about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Key weakness of Oracle’s Exadata platform products in a commoditizing DW appliance market.
  • Oracle has no clear strategy for Exadata DW in cloud, hosted by them or partners. Ellison's cloud positioning feels noncommittal. #OOW09about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Another weakness in Oracle’s Exadata product roadmap. But they’re not the only DW vendor keeping their distance from cloud. It’s more of a 2010-2011 topic. Customers aren’t screaming for it. But they are asking me about cloud DWs—and the most appropriate apps/roles for them—through Forrester inquiries. I’m sure Oracle will begin to address when they, and the market, are ready.
  • Listening to Oracle's Mark Townsend speak on DB 11g R2 & Exadata v2 at DBMS/DW analyst summit, #OOW09. Most interesting: flash/SSD storyabout 19 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—The days of the all-solid-state-drive DW appliance are approaching. No, they’ll be pricier and less capacious than all-disk DW appliances for at least the next 3-5 years, but they’ll be wicked fast right out of the starting block!.
  • DW value-based pricing based on upfront proven customer-site query accel would change market: put POC-aggressive vendors at advantage.about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—See discussion above of “bang for budget” pricing. Speaking of POC-aggressive DW appliance vendors: I currently put Oracle, Netezza, and Greenplum in that category.
  • "Exadata v2 Raises Questions re DW Mkt" (http://bit.ly/3OmIig): JK--#Forrester seeing significant customer Exadata eval, growing deployment.about 19 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Every working day I see this. You should see my inquiry schedule (but, no, I won’t/can’t show you)..
  • By using already-dated "Cash4Clunkers" term, ParAccel just feeding on FUD. Should change program name but keep cool trade-in allowance.about 24 hours ago from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Oh, and while ParaAccel’s at it, they should get their appliances into POCs everywhere, so more prospects can kick the tires. Last time I checked, they haven’t been anywhere near as aggressive as a former start-up, Netezza, that’s come a long way in a short time by making customer-site competitive-benchmarking POCs the focus on their sales dog-and-ponies.
  • "Univa Puts Oracle E-Business Suite In Cloud" (http://bit.ly/27RmID): JK--When's Oracle going to put Exadata in cloud?6:53 AM Oct 14th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—As you may or may not be able to tell by now, I’m reasonably confident that Oracle will put Exadata “in the cloud” in the coming 1-2 years, and will begin to put that cloud Exadata into its cloud-based transactional apps inn roughly the same timeframe.
  • "Oracle Execs Detail App Integ Strategy" (http://bit.ly/flka8): JK--If integrated ORCL suites "send you complete car," do cloud apps=zipcar?6:47 AM Oct 14th from TweetDeck
    • JK2---I suspect that as Moore’s Law kicks in on DW size, more of these multi-100-TB and petabyte-plus DWs will live only in public clouds. The data marts you provision in these environments for limited projects (e.g, clickstream, tweetstream, tickstream, eventstream mining for marketing campaigns, customer churn, and the like) and then promptly deprovision at project end? You’ll essentially be “renting” them: zippy zipcars that can sprout titanium wings and supersonic engines for enterprising low earth orbit and surveying Planet Petabyte.
  • Pay bucks for POC-demonstrated DW "bang" not silly. It's value pricing. @laurenk1802432: @JeromePineau @jameskobielus @merv @CurtMonash6:19 AM Oct 14th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—See “bang for budget” discussion above. Value-pricing for demonstrated DW performance. Not “trust us” pricing based on bold public marketing swagger by Oracle or any other DW vendor.
  • RT @JeromePineau @CurtMonash: "ParAccel's faster or free gimmick" JK--Not bad idea: if DW POC can't make good on 10x claim, give it to 'em.12:01 AM Oct 14th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Often times, startups with less to lose and chutzpah to burn innovate in surprising ways: such as new pricing approaches that make great sense for the market as a whole. Sometimes, these same startups don’t fully realize what they hath wrought.
  • Problem w/ ORCL being so big is that individual analysts never get to grill CEO 1:1. Same w/ MSFT, SAP, IBM. IMHO, would behoove 'em. #OOW096:29 PM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—I’m an analyst who has enough chutzpah to at least request being allowed to enter the presence of His or Her Excellency.
  • Open discussion: is Exadata simply Oracle proprietary arch a la old Netezza? Of course, with TwinFin on IBM, Netezza's slightly beyond that5:15 PM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Oracle says they don’t want to be in the commodity hardware business, but how can they avoid it after acquiring Sun? They can avoid it by taking Sun’s hardware entirely proprietary within Oracle-branded Exadata-based solution DW, analytics, transactions, and solution appliances—and by entirely cutting off all of Sun’s many OEM and ISV partners, including several other DW appliance vendors. I doubt that Oracle wishes to strangle that particular golden-egg goose. Besides, Oracle will need the high-volume unit shipments of a commodity-hardware in-house vendor to keep scale economies of procurement, production, and distribution low enough to keep costs of the Exadata hardware low enough to keep it at the $20K/TB threshold—and inexorable cheaper—to stay competitive.
