A grey day

Arrived in the office this morning and glanced towards the window; it was that sort of heavy grey light, the sort you see just before a heavy winter's snowstorm. Then I realised that the warehouse being constructed next to my office building had been clad over the weekend in battleship-grey siding; now I can't see the sky or trees from my desk, I think I must look for a new office.

I have been catching up on press releases today: IDC says that Oracle's takes leading share in DW platform platform tools, that is, databases (management) and ETL/Cleanse (Generation). The usual suspects occupy the top three slots (Oracle, IBM and Microsoft) with over 68% of the platform market (and 78% of the database market). A couple of interesting points: Microsoft needs to get a track record in the multi-terabyte space before it can boost its position in the table and the Oracle generation tools figures do not mention Oracle Data Integrator (Sunopsis).

New kid on the block, Netezza, is sitting in 8th place in the IDC database table and also shows the highest growth rate, a growth trend I expect to continue following the recent IPO giving more customer confidence (what is it about a stock listing that sways buyers?) On the other hand NCR's Teradata growth rate drops, maybe because of uncertainty about a vendor about to demerge from its parent, or perhaps the pressure on its business from the appliance vendors from one side and the conventional RDBMS vendors on the other - oh, and that other irritation, HP NeoView. HP are full of themselves at the moment having sold a NeoView system into WalMart a bastion of things Teradata.