Welcome to Tomorrow

Netezza and Data Analytics as a Gateway to the Intelligent Economy

jbaum — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:49:27 GMT

The "Intelligent Economy" is much more than a trendy buzz phrase or the name of a business school seminar.

It's the new reality for enterprises today.

The Intelligent Economy is about fundamentally changing the way we view our businesses and our customers, about inviting change when we decide change is needed – but also about recognizing what we do that makes sense and valuing it accordingly.

A June, 2010 IDC Vendor Spotlight noted that the “demand to respond faster and with greater insight to ongoing internal and external events based on facts is increasing,” and that “data management and analytics challenges of the intelligent economy are likely to overwhelm organizations unprepared for the emerging changes.” (You can download the PDF of the IDC report here.)

Gut checks and intuition are still valuable when it comes to making management decisions – but actionable, on-demand information from analytics is shaping up to be a key differentiator when it comes to competing these days.

ENTERPRISES MAKE UP THE INTELLIGENT ECONOMY

The Intelligent Economy is made up of "Intelligent Enterprises" – companies and organizations that not only recognize the new reality – but are thriving because of it.

For these enterprises, data isn't viewed as a problem that must be managed and contained. For them, data is a gift that exposes hidden truths about their futures.

We know at Netezza – based on the real-life experiences of our customers – that data is a valuable, sustainable resource that can change the way you view your customers and run your business in fundamental ways - forever.

The ideas that stem from the analytics solutions we enable for our customers are much more than abstract formulas on a virtual chalkboard. They result in real, positive, lasting change. Our technology at Netezza becomes a source of inspiration, a catalyst to a new way of thinking about the way people interact with the world and with each other.

BUSINESS ANALYTICS COME OF AGE

The energy and enthusiasm we experienced at 2010 Enzee Universe this June on Boston's waterfront proved to me that we have reached a tipping point when it comes to accepting data analytics on a much deeper, broader level.

As I said in my keynote address, Netezza embraces a set of core principles that are simply hard for others to reproduce:

Your success as our customer is our top objective
We embrace the fact that we are part of an ecosystem of partners and technologies that provide you with a complete solution
Simplicity is the key to making analytics more accessible and a fundamental driver behind everything we do
We want to be a company that is easy to do business with and one that is viewed as a partner, not just a vendor
We value our customers’ input and integrate it into our thinking every day

Many of our customers are solving problems they could previously only DREAM of with a level of agility and simplicity that has allowed them to apply their energy to the business opportunity, freeing them from the complexities of the platform to focus on what really matters, the business solution.

This, in a nutshell, is what is enabling the Intelligent Economy to emerge: the enormous amounts of human time and energy previously required to simply process information can now go toward inspiration, learning, and improving.

Over the next few blog posts, I will be writing about the real-life experiences of some of the Intelligent Enterprises that make up this emerging Intelligent Economy – organizations that are using high-performance data analytics to make critical time-sensitive decisions, predict future events, and change they way they do business for the better, forever. Stay tuned.

Boston Globe Names Netezza Top 100 Massachusetts Company!

jbaum — Thu, 20 May 2010 18:17:32 GMT

It’s a great honor after just two full years as a public company to be recognized in the Boston Globe Top 100 list. Making the list after a most difficult economic downturn is not only something that all of us at Netezza are proud of but it’s a testament to the tremendous support we receive from our customers, our partners, our investors, and our employees.

To be highlighted amongst the ranks of some of Massachusetts largest, most successful, and most important companies, including EMC, Genzyme and our customer TJX, is truly special. Given all the great technology companies in Massachusetts, to be chosen as one of only 19 companies categorized as “technology” by the Globe is exciting.

We are building Netezza on a strong philosophy of being a business partner that is “easy to do business with”, that simplifies the complexity of IT infrastructure, and that helps our customers gain value and insight from the data assets on which they run their businesses. Our core values permeate everything we do and our customers are continually complementing us on our approach to the business. Of course, we could not do all this without a remarkably talented group of employees and our experience has been that Massachusetts continues to produce many of the best and brightest.

Thank you, Boston Globe for this recognition. We look forward to our continued journey building a great east coast technology company, a company that Massachusetts can be proud of.

Smarter Planet or Smarter Computers?

jbaum — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:15:32 GMT

There’s so much happening in the world of analytics, business intelligence, and data management that, as the CEO of one of the more exciting companies in this space, I find it impossible not to comment. You can expect to hear from me on a regular basis as I share my personal views on this rapidly changing market and the technologies and business solutions that are driving it.

The world of data, where it comes from, what we do with it, how we manage it, and how we extract value from it is undergoing a fundamental transformation. You can see evidence of this everywhere you look. One particularly fascinating example is the “battle of the titans” between Oracle and IBM as each aggressively positions itself for what it believes to be a massive growth opportunity. If you are anywhere near technology on this planet, you have no doubt seen Oracle’s aggressive advertising campaigns. One of their recent jabs at IBM’s products suggests that while IBM are off building smarter planets, Oracle are busy building smarter computers.