  • What I like most about Oracle EHCC is ability to optimize both fast table scans and fast single-row lookups in single storage layer. #OOW094:35 PM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—In other words, optimized for analytics and transactions, OLAP and OLTP, DW and LOB.
  • Great discussion at #OOW09 on their enhanced hybrid columnar compression (EHCC) in Exadata v2. Huge differentiator!4:26 PM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Their EHCC compression efficiencies are sensational!
  • RT @CurtMonash "M/R paradigm commonly violated...good thing.. it illustrates paradigm's strength" JK--Yep. Inline analytics the big paradigm11:55 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—See my forthcoming Forrester report: “In-Database Analytics: Heart of the Predictive Enterprise.”
  • Vendors talk about "building relationships w/ analysts." Remember that "relationships" are wildcards. We won't necessarily agree with you.9:20 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—But we will spend quality time with you!
  • Vendors talk about "building relationships w/ analysts." Remember that analysts are basically market researchers. First rule: loop us in!9:15 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—E-mail is fine. Nothing fancy necessary.
  • Vendors talk about "building relationships w/ analysts." Sounds way heavier than it is in reality. Basis for any good relationship: say hi!9:13 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—And if we forget your name, even momentarily, please don’t hate us. We’re working hard on connecting names and faces.
  • Catch my presentation on in-database analytics at next week's Teradata Partners conference, National Harbor MD, on the mighty Potomac!2:00 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—And meet Egidia.
  • Whatever became of Oracle Optimized Warehouses in their DW product portfolio? Superseded by the Exadata product in strategic importance.1:35 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—They never mentioned the Oracle Optimized Warehouses, as products or as partnerships, at OpenWorld. Not even once.
  • RT @marksmithvr: "Oracle CEP....not integrated into Oracle BI discussion yet" JK--Missing from both Oracle BI & Oracle DW (Exadata) strategy12:39 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—I bet they’ll ramp up the CEP story, deepening the acquired BEA technologies, in 2010. Why? IBM, Microsoft, and SAP focusing on it.
  • Modern computing began in WWII calculating ballistic trajectories. Now we do same on grander scale: predictive analytics: hit moving targets12:09 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—I think I aweekstweeted about this thought before. I forget. But, oh well, here it is again (or the first time, as far as I know).
  • Social network analysis: more & more we'll use predictive models to surface emergent patterns of future civilization: archaeology in reverse12:06 AM Oct 13th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Important eval criteria for differentiating in today’s predictive analytics and data mining market.
  • @merv noted that #OOW09 put DBMS/DW in (my word) side (i.e., west) Moscone, and app/middleware in (mine again) main Moscones. Significance?11:59 PM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Don’t read too much into it. Moscone West was jampacked too.
  • HP SAP partnership on DW. Neoview needs vertical solution packaging. They recognize that. Will work toward that goal. Details TBD.5:27 PM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Same recommendation applies to Oracle. Same TBD applies.
  • HP's Livermore up to speak. Curious what she'll say, or not say, about the Exadata v2 machine, and whither the HP Oracle partnership. #OOW0911:35 AM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—She said nothing. What could she say?
  • RT @merv: " just be list of different apps and industries, or is there some thematic unity? no setup at beginning to tie it together #oow09"11:32 AM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Oracle OpenWorld 2009 got off to a disappointing start, but built up to a reasonably satisfying climax with Ellison’s Exadata v2 hardsell and “$10 million challenge.” Gov. Schwarzenegger had a good, substantive speech as well. But the chief take-away—Oracle rocks and rolls over the competition with Exadata v2—was way too swagger-intensive to function as a unifying theme, considering that it had little direct relevance to the apps and middleware products that occupied more than two-third of Moscone Center this time around. On the whole, there was something lacking from the OpenWorld experience this year. Oracle was gracious and informative, though, at least with the analysts in attendance.
  • I'd like to see some discussion of Oracle Data Miner as an enabler for social CRM: demand planning, etc. #OOW09.11:31 AM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—One big disappointment for me, considering that I’m Forrester’s lead analyst in predictive analytics and data mining, and also considering how important this is for the future evolution of in-database analytics on Exadata platforms.
  • On the DW/DBMS side, Oracle announced DB 11g R2 and Exadata v2 a few weeks ago. This year's #OOW09 is mostly just educating on all that.11:18 AM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Tactically, I think Oracle erred by not waiting till OpenWorld to announce Exadata v2. For starters, they’re still not shipping it yet, which can only breed frustsration and disappointment. Also, it could have been their banner announcement to add the necessary dramatic oomph to this, their big annual show. (no, I’m not convinced that the “$10 million challenge did the trick; see above). Furthermore, Oracle gave DW competitors (most significantly Teradata and IBM, whose respective conferences I’ll be attending in the next 2 weeks) a lead time to digest the Exadata v2 announcement and tailor their counter-messages.
  • Disappointed there are no splashy announcements from mainstage at #oow09. Ellison spoke last night. Judge for yourself: http://bit.ly/YwVhD11:16 AM Oct 12th from TweetDeck
    • JK2—Glad I was able to have a semblance of a Sunday at home (morning) and a relatively leisurely flight to SF, with a good night’s sleep. Reading about it the following day was more than sufficient.
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