Ramon Chen: Cloud 'N Clear

First of all, congrats to Initiate Systems management and their employees, an excellent result for you and I wish you all the best. Also for those ex-DWL employees who ended up at Initiate, nice going! Nothing like getting two buyout checks from IBM in a 5 year span.

Ok let’s get down to brass tacks. Even though rumors had been swirling around IBM’s purchase of Initiate Systems for over a week, today’s announcement is still a bit of a surprise for those of us focused on Initiate as an MDM vendor. IBM had been offering their MDM solution via a combination of their Trigo and DWL acquisitions more than 5 years ago. Together with IBM’s other data management offerings via their acquisitions of Ascential’s DataStage and Quality Stage you would think that they had more than enough pieces to be successful.

Not so it would seem. Over the years IBM’s MDM customer base through their DWL acquisition has been under attack and new customers haven’t been rushing to their door. For example Siperian (disclosure, my former company) displaced IBM/DWL in a head-to-head evaluation at BofA/Merrill Lynch a few years back. Additionally the IBM offering which was supposedly optimized for a financial services and insurance data model, continued to lose deals to the likes of Siperian, Initiate Systems and others. While the adage “nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM” still has some play in IBM won MDM deals, more and more customers were realizing that that Siperian and Initiate had the better solution.

Credit Ray Wang (now with Altimeter), and Rob Karel of Forrester who put out an objective CDI/MDM assessment in the form of the Forrester Wave. That wave fundamentally positioned Siperian and Initiate at the top of the pile for those evaluating MDM. It allowed customers to truly focus on what mattered to them technically and architecturally.

In another sign that may have indicated to IBM that it was time to reconsider their MDM capabilities, IBM Business Consulting Services (operating as an independent entity) routinely partnered with and recommended both Siperian and Initiate over their paternal offerings. System integrators are no dummies, they want project success and they will align and partner with the products that will allow them to deliver for their customers.

So is IBM practicing a “if you can’t beat them, buy them” strategy? Maybe, but the Initiate acquisition could be justified as a 2 for 1 purchase. The reality is while Initiate was high profile in MDM, their bread and butter growth has been focused on health care and the EMPI (Employee Master Patient Index) space. As such, IBM has purchased solid technology with proven penetration in a potentially hyper growth industry, especially given the Obama administration’s focus on health care. Meanwhile, I’m sure the IBM MDM team and Initiate are looking at how the two technologies can be further integrated to bolster IBM’s MDM solutions. Given that IBM already had 2 different types of offerings for MDM, if a 3^rd suddenly appears that would not be a good thing. That would also definitely be counter to the concept of “Master” and “multi-domain/entity” persisting within a single platform.

So this brings me to my preliminary verdict based on the two announcements:

1) If you are evaluating IBM’s MDM platform pre-Initiate purchase, you have to ask yourself what is IBM doing buying Initiate? Is it an admission that their current offering is lacking? Or are they buying another product because their current offering can’t fulfill a “master data” capability in a specific vertical. Either way, it’s not a strong endorsement.

2) Informatica’s acquisition of Siperian however changes nothing about Siperian’s offering. The best MDM platform is still intact, and the benefits to you as an MDM buyer is that Informatica are now behind the technology and they will also bring to the table a suite of complementary data management tools and technologies to further ensure your success.

So my early verdict: Informatica – Siperian wins in my opinion over IBM – Initiate, over the long haul who knows. I guess if you are not ready to deploy MDM till 2015 you can wait until IBM integrates Initiate, or you can get going now and call your friendly Informatica/Siperian rep.

With the dust settling on yesterdays announcement of the Informatica-Siperian (disclosure, my former company) acquisition I would be remiss in not pointing out the human side of the equation of such mergers. That is the people who through no fault of their own are now looking for new jobs.

Of course the process generally follows a tried and tested formula by which senior executives are compensated handsomely, a few select employees are flagged as “key” and given generous retention bonuses, while others are offered employment contracts. However, since the acquisition is primarily for the technology and/or customer base, many functions and departments are considered duplicate with what the acquiring company already has. Additionally when an acquisition occurs, there is a lot of political maneuvering in order to curry favor and obtain prime positions in the combined entity. No surprise that many who end up surviving are politically well connected within the organization as the acquiring company rely on the feedback and judgement of senior staff and forced ranking charts as to who and who not to keep.

