23. January 2009 by Rick Abbott.

I had a briefing from Kim Stanick, VP Marketing for ParAccel yesterday, and made a few updates to the DW appliance vendor chart I’m maintaining.  The chart lists vendor solutions grouped by full stack, database-only, and hardware, and lists key features for each vendor such as architecture (MPP vs SMP, row vs column orientation), DBMS and OS platforms, and key integration partners.

If you would like to add your solution to the list or update an existing entry please send me an e-mail at rick@360degreeview.com

Posted in Vendors | 1 Comment »

19. January 2009 by Rick Abbott.

I just published the first in a series of articles on green computing.  The article was released on Thursday, and provides an approach for measuring the energy consumption of servers and other hardware components typically used to support a data warehouse.  I also discuss how this consumption links to energy usage in the data center.

Next month’s article will be a “top 10″ list of techniques for improving energy efficiency in the data warehouse.  Future articles will explore the energy ecosystem - how managing usage at the component level (e.g., servers, disk drives) impacts the public energy grid. 

It’s not enough for us to make incremental improvements in our usage, we need to make exponential reductions in our grid capacity.  To do that we need to employ smart technology that balances usage against capacity.  I believe that technology is already present in today’s mainstream data warehouse and business intelligence toolbox, such as business activity monitoring which facilitates adjustments in real-time based on historical data.

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