Thinking Inside the Box

 5 Posts tagged with the netezza tag
Phil Francisco

“The best vision is insight.” -- Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990), publisher of Forbes magazine, New Jersey state senator and adventure hobbyist.

A couple of big announcements from our friends at SAS today. For the industry at large, SAS’ commitment to in-database analytic processing is a confirmation of trends that we have been discussing for over two years: more and more, the “data warehouse” is becoming the hub of all analytics processing for the enterprise. While that announcement covers multiple database vendors, today’s other announcement from Cary, NC on the availability of the “SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza” means that we and SAS are immediately putting this recommitted strategy into action.

Of primary importance to Netezza’s customers is the fact that with SAS’ intensification of In-Database functionality, SAS and Netezza will continue working together to deliver ever more advanced analytic capabilities inside the Netezza appliance. And the first step on that path is an excellent one: the availability SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza means that Netezza’s customers are able to execute SAS scoring models directly within the Netezza appliance and in-line with other SQL query processing on their data. The SAS Scoring Accelerator for Netezza will be Generally Available in early 2010, and Netezza and SAS are already working with a small number of early adopter customers such as Catalina Marketing, as they begin to benefit from this powerful functionality.

These scoring models are used in virtually every vertical market in which Netezza sells our products for fraud detection, credit and risk analysis and market segmentation. By embedding them in the Netezza appliance, customers will get the same 10-100X market-leading performance on scoring their data as they do on query processing. By running in-database customers can score all their data and not be reliant on only using samples or aggregates for expediency. And the in-database scoring also means that the inherent delays, or latency, in getting at the data to score it has been eliminated. The best way to deal with the large amounts of data being loaded in today’s data warehouse systems is not move it unless necessary, so Netezza’s AMPP architecture and method of moving the data processing as close as possible to where data is stored delivers huge performance gains for in-database analytics.

 

n-sight atomic small 2.png

n-sight logo small.pngThe on-going partnering work with SAS, and specifically the Scoring Accelerator, are part of the conversation with customers, partners and the market in general that Netezza began back with our Enzee Universe world tour in September regarding our vision for the industry and for Netezza. It’s known as “Netezza Insight” and CEO Jim Baum used his keynote addresses in seven cities around the world to begin the dialogue of taking Netezza and the concept of data warehousing “deeper”, “higher”, “wider” in a “unified” enterprise-wide platform approach together with other partners in the community. In smaller settings with customers, partners and analysts since then, we’ve continued that dialogue since the Enzee Universe and generated real excitement as they come to understand the full breadth of what Netezza is enabling in the market.


In coming days, we’ll be writing more about Netezza Insight and how it is manifest in product platforms, features and applications. But for today, let’s just say that SAS and Netezza customers are already able to do more, faster, with our combined products than ever before and that this is just a step toward even more powerful capabilities.

As Rick (Humphrey Bogart) said in the closing scenes of Casablanca, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

 

 

 

[UPDATE: Rather than just reading what I have to say, you can watch SAS Executive Vice President and CTO Keith Collins describe his take on the value of in-database processing and the Scoring Accelerator for Netezza in the following video from the Enzee Universe 2009 show in Boston.]

 



0 Comments Permalink Tags: sas, advanced_analytics, netezza_insight, analytics, risk, extreme, netezza, scoring_accelerator, in-database, onstream, n-sight, catalina, catalina_marketing, bi, scoring, crm, fraud, segmentation
Phil Francisco

 


"You stay classy, San Diego." -- Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) in "Anchorman" (2004)Will Ferrell Anchorman.gif


This morning a few others from the Netezza Marketing and Product Management teams and I are ensconced by the Marina in sunny San Diego, CA for the TDWI World Conference and for an news announcement or two. And who better to bring us "Breaking News!" than the Number 1 newsman in all of San Diego, Ron Burgundy. [For those of you who might have been "hoping for more" from Ron in a quote about San Diego, you can check out the IMDB database for some great ones, including Ron's own historical (and hysterical) etymology for the city's name.]