Having been through a few acquisitions myself (with Siperian, my last 5 companies have been acquired, either while I was there or shortly after) I can say that many of those let go ARE great people. In fact, many of them are the hardest, most unsung of the lot. Because they do their job well and don’t ask for the limelight, do not play politics, they don’t often get their due when the axe falls.

For those of you reading this post and my other posts, firstly thank you for reading, I appreciate it very much.
But also please do take a look at LinkedIn for some great Siperian employees who are now available. You could really benefit indirectly from this acquisition. I personally know some great marketing talent now available that I’d be happy to connect you with. Great corporate marketing and demand generation specialists are available!

To my friends and former colleagues at Siperian, please reach out to me if I can help in any way. I realize that it is a difficult time for you and all I can offer is some simple advice. You’ll go through the stages of shock, sadness, anger and disbelief. But once that passes you’ll find that there is a lot of interesting stuff happening out there right now. The new world of cloud computing is exploding. Take the opportunity to get engaged in social media with Twitter, LinkedIn and even Facebook. They are great ways to network and get to understand the world beyond Siperian. If you are so inclined, write a blog! It’s cathartic and you’ll also showcase your knowledge while giving information and experience back to the community.

Remember that the “business decision” of letting you go does not define who you are, nor does it say anything about your character and work ethic. You WILL find a good home and some lucky company will benefit from your talents.

UPDATE:

• RainStor (my current company) is hiring, although the positions available today are very specific. Either 1) Inside sales/demand generation or 2) Business Development quota carrying with strong OEM sales background
• Chris Blotto of Knowledgent informs me they are hiring – “Knowledgent is growing! Seeking Big 5 and Strategic FS and LS Industry Consultants. Interested? Email recruiting@knowledgent.com”. If you don’t know Knowledgent is an SI/Consulting group started by the former BusinessEdge/EMC Consulting folks. With Chris part of the team there’s bound to be MDM or related projects that they’ll be part of.

One of the most valuable elements of a MDM Platform is its ability to make associations and relationships once the data is matched and/or consolidated into a single hub. Often visualization of these relationships are a very sexy and practical demonstration of the possibilities once information is uncovered across contributing sources.

I blogged about how this works in a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon example last year. With all of the MDM vendor relationships and acquisitions, I thought it might be useful to show all of the OEMs, resell/referral and ultimately acquisitions that have taken place over the last 6 years in the CDI/MDM space. Enjoy!

Things that stand out from this MDM relationship map:

1) Informatica now owns and has integrated 2 very valuable OEM components (red lines) in AddressDoctor and Identity Systems, of which D&B (Purisma), Oracle, IBM and SAS are dependent. Siperian was very dependent on AddressDoctor & Identity Systems which made the fit with Informatica a natural. If this were a game of chess, I’d say Informatica has made all the right moves and has quite a few of their rivals cornered. How Oracle and IBM got themselves into this pickle is a mystery, since they obviously had their chances to make some moves. In fact it was well known that IBM had been in discussions with AddressDoctor for quite a while back in 2008 but never pulled the trigger. Oracle finally bought Silver Creek, but did that really matter? As for SAP … “Hello McFly? Is there anyone home?”

2) Siperian’s OEM (red lines) and numerous partnerships (blue lines) stand out. Credit goes to Siperian, CTO and founder Ken Hoang for establishing the majority of those relationships. Note that Siperian ended their OEM relationship with DataFlux back in 2005 and switched to AddressDoctor.

3) Valuations have really come down from 2005 as evidenced by the $225M purchase of DWL by IBM back then when DWL revenues were barely pushing $25M (as compared to Informatica’s purchase of Siperian for $130M on revenues of about $40M). But with IBM looking to acquire Initiate Systems for a rich premium soon, maybe IBM is partying like it’s 2005 again?

