Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Business

There are many business intelligence tools available to help make sense of the huge volumes of data that the average business must process. One of the most commonly used methods is Online Analytical Processing, also known as OLAP.
OLAP is only one kind of data analysis method but it is particularly useful in certain business circumstances such as process management, forecasting, budgeting, marketing and financial reporting among other areas. One of its defining features is that the databases allow complex queries that return results quickly.
OLAP systems run on the OLAP cube concept and have the potential to return results from queries in a fraction of the time taken by other methods. There are a number of different types of OLAP system.
    Multidimensional - MOLAP
    This is also simply known as OLAP and uses databases whose structures are optimized in advance for certain functionalities. Advantages include the fact that query results are returned very quickly and data can be stored using much smaller space than relational databases.
    Relational - ROLAP
    ROLAP differs from MOLAP in that it does not require any pre-computation, nor does it need to store any information. All information is accessed directly from the relational database. It can use standard query language (SQL) queries to request certain information from the database and present it to the end user. One of the main advantages of ROLAP is that it can handle very large volumes of data. Also, because data is stored on a standard relational database it can be accessed by SQL queries and presented with normal reporting tools.
    Hybrid - HOLAP
    There is no exact consensus on what a HOLAP is precisely, but as you might imagine it combines features of both multidimensional and relational OLAPs. In this scenario, some of the data will be kept in the MOLAP store and the rest in the ROLAP store. It is up to the designer how much and what kind of data is kept in each, and how it is partitioned.
    These are the three main types of OLAPs you will encounter. However, you may also hear of the following:
          o WOLAP - Web-based OLAP
          o DOLAP - Desktop OLAP
          o RTOLAP - Real-Time OLAP
          o SOLAP - Spatial OLAP
    There are a range of OLAP products on the market today, however the most commonly used by far is Microsoft Analysis Services, which has been available since 1998. There are also a number of other commercial offerings like Hyperion and Cognos. Since 2000, a number of open source products have emerged including Palo and Mondrian.