BANNER_TwinFin_3.gif

 

Though it’s not exactly a state-secret at this point, today we’re launching the 4th generation of Netezza data warehouse and analytic appliances and the first of four initial product lines in it: TwinFin™.

 

TwinFin logo name.jpg

Some of the core characteristics of the TwinFin and the overall platform are:

  • Resetting Netezza’s price-performance leadership position in the market and extending Netezza’s performance lead;
  • Disrupting the competitive data warehouse market among the incumbents, just as we did with our initial systems in 2003/’04;
  • Moving to a commercially-available, blade-based server and storage platform; and
  • Opening Netezza’s aperture on the broader market with a multi-product platform design to match customers’ data warehouse and analytics needs across their enterprise


After the market disruption Netezza caused with the introduction of the NPS® in 2003 and since, we have seen the entry of dozens of new startups in our wake and virtually every major incumbent data warehouse vendor has retooled its portfolio to include a “response” to the Data Warehouse Appliance (DWA) in a suddenly reenergized market. Several of them, to their credit, have advanced their value propositions and improved their competitive position.


TwinFin Board Image.gifNow it is Netezza’s time once again. With the introduction of TwinFin and the other members of the new family of products, Netezza is once again changing the game; widening the applicability of our systems to more types of customers, applications and partners in the market.

As stated in my response to Curt Monash, my response to Curt Monash last week, we think of this 4th generation of the Netezza appliance as using “the same architecture with a new physical implementation”. Starting with TwinFin, we moved to a commodity blade-server based system framework, but one that still uses Netezza’s “secret sauce” to deliver as much as a 5X increase in performance over the previous generation of Netezza systems, namely:

· our balanced design and streaming architecture;

· the use of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology as a query processing “turbocharger”; and

· our advanced MPP management and optimization software.

 

And there are more innovations and performance gains on the way! TwinFin, quite simply, will serve as a platform for expanding Netezza’s performance and price-performance advantage in the industry and as the basis for advancing the state-of-the-art for in-database, analytically intensive data processing; all without sacrificing any of the appliance simplicity with which our company is synonymous.

As a couple of us said last week, Netezza has served as “the benchmark” for high-performance DWA pricing in the industry and we are now leading “the market in pivoting to a new competitive price-performance level”. With these new systems, we have embraced a trend that has been happening around the industry – the movement of marginal cost of a bit of disk storage toward $0 – with system-sizing, pricing and even system numbering focused on the performance delivered by a given platform.

 

We think the net effect of the new, simplified pricing structure for TwinFin and the other members of the Netezza product family will create a major disruption in the market. With starting (US-based) prices that equate to under $20,000 per terabyte, TwinFin’s list price is a fraction of other competitors’ performance-system pricing (after they’re all done playing price-obfuscation games around mirror, swap and index storage).

 

TwinFin and the other new Netezza data and analytic appliance products give us the opportunity to continue to lead the market and provide our customers with the best value and performance possible for all of their data warehouse and analytic processing needs. Netezza TwinFin - because two fins are faster than one.

2 Comments Permalink Tags: netezza, tdwi, leader, twinfin, price-performance, monash, oracle, teradata, scalability
Phil Francisco

 

"Don't be afraid to try the greatest sport around

(catch a wave, catch a wave)
Everybody tries it once
Those who don't just have to put it down
You paddle out turn around and raise
And baby that's all there is to the coastline craze
You gotta catch a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world"
 – from "Catch a Wave" by The Beach Boys (1963)

Surf's up! Summer seems to finally have arrived in the Boston area and a number of vendors in the data warehousing and analytics space are hoping to catch a wave riding on a flurry of industry announcements. A few trends continue to build in the news:

 

  1. Data sizes continue to grow alongside the pressure to increase performance & shrink data latencies;
  2. Workload complexity and user counts continue to grow;
  3. More and more, customers are seeing the value of running advanced analytical processing directly in their primary data repository (see item #1 for reasons why); and
  4. Industry prices for data warehousing and analytics have begun another shift downward.