4) Netrics is an interesting independent match vendor that counts Kalido, Data Foundations and significantly Tibco among its OEM partners

As expected, Informatica has announced that it has acquired Siperian (disclosure, my former company) for $130M (see full press release below). If predictions are correct, this will be a relative “bargain” when compared with the upcoming IBM and Initiate Systems tie up which is expected to be 4 to 5x Initiate’s $90M annual revenues. If this indeed turns out to be true, Initiate will have pulled off an amazing deal, either that or someone at IBM is overpaying big time for market penetration. Fundamentally, Siperian and Initiate’s capabilities in MDM are very similar. Initiate definitely has the EMPI (Employee Master Patient Index) expertise, health care customer base, and has made some health care technology related acquisitions over the last few months, but holy premium batman, that would be a lot of money relative to what Informatica has paid for Siperian. If I needed a personal shopper for startups, I’d be enlisting the services of Informatica corporate development rather than IBM for sure. There’s a reason why Informatica’s CFO Earl Fry wins awards!

For Informatica, this is a great move, completing their MDM puzzle by supplementing their previous acquisitions of AddressDoctor, Identity Systems and others. Obviously I have personal bias, but I believe that this catapults the Informatica/Siperian MDM platform to the top of the MDM evaluation stack. The best MDM technology is now backed by a major player in the data management space and it is a one-stop shop for corporations seeking an MDM solution. It also reverses Informatica’s positioning back in July 2008 when they stated then that they were not going to “get into the MDM business”. But times have definitely changed and the spate of acquisitions in the MDM ecosystem, coupled with Initiate’s pending move to the alter with IBM has lead up to this. Kudos to Rob Karel of Forrester by the way who predicted this back in 2008 and later also revoiced an opinion that Oracle’s acquisition of Silver Creek would basically mean that Informatica would no longer have any qualms about getting into the MDM space through an acquisition. See his latest analysis on the Informatica/Siperian tie up here.

My best wishes go out to my former colleagues at Siperian. Congrats to Informatica management, you not only have acquired some great technology, but also a great group of people.

Finally, a personal word of thanks to Ken Hoang, CTO and Founder of Siperian for “the incredible ride” which we all at Siperian embarked on. His dedication, personal, professional was an inspiration to us all and I wish him and his family the very best.

Continue reading Informatica + Siperian Acquisition = Premier MDM Platform

On Brendon Daly’s blog at the 451 group are two posts which if true will absolutely rock the world of MDM software.

On Jan 25th he reported that Initiate Systems is to be acquired by IBM and just today he has posted a rumor that Siperian (disclosure, my former company) will be acquired by Informatica as early as this Thursday.

While none of these moves are a big surprise, see my previous posts on MDM M&A: 

• Oracle Acquires Silver Creek Systems, Does The MDM World Care?
• Lombardi Acquired by IBM – More MDM Ecosystem Consolidation?

it reflects the continued consolidation and bargain hunting that the big boys are engaging in to expand their revenue footprint, as well as to acquire significant technology in growing markets.

IBM’s rumored acquisition of Initiate would be somewhat strange given that they acquired DWL and Trigo over 5 years ago to form the core of their MDM Server platform. However looking beyond MDM, Initiate has been very successful in Health Care and recently made some significant acquisitions of its own. The large amount of funding due to come from the Obama administration around health care might also explain any premium IBM is rumored to be willing to be pay. 451’s Brendon Daly also speculates that Initiate’s failed IPO and any possible future attempt at public markets may have positioned it for a higher valuation.

As for Siperian, their close relationship with Informatica was made even closer last spring when AddressDoctor was acquired by Informatica. This followed the purchase of Identity Systems. Both companies were major OEM components for Siperian. Additionally Lombardi Systems acquisition of IBM and Oracle’s acquisition of Silver Creek continued to eat away at Siperian’s MDM partner ecosystem. Meanwhile Informatica had been consistently acquiring other pieces of the puzzle, buying Agent Logic for complex event processing as well. Kudos to the management team at Informatica for their methodical approach in acquiring pieces, not only for MDM but equally applicable across all lines of their business.