SOURCE:http://www.relativitycorp.com/data/article1.html

The Evolution of a Real-time Data Warehouse

Understanding Real-time Systems
Today, real time computing is everywhere, from customer information control systems (CICSs) to real-time data warehouse systems. Real-time systems have the ability to respond to user actions in a very short period of time. This computing behavior gives real-time systems special features such as instant interaction: users request information from the system and they receive the answer. Also, users have the possibility to remain connected (online) so they can start this interaction with the system anytime—which is called an online transaction processing (OLTP) system.
In general, a real-time system generates a large amount of up-to-date data and operates in a transactional way (meaning, it is used to register business transactions). Even though a traditional real-time system can store historical information, it is not designed to exploit this information for analytical purposes. In real-time systems, the importance of data resides mainly in the possibility of reacting or responding to the most current data in the system and uses historical data for monitoring purposes. Common real-time systems are designed for bookkeeping purposes (e.g., invoice information, flight reservations, etc.). Transactional data stored in the traditional real-time system will be changed (updated) according to operational purposes, which explains why some traditional real-time systems are also called "operational systems."
The Data Warehouse
Operational systems are able to generate a large amount of data to support the transactional operations of an organization. The data generated by these systems is fresh and valuable; as well, it can be very diverse and heterogeneous, and can come from a wide variety of sources. It is common for many companies to have several systems to support their operations. In order to solve the problem (gathering, integrating, cleaning, and analyzing this heterogeneous information), new software systems were developed. The data warehouse is its most important character.
A collection of subject-oriented, integrated, time-variant, and non-volatile data is what we can call a data warehouse. This data is used to support the decision-making process of an organization's management team. A data warehouse is used to integrate all of an organization's historical data, and has the ability to store snapshots of its transactions. All information generated from the operational data source is extracted, cleansed, transformed, and loaded into the data warehouse. Once in the data warehouse, the data can be subject to a wide range of analysis and exploration processes.
In a traditional data warehouse design, data generated within the company is concentrated in a unique place and will not be deleted. This ensures that all data is integrated and homologated to reflect one single version of the truth throughout the organization (every quarter, month, week, or even day). There are many tools that enable data analysis from very diverse points of view—reporting and analysis tools, online analytical processing (OLAP) analysis tools, data mining, forecasting, etc.
Managers and decision makers realized that a data warehouse—and its technology—had the ability to provide a complete view of the status of an organization. But as operational systems evolved, businesses merged, and globalization augmented, the number of business transactions increased substantially. Soon it became clear that having only historical information available wouldn't be enough to give companies all the necessary data for decision support. Managers needed data to be refreshed at a high speed, forcing data warehouses refresh cycles to be increased in frequency.
Real Time and the Data Warehouse
At first glance, real-time and data warehouse concepts appear to be very distant and disparate, but if we look more closely, we will be able to see that the real time data warehouse paradigm has more logic than we might have thought. As I mentioned before, the volume (data) generated from operational data systems has grown intensively. Data speed has forced data warehouses to radically change the way data is stored and handled.
As a natural process and consequence of the increasing speed of data generation, the traditional data warehouse design was forced to incorporate more frequent refresh cycles, and new challenges in data warehouse design had to be confronted. One of the first steps in managing this major issue was the creation of the near real-time data warehouse.
The Near Real-time Data Warehouse
The extraction, transformation, and load (ETL) process represents one of the major challenges in real-time data warehouse design. All ETL data warehouse processes were originally designed to be executed in batch mode, during previously scheduled downtimes. All operational data from distinct sources (e.g. ERP systems) was extracted, cleansed under a stage repository, and loaded into the data warehouse over long periods of time, mostly at night. These processes can take minutes or hours, depending on the volume of data being uploaded to the data warehouse.
With the pressure to load more recent data into the data warehouse, all ETL processes were forced to augment their frequency with new designs. This approach was derived from a very simple solution: if the business does not really need real-time technology, it might be enough to implement a near-real-time data warehouse. This means that the main part consists only in doing more ETL processes. The near real-time approach has some challenges such as increasing the downtime frequency; the pressure to decrease downtime period duration; and avoiding inconsistency in data results. If there is no actual need for a real-time data warehouse solution, a good option could be to implement a near real-time data warehouse.
The Real-time Data Warehouse
A real-time data warehouse enables data to be stored at the very moment it is generated and it is immediately captured, cleansed, and stored within the data warehouse structure. Traditional refresh cycles are no longer valid. The data warehouse is capable of reading the same data that moves around the operational systems at the same time it is generated. Despite the technical difficulties of implementing a true real-time data warehouse, there are some advantages.