Today I'd like to address this last point. According to more than one industry analyst, over the last several years, Netezza has served as "the benchmark" for DWA pricing in the industry. Several of our competitors have sought to match and/or undercut Netezza pricing in the market. Some of the incumbent players have tried to, with very limited success, hinge their pricing off Netezza prices, match the performance of the Netezza Performance Server® system, or inoculate their pricey "flagship" products by adding less-expensive, feature-deficient products to their portfolio. But Netezza has continued to succeed in the marketplace, becoming a profitable, publicly-traded company with nearly 300 customers and 400 employees worldwide and one that is listed among the "Leaders" in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

 

When we disrupted the data warehousing market with our first generation product in 2003 and 2004, Netezza was one of very few startups in an otherwise moribund industry. Now, with established "street cred" and hundreds of loyal customers, we intend to once again upset our competitors and lead the market in pivoting to a new competitive price-performance level. We're about to launch the fourth generation platform of our data warehouse and analytic appliances, which will advance Netezza's performance leadership and once again establish a new price-performance benchmark.

 

Admittedly, we won't be the first vendor offering high-performance data warehouse systems to move to a lower pricing plateau. That task is usually done by early-stage start-ups looking to find a way to differentiate themselves. True to form, Dataupia probably can claim establishing a lower price point first and recently another multiyear "start-up" has also started lower. But those are offerings from very modestly-sized startups with no established market "track record". Netezza will be the first company with proven product maturity, customer base and financial viability to do so.

 

Just how and what are we doing to cause this disruption? Well, let's just say things around the "briefing table" have been quite hectic, and that I and others will have more news about that to follow shortly.

 

[As you might imagine, it's been getting more and more difficult to keep things under wraps – in recent weeks we've even had to fight people off from getting early "sneak peeks". ]

 

Until then hey, it's summertime! So here's what I'd recommend –

 

"So take a lesson from a top-notch surfer boy

(catch a wave, catch a wave)
Get yourself a big board
But don't you treat it like a toy
Just get away from the shady turf
And baby go catch some rays on the sunny surf
And when you catch a wave you'll be sittin' on top of the world


Catch a wave and you'll be sittin' on top of the world"

 

 

Twin Fin: A short board (usually 5'8" - 6'8") with a wide tail for maneuverability and a fin near each rail for stability in radical turns.

 

Purpose: A wider tail area provides more planing area and lift, which creates more speed by efficiently utilizing wave energy. Milking speed and energy from smart surf with extremely sensitive and responsive turning ability are this design's strong points

0 Comments Permalink Tags: benchmark, netezza, leader, gartner, magic_quadrant, bi, data_warehouse, analytics, business_intelligence, data_liberators, price, price-performance, monash, pivot, enzee, enzee_universe, surf
Phil Francisco

 

We had quite a surprise the other day when it came to our attention that Netezza and the NPS data warehouse appliance are now the subjects of a new book: Netezza Underground: The unauthorized tales of derring-do and adventures in resilient data warehousing solutions, by David Birmingham (ISBN: 1-4392-0743-7 and now available in paperback version for $31.54 at Amazon.com).

 

 

This is not the first instance of the NPS system being the subject of a book sold by Amazon (e.g., SAS/ACCESS(R) 9.1.3 Supplement for Netezza), but this particular publication certainly brought feelings of both fun and reaching into the mainstream with it, starting right from it's very clever cover art (above) to David's clever turns of phrase and real-life examples.

 

 

As the title suggests, it was not written or coordinated with any Netezza authorization. So of course we bought a copy and read/skimmed through it as quickly as we could. I will say this, David's self-publication skills are great - he keeps what could easily have been a boring, heavy technical tome both engaging and fun to read while still imparting lots of great information about the NPS system, its performance and its ease of operation. And the book's publication is incredibly current - with references to Netezza Developer Network and "BI Appliance" announcements made only as recently as the Enzee Universe user conference in September.