If the rumors of IBM and Informatica’s acquisitions are true, it marks the end of a couple of great best of breed MDM players who really delivered innovative technology that won deals against the mega vendors. It also means that with Initiate and Siperian out of play, SAP, HP, EMC and any other vendors interested in picking up pieces of the MDM puzzle have pretty slim pickings to choose from. Kalido, Orchestra Networks, Visionware are still available but Initiate Systems and Siperian were clearly the last two crown jewels left in the MDM space.

We’ll wait to see if the rumors come true and if so what the valuations end up being. With the IPO market not what it once was, exit by acquisition at a favorable valuation is clearly the only route for private software companies.

The round of Sweet 16 is over! The votes are in and the polls are closed for the previous round. Check out the results at the end and vote for your Final Four.

Now the slate is clean and the match-ups get interesting. Cisco vs, VMware, IBM vs Salesforce, Facebook vs Google, Amazon vs Yahoo. Remember this is just a hypothetical match-up. You are picking who you feel deserves to move on to the next round based on their performance last decade.

Please vote by entering your winners for the Final Four. You can vote for any 4 even if they are opposing, the winner in each game will be determined by the highest number of votes between the two. Your votes will ultimately determine the next stage by the head-to-head with the most vote counts. Remember this is just for fun, so don’t get too invested in the result. Once you vote for your four, it will display the current totals.

Your Votes:

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Recap of how the Sweet 16 became the Elite 8 (votes from previous round at the end):

Cisco vs. EMC – In an extremely close match Cisco edges out EMC despite EMC bringing VMware off the bench but later releasing it for free agency. Cisco’s diversification from business dominance to consumer penetration through home networking and entertainment delivery with Linksys and Scientific Atlanta allows them to seal the win in the final 3 mins. Coaches are best of friends and form an all-star virtualization team together with VMware.
Cisco moves on to the elite eight.

Oracle vs. VMware – Oracle heavily favored in this matchup, having handily disposed of Sybase in previous rounds, is pressed by a highly touted snappy relative “newcomer”. VMware at one point leads at the half with massive quarter-on-quarter growth and darling mind share. Oracle rallies by buying up everything in its path leaving the lanes clear for their final drive to the hoop. However with the game on the line, Oracle’s legs get heavy at the final dunk and VMware rejects their enterprise play by reducing the number of licenses needed through virtualization.
VMware pulls off an upset and moves on to the elite eight.

Twitter vs. Facebook - Both teams in their first Sweet Sixteen are tentative in a relatively low revenue scoring affair. Lots of defense and passing with fancy dribbling leaves the crowds ahhhing and oooing. But with little scoring at one point the crowd starts doing the “Google” wave much to the annoyance of both teams. Finally, they both start to drain some 3s and raise the score to 15-12 at the half. But their hesitation to attack the low post makes them both vulnerable in the final quarter. In the end Facebook finally muscles up and uses their other skills to win out. In a post game conference Facebook’s coach says that Twitter’s attempt to win with a better Facebook run-and-gun was bound to fail as they were a one trick pony.
Facebook moves on to the elite eight with their fans giving Twitter the “likes this” thumbs up as they leave the arena.

Apple vs. Google – A highly anticipated match up and somewhat disappointing that the two teams were not in opposing brackets. Showdown draws massive TV interest. Like a Harlem Globe Trotter exhibition both teams score at will, dazzling the crowds with announcement after announcement. Apple pounds the boards with the ipod and later the iphone, while Google fresh from their disposal of printed news media in previous rounds, counters with the launch of Android. Not surprisingly the game goes into triple overtime as both try to use their corporate and business playbooks with little impact. In the end, Apple leads by 2 with 3 tenths of a second to go and declines to foul as Google drains a 3 pointer from half court, sending the crowd into a frenzy having watched the game of the decade.
Google moves on winning 210-209 after triple overtime