It’s hard to argue with the credibility and the ability to change an industry of either of these giants. IBM have invested literally billions of dollars in developing the Smarter Planet campaign and developing and acquiring the technologies to back it up. They have deployed over $10B of IBM capital to acquire over 35 companies over the past 2 1/2 years to make the capabilities behind Smarter Planet a reality. Oracle have also continued to build their business via acquisition and are telling the world about their “integrated hardware software” approach to building their solutions. While both companies have serious technology in hardware and software, it is interesting that IBM seem to focus their marketing energy on the social and business value of the solutions they can provide and Oracle are focused on the technology of moving application capability “into the silicon”. One thing is clear, this battle for the business of gaining more value from an increasing pool of data assets is just getting started. Just last week, another giant entered the fray. SAP announced its plans to acquire database and mobile solutions vendor Sybase for nearly $6 billion, adding Sybase’s capability to their growing analytics portfolio.

To me, the most important element of this transformation and the companies that participate in it is the way in which we provide value from the solutions we create. As a result of tremendous innovation, low cost availability of massive compute power, and the low cost of storage and bandwidth, we can create solutions that were previously inconceivable. Solutions that help businesses make decisions based on what will happen in the future, not just based on what happened in the past. It is my belief that the businesses that are most committed to effectively using data assets and the tools to extract insight from them will either become or remain the leaders in their industries. Those that do not will find themselves lost in a haze of non-competitiveness.

Smarter planets or smarter computers? Who cares. This isn’t politics or religion. Everyone agrees this sea change will happen. This industry is energized to innovate and create solutions that have never before been possible and corporations are finding extraordinary value from this new wave of analytics. All this attention on analytics is great for Netezza. As the giants add more capability to their systems, they will become complex, burdensome, and a drain on the very mission they are intended to perform. But not from Netezza. We focus our efforts on building the infrastructure to support the new world of data and analytics. Infrastructure that is high-performance and easy to deploy and use, allowing our customers to focus their attention on what really matters, running their businesses.

This Past Year and the One Ahead of Us

jbaum — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:11:33 GMT

Our annual reports were mailed out last week. Writing the letter for the report gave me a good opportunity to reflect on this past year and the one ahead of us.

Fiscal year 2010 was a defining moment for Netezza. Against a challenging economic backdrop, we successfully launched the Netezza® TwinFin™ appliance – our most significant product line introduction to date. We dramatically extended our price/performance and simplicity advantage, reminding the industry of the impact we’ve had in our brief history. We developed significant new distribution channels, including NEC in the fast-growing Asian markets, and we held our largest user conference ever. Unlike many companies in our space, we continued to invest in our products and our people to strongly position Netezza for the anticipated economic recovery. We ended the fiscal year better positioned than ever and while we remain cautious about the economy, we can’t help but be excited by the opportunities that lie ahead.

Our transition away from our proprietary hardware platform to the TwinFin platform – a daunting prospect for any appliance vendor – occurred seamlessly and with no negative disruption to our business. Today, there are many deployments of the TwinFin system being used by our customers for production purposes in each of our vertical and geographic markets, and we are seeing an encouragingly strong demand for this newest version of our data warehouse appliance. Our new platform allows us to quickly come to market with new products that broaden our market reach – a fact proven by the launch of our Skimmer™ platform, hot on the heels of the TwinFin appliance introduction. More recently, we announced the TwinFin i-Class™ appliance – a revolutionary step in data warehousing that supports BI and analytics in a single platform and helps organizations reduce costs, simplify analytics and make better decisions.

Undaunted by the recession, we took our annual user conference (Enzee Universe) on the road. Over 1,500 people – the vast majority of whom are either customers or prospects, and three times the number attending our previous user conference – saw us demonstrate the TwinFin system and outline our new N-Sight vision. N-Sight explains how we will broaden our product portfolio, extend analytics, embrace business applications and do so through a high-performance, cost-effective, easy to manage and unified enterprise-wide platform.

Fiscal year 2010 produced major advancements in our channel operations, which we believe will show results in coming fiscal periods. An agreement with NEC puts Netezza’s streaming architecture and analytical database software inside NEC hardware, giving us a dramatic increase in our coverage in North Asia and a significant foothold in the China market. We also delivered a Retail Analytic Appliance™ that combines the TwinFin appliance and a merchandising optimization solution, extending our value proposition beyond IT and into the retail business buyers.

As I look forward to fiscal year 2011, I cannot help but be excited by the opportunity that is unfolding before us. A significant technological transformation is taking place that is enabled by high-performance analytics. Data-driven intelligent enterprises are becoming increasingly interconnected with their customers through local data collection devices, such as smart meters. Consumers are revealing buying intentions in digital conversations on the social web and are in turn interconnected through digital devices. New business models – such as remote patient monitoring – are being built on top of these technology evolutions. A new “intelligent economy” is emerging. The organizations that rise to the top of this new food chain will be those that can farm the wealth of data being generated; can extrapolate profitable actions from this analysis; and can do so in a time frame that leapfrogs their competition. We uniquely provide the underpinnings of technology that will enable this massive shift to create game-changing value for our industry, customers and partners.