 

 

While I certainly could quibble with a point made here or there about the system, in general I thought it was an excellent book and even put up the following recommendation for it on the Amazon site:

 

I commend David Birmingham on a book that is at once as lightly entertaining and interesting to read as it is chock full of details about just the kind of performance and operational simplicity that is possible with the Netezza Performance Server (NPS) system. Straightaway from the opening pages, Birmingham's effusive, engaging style and excitement about Netezza's system is apparent, "It inhales, crunches and publishes Libraries-of-Congress-at-a-time - and fast."

He also captures the essence of the NPS appliance in an ultra-succinct two-sentence paragraph explaining just why his "Administration Stuff" chapter is so short, "It's an appliance. Put it in the corner and let it work." I couldn't have said it better myself!

This book is comprehensive and current - even reflecting some of the more recent announcements from Netezza regarding OnStream programmability, the Netezza Developer Network and analytic appliances.

As the guy who is responsible for projecting the Netezza products and our technology direction forward, I want to recommend David Birmingham's book to current and prospective customers and partners alike, or as David himself says on the book's Dedication page, "to Enzees everywhere".

--Phil Francisco, VP Product Management & Marketing, Netezza Corporation

So "to Enzees everywhere", have a read of David's book and welcome to the "Netezza Underground".

2 Comments Permalink Tags: netezza, nps, enzee, birmingham, david_birmingham, sql, bi, business_intelligence, data_warehouse, etl
Phil Francisco

It was an odd email exchange. Only 30-minutes earlier, at approximately 3:04pm US-PDT, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, head of one of the most powerful database technology companies on Earth, had publicly launched Oracle's entrée into the Data Warehouse Appliance marketplace: "the HP Oracle Database Machine and the Oracle Exadata Data Storage Server" - while simultaneously "sporting a curiously Romanesque hair style".

 

 

Larry Ellison & Julius Caesar - separated at birth? (Wikipedia: Julius Caesar)

 

 

Perhaps we should have been cowered by such a goliathan announcement? Perhaps we should have quivered? Well that's when the email showed up. You see, Netezza had a booth (or "stand" - as I'm writing this from London tonight) in the exposition area of Oracle's big OpenWorld show in San Francisco. Within minutes of Larry's presentation, in which Netezza figured prominently albeit with substantially erroneous information across Mr. Ellison's charts, the Netezza stand was completely deluged with people saying things like, "I had never talked to your company about data warehousing before, but if Larry is going to spend 10 minutes talking about you, I need to know more." And the Netezza product brochures starting flowing - not in a trickle like a leaky pipe, but like water through a burst dam.

 

 

Larry hadn't just brought up Netezza but had spent some "quality time" extolling the strengths of the Netezza architecture - moving query processing horsepower as close as possible to the storage elements of the system, and his commentary had marked Netezza as the leader in the Data Warehouse Appliance (DWA) approach. Within the hour, our team's supply had run out. Undeterred by the lack of the product brochures - the team had moved on to distributing our glossy fold out "BI Emergency Survival Guide".

 

 

But what this anecdote from the floor of a 50,000-person trade show really meant was that a sea-change had happened in the industry. No less than Larry Ellison had put his imprimatur on the DWA industry segment and in so-doing had also summarily marked Netezza as the industry's leading vendor in the segment.

 

 

Since then, phones have rung off the hook and email exchanges have approached the immediacy of Instant Messaging, with in-bound requests for more information about the Netezza Performance Server®. Whatever doubt that existed in the market that DWAs were a force in the marketplace was eradicated yesterday... at approximately 3:04 pm US-PDT.

 

 

"Please send more product brochures," indeed! Thanks for all the sales leads, Larry! We'll get around to correcting all your misconceptions about our product shortly.

 

 

0 Comments Permalink Tags: oracle, exadata, nps, openworld, netezza, larry_ellison

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