Microsoft vs. IBM- With a crowd full of mainly alumni and baby-boomers, Softee and Big Blue Devils play a textbook game full of classic screens and superb passing. IBM has a slight lead at the half which causes Microsoft’s coach to go berserk on the sidelines in what the reporters later decided was a cross between a gorilla and dolphin dance. Exorted on by their coach the Softees play up tempo to try to catch up. Unfortunately they use plays that were not well tested and their short term Vista of the game is impaired and they fall too far behind to catch up. IBM much to the surprise of the crowd actually plays a modern game and wins out through boring but cloud pleasing shots.
IBM moves on followed much to the delight of their Armonk Crazies

salesforce vs. SAP- A classic international match up with a partisan crowd chanting “USA, USA”. The salesforce team runs circles around their German opponents who continue to play zone defense, even as salesforce continues to drain 3 pointers with ease. SAP’s lack of crowd support is not surprising even though the game is played in their home arena. Their season ticket prices were so high and the purchasing process so complicated that only a select few could afford and understand it. salesforce on the other hand had huge support from all SMBs and the crowd’s attire was reminiscent of the Golden State Warriors 2007 playoff yellow shirts brandishing “We Believe … in Public Cloud”.
Salesforce wins in a blowout 100-20 since SAP only started scoring in the last quarter when they realized that the game was not 12 quarters long.

eBay vs. Amazon- eBay the darling coming into the 1st quarter of the decade led significantly and had Amazon completely dominated. eBay continues the rout into the half by bringing Paypal off the bench. After the half however Amazon decides to up the tempo. They re-kindle their play and start to overwhelm with the power of their ecommerce platform. Meanwhile ebay continues to call timeouts and uses all of them up before the crucial 4th quarter. Amazon reveals Amazon Web Services and eBay concedes. In an unusual move, they trade Skype, their flashy player with potential, before the end of the game!
Amazon moves on despite not reaching the reserve point total

Yahoo vs. AOL/Time Warner – Before the tournament began the crowd and analysts felt the two teams had the potential to go all the way. It was an entertaining game for the 1st quarter. AOL had recently transferred their entire team to a venerable institution and felt they had the muscle down low to dominate. Yahoo was still nimble enough and played a “good enough” game despite of themselves. At the half it was rumored that Microsoft’s Coach having just lost out earlier in the bracket visited the Yahoo locker room for a pep talk. However he was escorted to the door and Yahoo played on with their game plan. Softee’s coach would later say he accidentally walked into the wrong locker room and bada bing! Yahoo wins by default as AOL just gives up for no apparent reason. Late breaking news has it that AOL has moved back out of the dorm of the venerable institution to try free agency.
Yahoo moves on but is not tapped to make it through to the next round

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Dr. Mark, I am the Director of product management at my company with a team of 3 PMs.
My team and I do lots of market research, create plenty of MRDs, voice-of-the-customer reviews, industry segmentation and basically it is my belief that no one in the company reads any of our work. In fact, some of the items never even make it to review. Worse, prioritization of the release and features still appears to be done still on gut executive level agreement and the political clout of the head of engineering. How can I summarize and simplify the process for a more quantifiable review, executive level buy-in and trade-off across priorities and also prevent wasted effort?

Thanks,
Iggy Nored

Thanks for your e-mail Iggy. The challenge is that despite great research, lots of data and well thought out reasoning, a typical product planning and roadmap still becomes a matter of opinion, politics and personal agenda. This is because of an absence of an agreed way of quantifying and measuring and weighting the critical components and elements that contribute towards priorities. Today, product management software is available to help with the process and capturing data to ultimately help in the process, but if you are a typical small technology company good luck getting the budget to purchase $50k worth of software to help with product management and planning.

In lieu of software, all you really need is a spreadsheet to be able to reflect basic quantifiable assessment of the value, risks and tradeoffs of the product, module or solution you are proposing. For example you can use this simplified 12 step product planning and analysis scoring system I developed: 

If you get everyone in your product management team to go through the same thought process and score steps 3 through 8 on a scale or 0 to 3 for each section. You should get a score out of 9 for business opportunity and another out of 9 for technical effort/risk and a score out of 18 for total evaluation and comparison across proposed initiatives. By applying these 12 steps you standardize the thought processes required before you engage in lengthy MRD creation and you get a vehicle for communicating and presenting your proposal in a simple digestible format for early evaluation. Typically I would translate each step in a PPT slide and deliver a 30 minute presentation to the reviewing team.

