This time last year, in my blog article entitled: “VW World Records – So What?”, I predicted Vectorwise’s record breaking price performance would deliver break-out value to many businesses. I argued that with Vectorwise’s ultra high performance at a ultra low cost, even a 200-person company can now leverage Intel’s multi-billion dollar R&D investment in their chip technology to gain affordable performance for a whole range of tasks hitherto out of their reach . This opens up a whole new world of possibilities – from being able to compete with larger or more established competitors to accessing brand new markets to building innovative new functionality that would change their industry.

A year on, what has Vectorwise’s affordable high-performance database analytics spawned in the market?

I am happy to report that all kinds of exciting market developments have taken place to take advantage of Vectorwise’s price performance. Already we see 5 key trends starting to gather market momentum as the market acceptance for Vectorwise grows:

• Trend 1: Business Intelligence Software Vendors have figured out that the best way to show off the capability of their software is to run on Vectorwise. Every major BI vendor has signed strategic partnership agreements with Actian for Vectorwise. These include Tableau, Pentaho, Micro Strategy, Cognos, Business Objects, Yellowfin, Jaspersoft, and SAS. Its akin to when 20 out of 25 pro golfers say they use Titleist – you know you’re onto a winner!
• Trend 2: SaaS vendors looking for differentiation in a highly competitive market and growth strategies are finding answers to both with Vectorwise. Whether they provide highly specialized business functionality or domain specific analytics to their verticals, their success depends on their performance – the faster the information delivery the more their service is used and the more attractive they are compared to their slower competition. Running their services on Vectorwise gives them a dramatic edge over their rivals without breaking their venture backed budgets.  In addition, many are looking to Vectorwise as a foundation of additional revenue streams by providing reporting modules alongside their applications or adding mobile or on-line access to their analytic services as a priced additional option. Just look at our some of our SaaS sign-ups across all industries and geographies as examples – Datamatics (Utilities), Softwear BV (Retail)  TimoCom (Freight), iCreate (Finance), NumSight (Retail), Oxford University CTSU (Medical), Flying Binary (horizontal) and ecommbi (media, utility).  I predict this area to be a major growth segment for Actian as more Service Providers start to comprehend the leverage Vectorwise can bring to their businesses.
• Trend 3: Social Platforms are starting to realize that they have to turn to innovative solutions like Vectorwise in order to deal with the growing tsunami of data they have to monetize in order to survive. A classic Big Data problem with rich rewards for those that make it (Facebook IPO!).  They prize their communities above all else as it is the primary driver for their valuations and their only path to future revenue. But to succeed they have to keep their members and find ways of monetize services to advertisers and members alike.  Social Platforms like Badoo (introductions), Nasa Klaza (Alumini), Unruly Media (video) and IsCool (gaming) use Vectorwise to provide fast analytics into what works to keep their members happy and community analysis to improve ad sales to advertisers.
• Trend 4: System Integrators and IT Service providers are signing up for Vectorwise as their only means of completing benched BI projects and mobile BI roll-outs. The bulk of these projects are shelved not because they do not provide value but because of their inadequate performance. Many users report more than 5 seconds delay for their information as unacceptable. Vectorwise provides them with an east to use, flexible, affordable and above all very fast solution for accelerating BI projects. Pan European SI Business and Decision, Malaysia’s SAINS, Sogeti in Benelux, Meteorite and DS Callards in the UK, Viada in Geramany, ecommBI in Australia and France’s Decideis are tailoring offerings for their target segments to run on Vectorwise for their clients.  This trend will accelerate as corporations increasingly turn to SI’s for solutions for their Big Data issues.
• Trend 5: Innovative Business Solutions have been developed by corporations and vendors alike as they bring the price performance of Vectorwise to bear on their business challenges. US hardware vendor, Lenovo launched a DataMart Appliance powered by Vectorwise to tackle the need for affordable analytics from the PC up. Cisco does the same for their Unified Computing System from the datacenter down. Rackspace will market a new service called Vectorwise Cloud as a Big Data solution for their clients. Dell and HP turn to Vectorwise as standard to ensure their new hardware ranges benchmark at the top of the TPC performance charts. Irish Revenue use Vectorwise to trawl billions of records for Tax Evasion; Groupe Adeo better analyze their POS data to become the 4^th largest DIY chain in the world and Sheetz used Vectorwise to tackle their data volume growth affordably.  Actian uses it to innovate too as Vectorwise is the enabling technology behind the highly innovative Action Apps for business users to take action on important events.

As Vectorwise gets faster and pushes the edges of the price performance envelope even further, we will see even more innovative solutions deployed by our users. I predict some will be so disruptive to the existing way of doing analytics that we will look back and wonder how we ever survived without it – that will be a blog I look forward to writing soon.

In the meanwhile, what market sectors or industry issues do you think Vectorwise’s record breaking price performance could help address?  An iPad to the best suggestion.