It shortens information delivery times.
It improves integration throughout the organization.
It eases the analysis of future trends.
Basic Principles to Consider
With the growing popularity and increasing implementation of real-time data warehouses, it is important to consider some basic principles when considering a real-time data warehouse implementation.
Data on Time, at the Right Time. The data must flow to the real-time data warehouse at the necessary speed in order to be considered valuable data. In a real-time data warehouse, the ETL batch mechanism based on a table or file transfer is replaced with a design in which data flows from very different yet synchronized data sources into the data warehouse. Data will be considered valuable if it flows at the right speed and not necessarily at real-time speed. This data cycle will depend on the analytical purpose the data is used for. Real-time data is an essential part of the analytical process, but historical data remains an essential part of the design paradigm. While tactical analysis requires immediate or recent data, other sorts of strategic decision making require a higher volume of historical data. For all business analysis, a combination of both historical and real-time data is necessary.
The Analytical Purpose. Real-time data warehouses are not intended to replace traditional operational systems. One of the functions of a real-time data warehouse is to support analytical purposes, and not to perform operational functions. Even when a real-time data warehouse has the ability to store real-time data, its design is intended to perform intensive data loading, not transaction-based registrations. Real-time data warehouses are based on business data flows rather than business transactions, and need to maintain their main analytical purpose.
The Enterprise Focus. One of the key differentiators from other real-time systems such as ERPs, CRMs etc. is integration. A real-time data warehouse integrates data that flows from different sources to one single site. Consider a real-time data warehouse as an enterprise data warehouse—this repository will be accessible for all business units across the organization.
Some Players in the Real-time Data Warehouse Field
There are several vendors in the data warehouse space. Some are big and offer very robust solutions. Others vendors are innovative and offer very state-of-the-art solutions. Here are some data warehouse vendors to consider when planning a real-time data warehouse solution implementation (listed in alphabetic order).
Greenplum
Greenplum Database is data warehouse software built to support large-scale analytics processing. Massive parallel processing (MPP) is architecture-based and multi-level fault tolerance. This database supports industry standard interfaces (structured query language [SQL], open database connectivity [ODBC], java database connection [JDBC], and interoperation with most common business intelligence (BI) and ETL tools.
IBM
IBM counts on InfoSphere Warehouse to deliver an entire data warehouse deployment solution, with different editions (e.g., Enterprise and Departmental), and a complete warehousing solution (InfoSphere Balanced Warehouse). Recently, IBM announced InfoSphere System Z as part of a complete IBM data warehouse solution. It enables applications to populate data warehouses under DB2 for z/OS operating systems.
Microsoft
SQL Server 2008 provides a scalable data warehouse solution for BI. This product's features include data compression, partitioned tables, parallelism capabilities, and change data capture. The scalable integration services tools enable fast ETL operations and connectivity to non-SQL server data sources.
Netezza
Netezza Data Warehouse Appliances is a combination of software and hardware tools designed for analytical processing of very large amounts of data. Netezza's architecture is massively parallel processing (MPP)-based and uses a "streaming" processing to help enable advanced or complex analytical processes.
Oracle
Oracle offers a set of products for deploying data warehousing solutions, such as Exadata Storage Server (based on the HP ProLiant DL180 G5 server), HP Oracle Database Machine designed for multiterabyte data warehouses, and the Oracle Warehouse Builder integration tool that supports advanced data loads and data capture for low latency databases. They also offer other products like Oracle Partitioning, which can lower query times and increase data availability.
Teradata
Among other products offered, Terada Database 12 is an enterprise data warehouse (EDW) solution with parallel operation capability, mission-critical availability, and ease of integration. With support from symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), massively parallel processing (MPP), and its own tools and utilities such as Tpump, FastLoad, MultiLoad, data is loaded continuously. Also, the Teradata Replication Services are used for real-time capture and delivery of changed data.
Vertica
The Vertica Analytic Database is a column-oriented, MPP architecture-based database that handles new generation data warehouses. It is designed to handle large-scale data analysis and many concurrent users, and features an aggressive data compression.
Data warehouse implementation has changed radically. It still is an enterprise data repository that enables data analysis. But nowadays data warehouses are able to incorporate not only historical data but real-time data. This new feature expands the functionality of data warehouses and enables them to store information at a higher speed. It is also capable of supporting tactical and analytical decision for an organization at the right time. The data warehouse is not only alive and well, but it is evolving and maturing. It is enabling companies to evolve and expand by using new technology to analyze past and present information, to support future decisions.
http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-evolution-of-a-real-time-data-warehouse-20472/

