“In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade's no easier to make than an oak.” - James Russell Lowell, American Poet & Diplomat (1819-1891)

Welcome to the inaugural issue of “Thoughts from Inside the Box” – Netezza’s first officially endorsed blog.

What’s this blog about?

Well, we hope you’ll be comfortable here and feel free to engage in lively commentary on the thoughts and ideas we and others propose here.  We know that Technorati is currently tracking about 53 million blogs and according to a recent NPR story, there are about 2 new blogs and 18 postings created every second of every day (Search Site Tracks Blogosphere's Rapid Expansion).  To get your repeated attention, we know that what we say in this space has to be relevant, meaningful, interesting and timely – TO YOU.  We’ll do our best to make it so – but your interactions and comments can be instrumental as well.

Our goal is to take informal looks at industry issues and trends in Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, as well as providing information about Netezza and its product offerings in a more casual setting than is found in Netezza’s primary home page and marketing messaging.  We also plan to mix the serious industry and “vision thing” discussions in with more casual, sometimes far-afield, and even irreverent, ideas of the day in the hopes of jostling your thoughts and encouraging discussion.

Netezza has had some major accomplishments since its founding in late-2000.  Having moved from early phase start-up, and arguably to creating the industry category of Data Warehouse Appliances, with over 75 customers and growing, Netezza has earned a fair-share of the data warehouse systems market (Independent analyst firm recognizes Netezza as the Data Warehouse Appliance market leader).  And we have even higher aspirations for the future.  We thought it was time for us to create a more reachable venue for people interested in Netezza to find out more about our thoughts.

Who’s writing this blog?

Primarily I plan on being the principal author of this blog: Phil Francisco – the Product Marketing Director here at Netezza.  But we also look forward to frequent contributing posts from several members of the broader Netezza community including VP of Marketing, Ellen Rubin, Netezza’s SVP of Development, Bill Blake and other executives – along with occasional postings from customers, partners and other industry thought-leaders.

So come on in and make yourself at home – often!

There’s much more to come, beginning with some of our thoughts on just what a Data Warehouse Appliance (DWA) is and where we think the market for DWAs is headed next.