We are creatures of habit. It's not easy to stop doing something the way we've always done it. Especially when we think we are right (but actually we're not). Let's explain.

I have discussed (some might say preached) in many posts, articles, webinars, podcasts, classes and client discussions that for any recurring data integration tasks IT should use an Extract, Transform and Load (ETL)  tool.

This certainly has been the best practice for enterprise data warehousing projects in the Fortune 1000. This is where I got my early experience in data integration and got to use the ETL tools that annually rank in Gartner's Upper Magic Quadrant and Forrester's Top Wave. These ETL tools enabled IT groups and SI (system integrator) project teams to tackle data integration challenges too complex and extensive for hand-coding.

>>>continue reading this post on The Data Doghouse 

In our post Enterprise Software: Is there any one left to buy? we listed the best candidates to be acquired within the lucrative Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) industry:

• SAS (Private)
• Informatica (INFA)
• MicroStrategy (MSTR)
• Netezza (NZ)
• Teradata (TDC)

We have ruled out privately-held SAS because they are very reluctant to be acquired. (If they were willing then IBM would likely have bought them versus SPSS...no offense to SPSS but SAS is the 800-lb gorilla in the business analytics segment.)

The Usual Suspects

The high tech Titans - IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), SAP (SAP) - are already very active in the DW/BI industry selling software, services and in some cases hardware. Are any of the acquisition targets on our list attractive to the Titans and would impact their market presence?

>>>Continue reading Enterprise Software: Who Should Buy Whom?

The high tech Titans - IBM (IBM), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), SAP (SAP) and EMC (EMC) - have been buying software firms at an amazing pace over the last half decade. According to BusinessWeek the tally is: Oracle $30 billion for 56 companies, Microsoft 79 companies, IBM 60 companies, EMC 40, and HPQ 34. Many of these acquisitions have been "tuck-ins" where the Titans have added the purchased company's product capabilities into their product portfolio. This is a time honored practice the Titans and their smaller brethren, have used to expand beyond organic growth and tap the innovative ideas of entrepreneurs.

Although tuck-ins have been a mainstay of software mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for decades, Oracle in the last decade has raised the bar by being successful in acquiring firms of a much larger size and, very much against software etiquette, even completing hostile takeovers. PeopleSoft and Seibel are the two case studies to validate this new approach.

>>>Continue reading this post on The Data Doghouse

A recent flurry of news articles in the database industry has reinforced my perceptions that the software titans have lost touch with current market needs. 

The PR machines from IBM and Oracle have been each claiming to have the fastest database and hardware platform on the market today. Database vendors battling each other on who has the fastest or the most features is nothing new and has been going on for a couple of decades. But what has changed is "who cares?"  Of course it does matter if you are a techie and you are evaluating which platform has those characteristics. It also matters to industry analyst and consultants that are evaluating and recommending the "best" database platform one can buy.  But maybe the key criterion for future database market share growth is not the best but what is the "best buy." 

>>>Read the rest of Database Wars: Fighting Yesterday's Battle?