Of course you need to get everyone including your executives to buy in on the weightings of relative level of importance of each of the areas/steps, but that is a good thing, since you are engaging them in a quantified, emperical review of how to go about prioritizing the major initiatives in the roadmap. However complex you make the weighting formulas behind the categories, if there is a final score and relative scores to other items being proposed, the political and personal agendas should be reduced or at the very least called out into the open.
Finally, having each category segmented allows for a thoughtful discussion and agreement/disagreement before proceeding to next steps, thereby more efficiently using your PM resources.

Thank you and keep the questions coming.

About Dr. Mark Eteer
Mark Eteer was born in the UK in 1966. He studied computer science at the University of Essex and after 8 years as a programmer, moved into marketing. He obtained his PhD entirely online. His successes marketing for major corporations and minor startups, combined with his no nonsense straight forward guidance on all matters marketing, has led him to be sought out by some of the most well known marketing stars in Mollywood. Although unsubstantiated, he claims that he was the marketing/PR mind behind Tom Cruise’s behavior on Oprah, although he admits that Tom took it a bit too far. He currently lives in an exclusive suburb of Mollywood.

As a leading provider of scalable, enterprise-wide, high ROI marketing ideas, Dr. Mark uses his cloud-based, next-generation approach and solar-powered, game changing methodology which leverages social media to answer paradigm shifting questions about marketing and product management.

Dr. Mark would like to thank Ramon Chen for allowing him to be a guest blogger here on Cloud ‘N Clear and understands that Ramon disavows any knowledge of any bad advice he might offer.

There is no definitive origination for the term “Shoestring Budget”. Some have suggested that the analogy comes from the fact that a shoestring is slender and therefore relates to having slender resources. Having spent 20+ years developing and marketing software, my view on “shoestring” as it pertains to marketing is a little more precise than merely spending within a budget, or having only limited resources. Many marketing organizations actually have more than just shoestring budgets, but yet they operate and deliver results which are less than optimal.

How Shall I Tie Thee, Let Me Count The Ways?

Let’s visualize the shoestring as being the integral component that ties together an overall marketing plan and strategy. Just as there are many different techniques and ways to lace up a shoe (over 33 different combinations illustrated on this website), so there are many different ways to combine marketing activities to meet an organizations’ objective. Which of course means that the goals of that organization have to be directly correlated to the deliverables and metrics of the marketing plan.

Any marketer can list out and execute against all of the traditional activities which include: logos, trademarks/servicemarks, presentations, whitepapers, datasheets, brochures, mailers, promotions, advertising, website, web content, web presence (SEO), webinars, pricing, competitive analysis, positioning, value proposition, press releases, media/analyst relations, events, speaking, sponsorships, social media, blogging and more. But the truely effective and optimal marketing plan selectively determines the activities (eyelets in the shoe) which our shoestring will pass through in order to deliver the desired and effective results. Certainly you can pass through every eyelet (and some more than once) if you have unlimited resources and time, but most of us have to deliver using our shoestring, and that means being efficient and relevant.

For Get Me Knot?

Just as you typically tie a knot to secure your loops through your eyelets, your marketing plan and strategy must have a core objective and focus to which all activities lead. Much has been written about using Six Sigma techniques (DMAIC – Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) to ensure the proper processes for effective marketing and it can certainly help adjust and calibrate the effectiveness of marketing efforts to “tie” together target goals. But even without the rigour of Six Sigma, simple checks and balances can help ensure that marketing isn’t way off course or off base with expenditures on activities that aren’t delivering. When you build your marketing funnel it’s important to understand your audience and the messages that resonate with their issues and ultimately the manner in which they want to be reached in order to determine the correct mix of activities. This is particularly relevant in the light of new channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and alike. 

The Sole Of Marketing

In olden days there were several superstitions around shoes such as when the right shoestring became undone, something good was being said about you, whereas the left shoestring coming undone meant the opposite. Probably a good reflection of the fickleness of a PR barometer, but I digress. I can’t say whether marketers are a superstitious group as a whole, but we are creatures of habit. What worked before must work again, and if I do everything under the marketing handbook it would surely work eventually. Guerrilla marketing, social marketing, solution selling aren’t about major new breakthrough techniques, rather they should be viewed as a guide to the most effective execution of marketing activities based on the audience and desired objectives.

