Blogs
Blogs
Four Fundamental Differences Between TwinFin and Exadata
Today Netezza is launching a new eBook entitled, “Oracle Exadata and Netezza TwinFin™ Compared”. As the name implies, this eBook provides a comparison of the Netezza TwinFin data warehouse appliance and Oracle’s “appliance-like” database machine offering.
Certainly Netezza is not the first company to compare/contrast its flagship system with Oracle’s most recent entry. Richard Burns, a consultant over at Teradata did a laudable job exposing the technical shortcomings of the Exadata v2 machine as they pertain to data warehousing in a May 2010 whitepaper. And there have been several recent pieces written on Oracle’s apparent success although the publicly named customer-list has struck some as a bit underwhelming.
Netezza continues to compete (and win) against Oracle regularly in the marketplace, including in competition with the Exadata v2 product and so, we felt it was high time to put our own comparison story together with today’s eBook and with this little blog posting. Let me know what you think.
From Bartok the Magnficent to In-database Analytics
It seems a lifetime ago now, but since this is my first post of the new year i will allow myself a little backward look to the best bit of Christmas: watching 3 family films on Christmas day (with family): Bartok the Magnificent, Cabaret & A Night in Casablanca.
You’re supposed to enter the new year serene, focused, positive, filled with plans and schemes. Well that’s all very well but first to purge a little irritant from 2010. Now far be it from me to describe Oracle as a little irritant, but a thought did occur to me when i read about Oracle’s $10m challenge. (it’s expired now so don’t bother following the onward link). It expired pretty quickly after it was launched; maybe people were getting close to succeeding.
IBM Counters a Misinformation Machine
IBM’s latest advertising offers a counterpoint to ambitious claims made for Exadata by Redwood Shores’ Mad Men. At IBM’s Pulse 2011 event industry analyst Colin White presented results of a survey he and Claudia Imhoff have undertaken for The Data Warehousing Institute. 74% of those surveyed needed faster time-to-value from their analytic and technology deployments. Colin’s analysis is that technology should to be "fast to deploy", "scalable" and largely "self-service". I’ll investigate each of these, contrasting Oracle Exadata with IBM Netezza as evidenced by real world experience.
New Videos Highlight Key Differences between Netezza and Exadata
When you buy something these days, chances are you do some online research to see how the competition stacks up and then you "try before you buy." You find as much information as you can about a new appliance or product and you try it out before committing to anything.
With that in mind, Netezza has produced a series of videos to help you better understand our "secret sauce" – and why our appliance-based approach to data warehouse analytics differs in basic and important ways from that of Oracle Exadata. The differences between the two are so stark, in fact – in terms of simplicity, speed, scaleablity and smarts - that Netezza is able to introduce our customers to entirely new ways of thinking about data analytics and the ways they do business.
Oracle's Entry to the DWA Community - Just Some of the Snarkalicious Commentary
Okay I'll admit that my first posting about the new Oracle Data Warehouse Appliance (DWA) tonight was a tad on the "snarky" side. But I have to say that I think it was because of all influences in the environment all around me. Straight away since the announcement yesterday afternoon, there's been a healthy degree of skepticism from industry insiders.
Beyond his commentary on Larry Ellison's hairstyle, Gavin Clarke of the UK's Channel Register virtually flogged Larry for flogging the "Oracle server appliance alliance with HP". Some of the best snippets included:
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Gavin's subtitle: "(Not) a hardware provider"
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"And so to chief executive Larry Ellison, who Wednesday afternoon announced Oracle's third effort in 10 years bundling his company's software with someone else's hardware. This time, it's a high-performance, Oracle data and storage server stack locking arms with old favorite Hewlett-Packard."
Please Send More Product Brochures!
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)
Talkin' 'bout my generation
In a recent blog, Greg Rahn of Oracle responded to Phil’s “Oracle Exadata and Netezza TwinFin Compared” eBook; before commenting on an Oracle engineer’s views, I’ll restate the eBook’s larger themes.
Exadata connects Oracle’s RAC database, its architecture designed for online transaction processing (OLTP), via a fast network to a massively parallel processing storage tier. As an OLTP database paired with a specialized storage subsystem, tuning Exadata to function as a data warehouse is complicated and demands skilled, highly trained, experienced technical staff. Mitigating the shortcoming of an OLTP database pressed into service as an analytic database with expensive network and storage makes Exadata costly: to acquire; to design, tune and maintain as an optimally-configured data warehouse; to run in the data center.
TwinFin at Oracle OpenWorld
I’m at Oracle Openworld , now with added JavaOne, in a Netezza shirt after many occasions when I’ve attended in an Oracle shirt. It felt a little odd for the first hour or two. The place is a zoo, but then it’s been like that for years; it must take a huge amount of focus on the part of attendees to extract the agenda that has most value for them. And it’s a big challenge for specialist vendors like Netezza to get onto the agendas of the attendees that we think ought to come see us. In 2008 and 2009 Larry Ellison did a lot of that for us in his keynotes, positioning Netezza as the leader that Exadata sought to challenge.
What Is More Stunning: the Lack of Analysis or the Blatant Boosterism?
This is what greeted me on my return from the IBM Information On Demand show in Las Vegas, like an early “Trick or Treat” gift on the cusp of Halloween. On Thursday, our good friends at Oracle had launched a new ad in their “traditional spot” at the bottom of page one of the Wall Street Journal (in photo at right). And on catching the ad in the morning, our receptionist Maureen had had the great good sense not to pollute our lobby by putting the paper out in the waiting area.
And both Netezza and Teradata figured prominently in the ad. “Stunning,” it said. “Wiped the floor,” it said. “300x faster,” it said. And all from a report by the reputable Wall Street firm, Piper Jaffray. Now exactly what was all this about? It wasn’t a question of “if” our friends from Redwood Shores were stretching the truth, but exactly “how.”
What Larry Didn't Say This Year
Netezza Vice President of Corporate Marketing Tim Young is blogging from Oracle OpenWorld today.
Oracle OpenWorld is an event we often look forward to with a bit of expectation. While Oracle and its Exadata are often viewed as one of Twinfin’s largest antagonists, we view Larry’s ability to super-charge the industry conversation with his keynote and set forth his aggressive vision for both Oracle and the DWA industry at large with the healthy respect one would give a worthy adversary.