The Necessity of Data Warehousing

Why the market is necessary
Data warehousing is an integral part of the "information age". Corporations have long known that some of the keys to their future success could be gleaned from their existing data, both current and historical. Until approximately 1990, many factors made it difficult, if not impossible, to extract this data and turn it into useful information. Some examples:
Data storage peripherals such as DASD (Direct Access Storage Device) were extremely expensive on a per-megabyte basis. Therefore, much of the needed data was stored offline, typically on magnetic tape.
Processing power was very expensive as measured in MIPS (Millions of Instructions per Second). Mainframes had to reserve most of their processing power for day-to-day operations, reports could only be run overnight in batch mode (without interaction from the user).
Relational database technology was still in its infancy, and server engines were not powerful enough to support the data loads required.
The type of programming that had to be done with third generation languages (3GL's) was tedious and expensive. Fourth generation languages were needed to abstract some of the required coding, but 4GL's were still in their infancy.
Most operational data is stored in what is referred to as an OLTP (On-Line Transaction Processing) system. These systems are specifically designed for high levels of transaction volume with many concurrent users. If the database is relational, it has probably been "normalized" (the process of organizing data in accordance with the rules of a relational database). If the database is non-relational, custom programs have to be written to store and retrieve data from the database. (This is often accomplished with the COBOL programming language). Whether relational or non-relational, the very design that makes an OLTP system efficient for transaction processing makes it inefficient for end-user queries. In the 1980's, many business users referred to their mainframes as "the black hole", because all the information went into it, but none ever came back out - all requests for reports had to be programmed by the Information Systems staff. Only "pre-canned" reports could be generated on a scheduled basis, ad-hoc real-time querying was virtually impossible.
To resolve these issues, data warehousing was created. The theory was to create a database infrastructure that was always on-line, contained all the information from the OLTP systems, including historical data, but structured in such a way that it was fast and efficient for querying. The most common of these schemas (logical and physical database designs) is known as the star schema. A star schema consists of facts (actual business facts) and dimensions (ways of looking at the facts). One simple way to look at a star schema is that it is designed such that the maximum amount of information can be derived from the fewest number of table reads. Another way to reduce the amount of data being read is to pre-define aggregations (summaries of detail data, such as monthly total sales) within the star, since most queries ask questions like "how many were sold last month?"
Data warehousing also led to the development of the concept of metadata management. Metadata is data about data, such as table and column names, and datatypes. Managing metadata makes it possible to understand relationships between data elements and assists in the mapping of source to target fields. (For more information of Metadata see "Metadata Standards in the Marketplace ")
Next came the creation of Extract/Transform/Load (ETL) tools, which made use of the metadata to get the information from the source systems into the data warehouse.
Additional tools, which made use of SQL (Structured Query Language), were developed to give end-users direct access to the data in the warehouse. As time went by, the query tools became user-friendly, and many now have a parser that can turn plain English questions into valid SQL. These end-user tools are now loosely referred to as "business intelligence" tools. In addition, there are other database constructs used to assist business intelligence tools in multi-dimensional analysis of data in the warehouse. These databases are referred to as hypercubes (also known as cubes, multi-dimensional cubes, or MDB's).
Since the early 1990's, data warehouses have become ubiquitous, technology and methodology have been improving, and costs have been decreasing. In 1998, data warehousing was a $28 Billion (USD) industry, and growing at over 10% per year. In addition, a recent survey of top IT executives indicated that data warehousing would be the number one post-Y2K priority. Data warehousing is now recognized as an important way to add business value and improve return on investment, if it is properly planned and implemented.
Selection Issues
Selecting a set of products for a data warehouse effort is complex. The first and most important issue is to ensure that the Extract/Transform/Load tool that is chosen can effectively and efficiently extract the source data from all the required systems.
The selection of the ETL tool requires an understanding of the source data feeds. The following issues should be considered:
Many warehouses are built from "legacy" systems that may be difficult to access from the computer network. ETL tools often do not reside on the same machine as the source data.
The data structures of the legacy systems may be hard to decompose into raw data.
Legacy data is often "dirty" (containing invalid data, or missing data). Care must be taken in the evaluation of the tool to ensure it has an adequate function library for cleansing the data. Depending on the complexity of the cleansing required, a separate tool designed specifically for cleansing and validation may have to be purchased in addition to the ETL tool.
The ETL tool should have a metadata ("data about data") repository, which allows the data sources, targets, and transformations to be tracked in an effective manner.
The tool should be able to access legacy data without the need for pre-processing (usually with COBOL programs) to get the data into sequential "flat files". This becomes increasingly complex when working with filesystems like VSAM (Virtual Sequential Access Method), and files that contain COBOL Occurs and Re-Defines clauses (repeating groups and conditionally defined fields). It should be noted that a large percentage of the world's data is stored in VSAM files.
A final issue is whether the ETL tool moves all the data through its own engine on the way to the target, or can be a "proxy" and move the data directly from the source to the target.
Selection of the business intelligence tool(s) requires decisions such as:
Will multi-dimensional analysis be necessary, or does the organization need only generalized queries? Not all warehouse implementations require sophisticated analysis techniques such as data mining (statistical analysis to discover trends in the data), data visualization (graphical display of query results), or multi-dimensional analysis (the so called "slice and dice").
Will the architecture be two-tiered or three-tiered? Three-tiered architectures offload some of the processing to an "application server" which sits between the database server and the end-user.
Will the tool employ a "push" or a "pull" technology? ("Push" technology publishes the queries to subscribed users, much like Pointcast works, "pull" requires that the user request the query).
Will the information be broadcast over a corporate intranet, extranet, or the Internet?
How will the organization implement data security, especially if information is being broadcast outside the corporate firewalls?
Average acquisition cost
A minimum tool set, excluding hardware, would include a database engine, ETL tool, and a number of BI tools for the individual users. A reasonable starting point for this set would be in the range of $100,000. Costs vary greatly based on vendor selection, number of seats purchased, software maintenance fees, and many other factors. In addition, consulting services drive the cost up immensely. A full blown, large-scale data warehouse in the terabyte range with hundreds of user licenses could cost tens of millions of dollars to implement and maintain.
Conclusions
Data Warehousing has taken many years to develop into its current form, and is still an immature technology. Improvements in hardware and software have made it possible to build warehouses that are many terabytes (one terabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 bytes) in size. The ability to access current and historical data to examine market trends and to perform business analysis has proven to provide significant return on investment. In today's dynamic marketplace, companies will continue to use data warehousing to derive competitive advantage.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/the-necessity-of-data-warehousing-15998/

SAS/Warehouse 2.0 Goes Live

"CARY, N.C. (Feb. 24, 2000) - SAS Institute, the market leader in integrated data warehousing and decision support, has announced the production availability of SAS/Warehouse Administrator software, Version 2.0. Demonstrated at the Data Warehousing Institute conference in Anaheim, Calif., this new version provides IT the ability to proactively publish data warehouse information and track its usage, plus aggressively manage the process of change in the data warehouse."
"Data warehouses and data marts have become a vital component of all successful data mining, knowledge management, business portal, e-intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM) and supplier relationship management (SRM) applications today," said Frank Nauta, product manager for SAS/Warehouse Administrator at SAS Institute.
Nauta added, "Successful warehouses are continuously changing to keep pace with the changing business rules that they support. SAS/Warehouse Administrator simplifies change management by providing information delivery through e-enabled viewers like MetaSpace Explorer and integration with business intelligence and reporting tools. It helps make IT professionals more productive by giving them the ability to publish data from the warehouse - putting information in the hands of those who need it and freeing up IT staff for other projects."
Version 2.0 offers proactive information delivery with the addition of publish-and-subscribe tools robust enough for the entire enterprise, and offers enhanced intelligent access to data sources including SAP AG's R3, Baan, Oracle, DB2, Teradata, SQL Server 7.0, Sybase and many others.
SAS Institute was voted No. 1 in data warehousing and business intelligence in DM Review's 1999 Data Warehouse 100. SAS/Warehouse Administrator is a key component of this award-winning solution. Installed at more than 600 sites worldwide, SAS/Warehouse Administrator is the leading tool to help IT professionals meet the demands of administering a warehouse.
"IT and business users will find significant enhancements when building and designing warehouses and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) processes," Nauta said. "By tracking the usage of information in the warehouse, IT staff can identify and remove data that is not being used. Removing unnecessary data makes the warehouse more efficient and maximizes hardware investments."

