Contact: Matt Aslett
The face of the data-warehousing sector has changed considerably in the past 18 months. A series of acquisitions has seen Vertica Systems, Greenplum and Sybase snapped up by Hewlett-Packard, EMC and SAP, respectively. Further, Teradata and IBM have strengthened their hands to compete with Oracle and Microsoft with their respective purchases of Aster Data Systems and Netezza.
According to our 451 Information Management report, Data Warehousing: 2009-2013, Oracle, IBM, Teradata and Microsoft accounted for 93.6% of the total revenue in 2010, a level that will only drop slightly to 92.2% by 2013. Those figures were calculated prior to the recent M&A activity, but in order to make a considerable dent in the dominance of the big four, any acquiring company will not only have to buy a data-warehousing player but also invest in its growth.
EMC has the right idea: Greenplum had 140 employees when it was acquired in July 2010. EMC’s Data Computing Products Division now has more than 350 employees, and is set to reach 650 by the end of the year. Netezza can benefit by being part of the much larger IBM, but Big Blue is also investing in growing the business. IBM is expected to increase headcount there from 500 in September 2010 to 600 now, and a target of 800 by year-end. We believe that HP will have to make a similar investment in Vertica, which had just 100 employees at the time of its acquisition, just as Teradata is likely to boost the headcount at its new Aster Data ‘center of excellence’ beyond the estimated 100 employees Aster Data has today.
As for the remaining data-warehousing specialists, while they can all boast differentiating features and strategies, they must also be looking for acquisitions of their own. On their own, they can’t hope to compete with the investments available at their deep-pocketed rivals.