Comments on: When is an appliance not an appliance? http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/ Andy Hayler, founder of Kalido and The Information Difference, gives his views on the enterprise software market. Issues covered include data warehousing, master data management, business intelligence and data quality. Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:45:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.3 by: Huw Ringer http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-24327 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 09:21:45 +0000 http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-24327 P.S. The savings mentioned in my previous post were purely development cost - nothing to do with the savings made on the cost of the hardware/software itself (which was also considerable). P.S. The savings mentioned in my previous post were purely development cost - nothing to do with the savings made on the cost of the hardware/software itself (which was also considerable).

]]> by: Huw Ringer http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-24326 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 09:18:48 +0000 http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-24326 Andy - totally agree that an appliance is not a panacea for all your DW Project issues. However, in my experience, where they can save you both time and money during a DW implementation is physical schema design. Forget about indexes. Forget about tablespaces, fill factors, page sizes, buffer pools, clustering, etc. Certainly with Netezza you don't need any of these things - the hardware is managed for you - which not only makes the system easier to build, it also costs less to maintain (no need for constant tweaking). Even better than that though, because these things are just so unbelievably fast, I've found there is less need to create (and populate, and maintain) layers of hierarchies of aggregated data - results that used to be needed to be 'cached' in such structures can typically be derived 'on the fly'. As a result, and to put a figure on it, on my last project (not the same one Nigel Thomas was working on I hasten to add) this resulted in roughly 6X savings over using a conventional RDBMS for > 6X the performance. Andy - totally agree that an appliance is not a panacea for all your DW Project issues. However, in my experience, where they can save you both time and money during a DW implementation is physical schema design.

Forget about indexes. Forget about tablespaces, fill factors, page sizes, buffer pools, clustering, etc. Certainly with Netezza you don’t need any of these things - the hardware is managed for you - which not only makes the system easier to build, it also costs less to maintain (no need for constant tweaking).

Even better than that though, because these things are just so unbelievably fast, I’ve found there is less need to create (and populate, and maintain) layers of hierarchies of aggregated data - results that used to be needed to be ‘cached’ in such structures can typically be derived ‘on the fly’.

As a result, and to put a figure on it, on my last project (not the same one Nigel Thomas was working on I hasten to add) this resulted in roughly 6X savings over using a conventional RDBMS for > 6X the performance.

]]> by: Alex http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-24009 Thu, 22 Feb 2007 04:46:39 +0000 http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-24009 The 'appliance' tag is certainly good spin. Despite this it is going to be interesting all around in the warehousing world this year. Netezza, DATallegro and Kognitio all pushing some sort of 'appliance' message (although I think the latter can be licensed software only). Then there is Vertica Systems which, like Kognitio, is a columnar system which apparently will run on commodity hardware. On top of which HP wants in on Teradata's game. Going to put a lot of pressure on Teradata at the very least. There's some good technical stuff at this blog on warehousing appliances - http://www.dbms2.com/2007/01/27/data-warehouse-appliance-hardware-strategies/#more-135 The ‘appliance’ tag is certainly good spin.

Despite this it is going to be interesting all around in the warehousing world this year. Netezza, DATallegro and Kognitio all pushing some sort of ‘appliance’ message (although I think the latter can be licensed software only). Then there is Vertica Systems which, like Kognitio, is a columnar system which apparently will run on commodity hardware. On top of which HP wants in on Teradata’s game. Going to put a lot of pressure on Teradata at the very least.

There’s some good technical stuff at this blog on warehousing appliances - http://www.dbms2.com/2007/01/27/data-warehouse-appliance-hardware-strategies/#more-135

]]> by: Andy Hayler http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-23933 Tue, 20 Feb 2007 10:50:53 +0000 http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-23933 Thanks Nigel - very interesting. It is good to hear of some real life stories like this as it is usually hard to separate the marketing from the reality. Certainly at this very large scale it sounds like Netezza has a bright future. Thanks Nigel - very interesting. It is good to hear of some real life stories like this as it is usually hard to separate the marketing from the reality. Certainly at this very large scale it sounds like Netezza has a bright future.

]]> by: Nigel Thomas http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-23923 Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:03:31 +0000 http://andyonenterprisesoftware.com/2007/02/when-is-an-appliance-not-an-appliance/#comment-23923 Andy, you linked to the wrong post (although that was pretty breathless too). The correct link is http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/mia/index.php/2007/02/14/data-warehousings-darwinian-struggle/. Your warning points are well made. But the economic case for the Netezza model can still be made - rather easily. I'm aware of a POC where the capital costs of a 50TB Netezza solution are considerably less than the business is being charged back each year just for the cpus and discs supporting the equivalent Oracle DW. The clincher is that Netezza doesn't require the same level of DBA expertise - it just hasn't got any tuning knobs to fiddle with. Oh, and critical queries run up to 150 times faster... Regards Nigel Andy, you linked to the wrong post (although that was pretty breathless too).

The correct link is http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/mia/index.php/2007/02/14/data-warehousings-darwinian-struggle/.

Your warning points are well made. But the economic case for the Netezza model can still be made - rather easily. I’m aware of a POC where the capital costs of a 50TB Netezza solution are considerably less than the business is being charged back each year just for the cpus and discs supporting the equivalent Oracle DW. The clincher is that Netezza doesn’t require the same level of DBA expertise - it just hasn’t got any tuning knobs to fiddle with. Oh, and critical queries run up to 150 times faster…

Regards Nigel

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