Publish/Subscribe metaphors are becoming much more common in the data warehouse arena. The ability for users to subscribe (request information on a regular basis), and for the server to publish ("push") that information automatically to those users is a powerful feature. Platinum Technology had already begun on an effort in this area, known as "Project C", which was delayed by their acquisition by Computer Associates.
It has been made clear by the success of products such as PointCast that push technology is an important aspect of information distribution. In addition, although SAS Institute has not been well known in the Extract/Transform/Load arena, they have a strong offering.
SAS has also formed a business intelligence alliance with IBM which may be leveraged by customers in the general data warehousing arena.
Customers evaluating data warehouse solutions should include SAS Institute on a long list of candidates for selection. With their background in statistical products, SAS is particularly strong in the data-mining arena. SAS Institute's extract/transform/load tool has native drivers for many of the legacy data formats on the market (including databases such as CA/IDMS, CISAM, Model 204, MUMPS, and Unidata), and should have an interface for almost any customer's requirement. The products also provide integration with data modeling tools such as CA/ERWin to simplify the consolidation of warehouse metadata.
SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/sas/warehouse-2.0-goes-live-15410/

IBM Builds on Hadoop with New Storage Architecture

At the Supercomputing 2010 conference, IBM pulled back the curtain on a new storage architecture that, according to Big Blue, can double analytics processing speed for big data and the cloud.
Created by scientists at IBM Research – Almaden, the new General Parallel File System-Shared Nothing Cluster (GPFS-SNC) architecture was built on the IBM (NYSE: IBM) GPFS and incorporates the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) to provide high availability through advanced clustering technologies, dynamic file system management and advanced data replication techniques.
The cluster "shares nothing," in a distributed computing architecture in which each node is self-sufficient. The GPFS-SNC divides tasks between independent nodes and no one waits on the other.
According to IBM, the GPFS-SNC can “convert terabytes of pure information into actionable insights twice as fast as previously possible.”
In addition, the GPFS-SNC design won the Supercomputing 2010 Storage Challenge. The judging system for the Storage Challenge measures technologies based on performance, scalability and storage subsystem utilization, to determine the most innovative and effective design in high performance computing.
Prasenjit Sarkar, master inventor, Storage Analytics and Resiliency, IBM Research – Almaden, described the GPFS-SNC as a general purpose file system that allows IBM to compete in “all worlds,” whether it be against Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) MapReduce framework, in traditional data warehouse environments against Oracle’s (NASDAQ: ORCL) Exadata Database Machine and EMC’s (NYSE: EMC) Greenplum Data Computing Appliance, or in the cloud.
Sarkar said the GPFS-SNC boasts twice the performance of competing architectures, supports POSIX for backward compatibility, and includes advanced storage features such as caching, replication, backup and recovery, and wide area replication for disaster recovery.
“The world is overflowing with petabytes to exabytes of data and the challenge is to store this data efficiently so that it can be accessed quickly at any point in time. This new way of storage partitioning is another step forward on this path as it gives businesses faster time-to-insight without concern for traditional storage limitations,” Sarkar said.
IBM’s GPFS currently serves as the basis for the IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) platform, which is capable of scaling both capacity and performance while providing parallel access to data and a global name space that can manage billions of files and up to 14.4PB of capacity. It is also used in IBM's Information Archive and the IBM Smart Business Compute Cloud.
Sarkar did not comment on when or how the GPFS-SNC storage technology will find its way into IBM’s commercially available product portfolio. However, it stands to reason that the GPFS-SNC will be used in IBM’s recently announced VISION Cloud initiative, which has been formed to develop a new approach to cloud storage, where data is represented by smart objects that include information describing the content of the data and how the object should be handled, replicated, or preserved.
IBM announced the VISION project last week as a joint research initiative of 15 European partners to develop a so-called “smart cloud storage architecture.” The effort centers on delivering storage services within and across cloud boundaries through a better understanding what’s inside the data.
The VISION Cloud storage cloud architecture concept combines (a) a rich object data model, (b) execution of computations close to the stored content, (c) content-centric access, and (d) full data interoperability.
The VISION Cloud initiative will be spearheaded by scientists at IBM Research in Haifa, Israel, and supported by partners, including SAP AG, Siemens Corporate Technology, Engineering and ITRicity, Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo, Orange Labs and Telenor, RAI and Deutche Welle, the SNIA Europe standards organization. The National Technical University of Athens, Umea University, Swedish Institute of Computer Science and University of Messin, will also contribute to the effort.