So next time someone mentions “Shoestring Marketing Budget” to you, don’t panic and complain about how much you have to do, and how impossible it will be to achieve the results with so few resources and $$$. Think about the whole shoestring and how you are going to determine which eyelets to lace-up and ultimately tie your knot. Remember that you are responsible for a platform upon which the rest of the organization will depend upon for steady and secure revenue generating footing.

For more ideas about marketing, please take a look at my 2010 marketing resolutions post.

This new recently published article MapReduce and Parallel DBMS, Friends or Foe? is an excellent read and reminded me of one of my earlier posts around Oracle and Hadoop. For those of you who don’t have the time to read the entire article, the conclusion is listed below:

“Most of the architectural differences discussed here are the result of the different focuses of the two classes of system. Parallel DBMSs excel at efficient querying of large data sets; MR-style systems excel at complex analytics and ETL tasks. Neither is good at what the other does well. Hence, the two technologies are complementary, and we expect MR-style systems performing ETL to live directly upstream from DBMSs.

Many complex analytical problems require the capabilities provided by both systems. This requirement motivates the need for interfaces between MR systems and DBMSs that allow each system to do what it is good at. The result is a much more efficient overall system than if one tries to do the entire application in either system. That is, “smart software” is always a good idea.”

Which is not earth shattering, given that no one is giving up their Oracle RDBMS anytime soon. But it does point out that there is a growing market for companies like AsterData, Greenplum, Cloudera, and Vertica who all have commercially available products and continue to garner interest. To me it also vindicates RainStor’s (Disclosure, my current company) specialization for high efficiency retention and access of historical structured data. Since RainStor’s value proposition is to take massive quantities of data no longer needed in production systems, but still required to be retained for long term compliance, you could say that the old adage “horses for courses” also applies here.

Oracle announced that they acquired Silver Creek Systems on Monday. Silver Creek is a small best of breed Product Data Quality vendor. The announcement comes after several months in which Oracle has been “test driving” Silvercreek through a partnership announced early in 2009. For many in the MDM world the news is hardly surprising. Several analysts like Dan Power of Hubdesigns had predicted this move  and even Gartner said “It’s about time”. While this adds further fuel to the MDM ecosystem consolidation I previously discussed (see Lombardi acquired by IBM – More MDM Ecosystem Consolidation?), the question is does anyone in the MDM world even care?

Silver Creek has been around a while and had struck up deals with some major MDM best-of-breed vendors including Siperian (Disclosure, my former company). That deal was in fact struck over 2 years ago in 2007. While there certainly was cursory interest by customers looking at full enterprise MDM, mastering Product data types was always lower on their priorities back then and a later phase focus. That being the case, Silver Creek’s popularity appeared to be more for those comapnies looking at point solutions for PIM (product information management) prior to the beginning of a convergence of the concept of PIM into Product MDM.

As interest began to ramp for Product MDM at least as a check box of RFPs, larger data quality vendors such as Trillium Software, Business Objects (formerly Firstlogic) and now even Informatica began to offer complete data cleansing offerings for customer and product data types. I’m not making a call on whether their offerings are technically superior to Silvercreek, but certainly there were and are other options available.

Oracle’s press release states that it  ”… enhances product data quality across enterprise applications including Oracle’s Product Information Management Data Hub, Agile Product Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Management and Enterprise Resource Planning offerings” so the value proposition for them extends beyond just MDM. More significantly though it highlights that Oracle continues to have separate Hub’s for customer and product data while companies like Siperian and Initiate Systems continue to flourish as MDM platforms of choice for organizations that believe that you should be able to manage all data types in a single hub. So I doubt if anyone at Siperian or Initiate is in a panic over this.

It’s never a fun day when an innovative startup like Silver Creek gets swallowed up (unless of course the valuation is pleasing to the owners). But given that the MDM world wasn’t exactly beating down their door it was probably the most appropriate exit. I wish everyone at Silver Creek well.