Andy Hayler on IT-Analysis.com

Onwards and Upwards

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Vertica 4.0 is a significant new release of its data warehouse technology. Vertica continues to make strong commercial progress, validating the columnar approach for analytics by signing up plenty of paying customers. [Read More...]

Aster Blossoms

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Version 4.5 of Aster Data's data warehouse appliance has just been released. It has specialized in near real-time analysis of large data sets, and has some highly credible customers in this challenging niche. [Read More...]

Enterprise Business Modelling Revisited

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Previous enterprise business modelling approaches have floundered, partly due to technical tools disconnected from core applications. Collibra's natural language approach with web services support hopes to succeed where others have failed. [Read More...]

Appliances Are Getting Cheaper

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0100

Calpont has emerged from a troubled past with new investors, staff, and a data warehouse appliance that appears to be very cheap indeed. This is still a version 1 product, with several missing features, but the price point is attractive. [Read More...]

Keeping An Open Mind

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Today Talend announce general availability of Talend MDM, an open source MDM hub based on the acquired Xtentis technology. Open source MDM will provide pricing pressure to the market, and allow customers to dip their toe into MDM waters. [Read More...]

Oracle sees a silver lining in product data

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:00:00 +0100

Oracle buys Silver Creek, ensuring that it has a product data quality solution to complement its PIM hub and other supply chain offerings. There are few product data quality companies, so this makes those others more appealing targets. [Read More...]

Bolt from the blue

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:00:00 +0100

IBM's latest MDM release continues the gradual convergence between its two MDM product lines, and further extends the capability of handling multiple data domains. It is still some way to its goal, but at least it is on the right path. [Read More...]

Data governance for the masses

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:00:00 +0100

The new release of Kalido (8.5) has significant enhancements in the area of data governance. Data governance needs to be propagated throughout an organisation, not just dealt with by designated data stewards, and this will help. [Read More...]

Spend, Spend Spend

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Rosslyn Analytics has made good commercial progress by focusing exclusively on spend management, notching up some big name clients with proper return-on-investment cases. [Read More...]

Opening Up MDM

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0100

Talend brings out the first open source master data management product, based on technology bought from Amalto. This may bring price pressure to a hitherto proprietary market, while other data integration vendors will likely need to respond [Read More...]

The Appliance of Science

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0100

Vertica's new version 3.5 has a much improved storage management system amongst other new features. What is just as interesting is the commercial progress that Vertica is making in terms of new customers. [Read More...]

Would you like chips with that?

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Ingres announced a project with Intel to develop an appliance aimed at fast query processing, specifically to take advantage of the Intel chipset. Essentially it is a columnar database appliance tuned for Intel chips. [Read More...]

A Bulldog Puppy Emerges

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:05:00 +0100

The plans for Microsoft's entry to the master data management (MDM) market are slowly emerging from the shadows. Based on their Stratature acquisition, but significantly overhauled, the product will appear in beta around the end of 2009. [Read More...]

The Trickle-up effect

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:05:00 +0100

Recently MDM platform vendors have been moving down the functionality stack by adding data quality functionality, but Global IDS has gone the other way, starting with data quality functionality and now adding an MDM repository. [Read More...]

Supplier Master Data - An Emerging Market?

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Most master data management solutions have their roots in either product or customer data, but there are vendors who specialise in supplier data. Companies like CVM Solutions sell data, not just software, and are carving out a niche. [Read More...]

An open and shut case

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Ingres moved to an open-source model in 2005. It is showing strong revenue growth and, unlike some other open-source offerings, cannot be accused of being unproven. Migration effort may be significant, but makes sense in certain cases. [Read More...]

An Important Day for Product Data Quality

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Oracle will OEM the Silver Creek DataLens technology. This is significant because it validates the product data quality area as a separate, valid space (Oracle already OEM's other DQ technology that deals with addresses). [Read More...]

Party Animal Enters the Data Quality Market

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0100

DataQualityFirst is a data quality start-up which puts a friendly front end on to the IBM Quality Stage product set. The company has launched itself with an eye-catching piece of PR, an analysis of the Bernie Madoff client list. [Read More...]

Turbo charging data quality

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Pervasive software have just released a parallel engine which can apply data quality algorithms to very large data volumes. Given the increasing demands being placed on data quality and MDM applications, this has the potential to do well. [Read More...]

Partnership of sequels

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:05:00 +0100

Netezza and Kalido have announced a partnership. Both have a lot to gain from this if they actually get their respective sales organisations to understand the (very real) mutual benefits properly. [Read More...]

When navigating the uncharted waters of MDM, it helps to have a map

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Few consultancy companies have done multiple MDM projects, so for repeatable best pratice you need to trust the project methodology. Platon has developed an unusually deep MDM methodology which help it win business against the big boys. [Read More...]

It's all about location...

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Pitney Bowes are combining their Mapinfo and Group 1 divisions, linking their data quality and geographic information offerings. The new software release adds support for data governance and a number of other goodies. [Read More...]

Points of View

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0100

IBM this week releases Business Viewpoint, a tool from Cognos which aims at the analytic MDM market. This adds to its existing two MDM product lines, but has some good hierarchy management and workflow features. [Read More...]

United we stand

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:00:00 +0100

SAS is bringing together its data quality and MDM products. It is also broadening the solution with its ETL technology, making an interesting solution offering. [Read More...]

SAP MDM New Release

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:00:00 +0100

The new release of SAP MDM, version 7.1, is a significant one. In particular it addresses some serious architectural issues which hold back the current offering. [Read More...]

Data quality niches

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:00:00 +0100

The data quality market, crowded as it is, continues to produce new vendors who can thrive in niches. Irion is an Italian company that specialises in data quality for banks, with functionality specific to the capital markets. [Read More...]

Something for the hard core analyst

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:00:00 +0100

There are several categories of users of business intelligence software, often mistakenly lumped together. Analysts are an important minority group whose needs are sometimes neglected. A new product, Lyza, hopes to exploit this niche. [Read More...]

"It was this big" - measuring MDM performance

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Master Data Management (MDM) lacks proper benchmarks for system performance, making it hard for prospects to compare vendors. In the absence of this, audited laboratory tests, such as ones doen recently for Stibo Catalog, are a start. [Read More...]

The Elusive Data Quality Ideal

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Data quality vendors pay too much attention to algorithms and too little to data governance, the business processes that lie behind data quality. Systems integrators such as Utopia are providing data governance add-ons to fill the gap. [Read More...]

SQL Server can soon be played in allegro tempo

Andy Hayler, The Information Difference — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:00:00 +0100

The purchase of DATAllegro by Microsoft allows it to shed the low scalability lavel that has been attached to SQL Server. Morevoer, the DATAllegro's grid technology gives enterprises a future path to SQL Server data mart consolidation. [Read More...]