Oracle Warehouse Builder: Better Late than Never?

"REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Mar. 6, 2000 - Oracle announced the immediate availability of Oracle Warehouse Builder, an extensible and easy-to-use data warehouse design and deployment framework. As part of Oracle's Intelligent WebHouse Initiative, Oracle Warehouse Builder automates much of the work that goes into creating a powerful, single data store for e-business analysis, specifically with its ability to integrate historical data with the massive, daily influxes of online data from web sites. The product, already in production at nearly 20 beta sites worldwide, is available for purchase tomorrow."
The Oracle Warehouse Builder framework eliminates the previous time-consuming and error-prone methods for deploying data warehouses, data marts, and e-business applications, even when integrating ERP data from multiple vendors such as Oracle and SAP. These previous methods included hand coding the software and stitching together point solutions. Oracle Warehouse Builder enables customers to deploy even terabyte-sized data warehouses quickly, an essential benefit in today's cutthroat business environment.
"With Oracle Warehouse Builder, Honeywell is building a data warehouse infrastructure that top management will use daily to spot inefficiencies that affect the bottom line. For example, we can find out if an order is being held up on the manufacturing floor or in shipping, and then take the needed steps to get the order out and revenue booked," said Jason Haugland, consultant for Honeywell. "Because of the great data integration features in Oracle Warehouse Builder, we can easily pull flat-file data from our legacy system into our warehouse. The product also interfaces extremely well with Oracle8i, allowing us to create specific features such as materialized views and dimension capabilities, which we use to build high-level aggregate summaries directly into the database."
"Oracle Warehouse Builder integrates the areas that were previously addressed by separate tools into one common environment. Functions include modeling and design, data extraction, movement and loading, aggregation, metadata management and integration of analysis tools are all part of Oracle Warehouse Builder's easy-to-use and easy-to-implement framework."
Oracle has publicly stated that being late to market was caused by "lengthy beta testing". In reality, Oracle has had problems meeting release dates, and difficulty integrating the various technologies involved. They have also stated that data quality management software provided by the acquisition of Carleton Software will not be integrated for "a few months." The tool does currently have modeling software, tools for generating PL-SQL (Oracle's proprietary stored procedure language), a workflow manager, and gateway software for data access.
Whether this product is too late to market to meet customers' needs remains to be seen. Doubtless, Oracle will throw their considerable marketing muscle into the fray to try to offset the delay.
Customers evaluating complete data warehouse solutions should consider Oracle's Warehouse Builder on a long list of candidates, along with offerings from Informatica, Ardent Software (now part of Informix), and Computer Associates, among others. Oracle has stated that the key attraction is that "the product offers warehouse design, warehouse administration, and metadata management capabilities all in one suite."
Given that the product has just been released into general availability, the full functionality of the product is unknown. Oracle can throw a wide array of resources at the product to ensure its success, so it should not be ignored.
Customers should also evaluate "best-of-breed" solutions which combine warehouse design tools such as CA/Erwin, administration tools such as Embarcadero's DBArtisan, and metadata management facilities such as CA/Platinum Open Enterprise Edition Repository. Complete solutions from a single vendor may not comprise the best answer to a customer's problem.

SOURCE:http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/oracle-warehouse-builder-better-late-than-never-15622/

