Oracle Chases Business Intelligence
October 1, 2009
A happy quack to my colleague in Israel. Another useful heads up. This time about Oracle.
Life has been getting tough for the companies hawking old-style relational database management systems. The vendors have been moving into verticals, chasing applications, and pumping up licensing fees. I am surprised to see database appliances poking their noses from corporate research labs. Instead of breaking new ground, these DB appliances are tackling performance problems by throwing hardware at the inherent weaknesses of the row and column systems that once were state of the art. Not any more. New approaches from outfits like Google and clever start ups like Aster Data have shifted the game from checkers to data management chess. One can argue that technology like MarkLogic’s may contribute to the data management revolution. I was not surprised to learn that Oracle has bought an Israeli business intelligence company. The idea seems to be that business intelligence is a hot sector and, probably more important, relies on data stored in RDBMS tables. You can read the Oracle statement here. Globes reported in “Oracle Buys Israeli Business Intelligence Company HyperRoll”:
Last night, Oracle reported that it had acquired HyperRoll Inc., which develops what are known as financial reporting acceleration solutions, that is software that enables an enterprise to gather data for financial reporting faster and thus produce financial statements in a shorter time. Oracle did not disclose financial details of the transaction, which is expected to close in the next few months. HyperRoll was founded in 2000. It has its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California, and its development center in Omer. Its field is business intelligence (BI), more specifically data warehouse performance acceleration software.
For me the key word is “acceleration”. Oracle is having to find ways around the inherent performance problems petascale data management imposes on dear Dr. Codd’s decades old invention. In my opinion, the Oracle approach is a stop gap measure. Newer approaches are in the market already and it is just a matter of time before the bottom falls out of the RDBMS market. Costs and performance will be the spikes that kill these agility vampires in my view. I wonder if Oracle will make more of a success in business intelligence than it has with its enterprise search initiative. Hot a couple of years ago, the Oracle search system has dropped outside the range of my radar.
Stephen Arnold, October 1, 2009
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