50 Open Source Replacements for Storage Software

Open source storage software clearly fills a need.
According to researchers at IDC, the digital universe included 1.2 million petabytes, or 1.2 zettabytes, of data by the end of 2010. In case you have trouble picturing those numbers, that's enough data to fill a stack of DVDs that stretches to the moon and back.
With the amount of data growing exponentially, storage has become big business. 2010 saw a number of large tech firms snap up smaller storage-related vendors, including HP's notable acquisition of 3PAR after a bidding war with Dell.
But enterprises and small business don't have to spend a lot of money on their storage solutions. A number of open source projects offer backup, network attached storage (NAS), data warehouse, compression, encryption and other storage-related capabilities. Even if companies pay for support or related services, these open source options usually cost considerably less than their commercial counterparts.
Here are 50 noteworthy open source replacements for commercial storage-related tools. As always, feel free to suggest any others you think we should have included in the comments section below.
Open Source: Backup
1. Amanda Replaces Symantec NetBackup, NovaBackup, Barracuda Backup Service
Suitable for both small and large organizations, Amanda allows IT administrators to backup up multiple multi-platform systems to tape, disk, or other media. Development of the software is now sponsored by Zmanda, which provides cloud-based backup services that rely on the same software. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
2. Areca Backup Replaces Norton Ghost, McAfee Online Backup, NovaBackup
More suitable for home users, Areca Backup offers advanced features like compression, encryption, file version tracking and backup simulation, along with a fairly easy-to-use interface. It offers full (backs up the entire drive), incremental (backs up files changed since last backup), differential (backs up files changed since last full backup), and delta (backs up the portions of the files changed since the last backup) backup options. Operating System: Windows, Linux.
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3. Bacula Replaces Symantec NetBackup, NovaBackup, Barracuda Backup Service
This enterprise-ready network backup solution claims to be the most popular open source backup option for enterprise users. Commercial support is available through Bacula Systems. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
4. Clonezilla Replaces Symantec NetBackup, Norton Ghost
Specifically designed as a replacement for Norton Ghost and other Symantec backup products, Clonezilla is an open-source backup/imaging/cloning app that allows bare metal recovery and has unicasting and multicasting capabilities. It comes in two flavors: Clonezilla Live for backing up a single machine, and Clonezilla SE which can clone more than 40 systems at once. Operating System: Linux.
5. Create Synchronicity Replaces Norton Ghost, McAfee Online Backup, NovaBackup
Extremely lightweight and easy-to-use, Create Synchronicity is great for home or small business users. It has good scheduling capabilities and is available in a number of different languages. Operating System: Windows.
6. FOG Replaces Symantec NetBackup, NovaBackup, Barracuda Backup Service
FOG creates a Linux-based server that can backup both Windows and Linux systems. It's a good choice for small organizations, because it's very easy to use but also very powerful with a number of advanced features. Operating System: Linux, Windows.
7. Partimage Relaces Norton Ghost
This network tool can back up entire disks or just partitions. Note that it runs on Linux, but can also back up Windows machines connected to the network. Operating System: Linux.
8. Redo Replaces Norton Ghost, McAfee Online Backup, NovaBackup
Redo Backup and Recovery boasts that it can do a bare-metal restore in as little as 10 minutes. Unlike many other backup and recovery tools for home users, it can boot from a CD even if you can't run your operating system due to a virus or system crash. Operating System: Windows, Linux.
Open Source: Compression
9. 7-zip Replaces WinZip
This utility offers a 2-10 percent better compression ratio on zip files than WinZip. And it also lets you create self-extracting 7z files with 30-70 percent better compression than zip files. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
10. KGB Archiver Replaces WinZip
The KGB Archiver offers both good compression and good encryption capabilities, with all files protected by AES-256 encryption automatically. It's also pretty fast, but you will need a fairly robust system in order to use it. Operating System: Windows.
11. PeaZip Replaces WinZip PeaZip writes to 10 different compression file formats and extracts from 129 file types, making it one of the most versatile archiving tools available. It also offers encryption capabilities, and it's available in a portable version that you can use from a thumb drive. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
Open Source: Databases
12.Kexi Replaces Microsoft Access, FileMaker
It's Web site proclaims Kexi to be “a long-awaited competitor for programs like MS Access or Filemaker.” It's part of the KDE suite, but can also be used on its own. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
13. LucidDB Replaces Microsoft SQL Server
Unlike the other databases on our list, LucidDB was specifically designed to serve the analytics needs of data warehouse and business intelligence projects. It was created with "flexible, high-performance data integration and sophisticated query processing in mind." Operating System: Windows, Linux.
14. MySQL Replace: Microsoft SQL Server
MySQL claims to be the "world's most popular open source database." It's very popular with Web developers because of its excellent performance and scalability capabilities. In addition to the free community edition, Oracle offers a number of paid commercial editions, as well as services and training. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X
15. PostgreSQL Replaces Microsoft SQL Server
This database touts its reliability saying, "Unlike many proprietary databases, it is extremely common for companies to report that PostgreSQL has never, ever crashed for them in several years of high activity operation. Not even once." It offers a wide array of advanced enterprise-class features like Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point-in-time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups and much more. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
Open Source: Data Destruction
16. BleachBit Replaces Easy System Cleaner
Among its many functions, BleachBit can "shred" files previously stored on your system so that they can't be recovered. It also cleans up your cache, temporary files, logs, cookies, etc. to improve system performance. Operating System: Windows, Linux.
17. Darik's Boot And Nuke Replaces Kill Disk, BCWipe Total WipeOut
If you need to get rid of all of the files stored on a system, DBAN does the job quickly and easily. It runs from a disk and automatically erases all drives it can detect so that they cannot be recovered. Operating System: OS Independent.
18. Eraser Replaces BCWipe Enterprise
If you need to eliminate personal or sensitive files completely, Eraser does the job by overwriting the old file with random data. It also comes with a scheduler so you can eliminate old archives on a set date. Operating System: Windows.
19. FileKiller Replaces BCWipe Enterprise
FileKiller works much like Eraser, but it gives the user the option of determining how many times the old data is overwritten. It's also very fast. Operating System: Windows.
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20. Wipe Replaces BCWipe Enterprise
Wipe also performs the same data destruction as Eraser, only for Linux instead of Windows. Operating System: Linux.
Open Source: Data Warehouse (DW) Tools
21. Clover ETL Replaces Oracle Data Integration Suite, Informatica
Designed for those with "modest data transformation and ETL requirements," the community edition of CloverETL makes it easy to move data between different types of databases and spreadsheets. For those with more advanced needs, CloverETL also offers a variety of fee-based versions. Operating System: OS Independent.
22. DataCleaner Replaces DataFlux Data Management Studio, IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management, Oracle Master Data Management Suite
DataCleaner profiles, validates, and compares data in order to ensure its quality. It can work with nearly any kind of datastore, including Oracle, MySQL, XML files, Microsoft SQL, Excel spreadsheets, and more. Operating System: OS Independent.
23. KETL Replaces Oracle Data Integration Suite, Informatica
This "premier" extract, transform, load (ETL) tool offers excellent scalability, which allows it to compete against commercial tools. It integrates with most popular security and data management tools. Operating System: Linux, Unix.
24. MailArchiva Replaces ArcMail, Barracuda Message Archiver, GFI Mail Archiver
Highly scalable, MailArchiva offers long-term storage of e-mails in an easy-to-search format for compliance purposes. In addition to the free community version, it's also available in a paid enterprise edition, which includes additional features. Operating System: Windows, Linux.
25. Talend Open Studio Replaces Oracle Data Integration Suite, Informatica
Talend offers a variety of open-source tools for data integration, data quality, master data management and application integration. In addition to the free, open-source version of their software, they also offer paid SaaS versions and commercial support, services and training. Operating System: Windows, Linux, Unix.
Open Source: Document Management Systems (DMS)
26. Epiware Replaces Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, OpenText
Epiware merges document management capabilities with some collaboration capabilities, including calendaring, project management and a wiki. Other features include search, check-in/check-out, and access and version history. Operating System: Windows, Linux.
27. LogicalDOC Replaces: Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, OpenText
This app aims to help enterprises replace their paper files with digital versions that make it fast and easy to find the information you need. In addition to the community version, it's also available in paid enterprise and SaaS versions. Operating System: OS Independent.
28. OpenKM Replaces: Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, OpenText
While not quite as polished as some of the other open-source document management systems, OpenKM also offers enterprise-ready capabilities. Key features include drag-and-drop functionality, a powerful search engine, and tag clouds. Operating System: OS Independent.
Open Source: Encryption
29. AxCrypt Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
The "leading open source file encryption software for Windows," AxCrypt lets you encrypt files from the Windows file manager with a simple right click, and decrypting just takes a double-click. You can also use it to send self-decrypting files via e-mail. Operating System: Windows.
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30. Crypt Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
Designed for speed, Crypt is very lightweight—just 44 kb. Note that it runs from the command line (no GUI), so it might be a little intimidating to less experienced computer users. Operating System: Windows.
31. Gnu Privacy Guard Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
Based on the OpenPGP standard, GPG lets you sign and encrypt both data and e-mail. Like Crypt, this app runs from the command line, but it does have a number of front-ends available if you prefer a GUI. Operating System: Linux.
32. gpg4win Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
If you want to use GPG on a Windows machine, this is the app for you. Operating System: Windows.
33. Mac GNU Privacy Guard
Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge Yet another version of GPG—this time for Mac users. Operating System: OS X.
34. MailCrypt Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
If you want to encrypt all of your e-mail, try MailCrypt. It lets you select from PGP or GnuPGP encryption (though it recommends GnuPGP). Note that this app is not as user-friendly as some of the other options Operating System: OS Independent.
35. NeoCrypt Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
A better option for beginners, NeoCrypt offers a simple user interface and right-click integration with Windows Explorer. It supports 10 different encryption algorithms and has bulk encryption options for quickly protecting a lot of stored files. Operating System: Windows.
36. TrueCrypt Replaces McAfee Anti-Theft, Symantec Endpoint Encryption, CryptoForge
Downloaded more than 17 million times, this app is one of the most sophisticated and easy-to-use open-source encryption tools available. It can encrypt an entire disk or a disk partition, or create virtual encrypted disk within a file and mount it as a real disk. Operating System: Windows.
Open Source: File Managers
37. Explorer++ Replaces Windows Explorer
This utility doesn't so much replace Windows Explorer as enhance it. It adds tabbed browsing, a preview window, keyboard shortcuts and other features to the familiar interface. Operating System: Windows.
38. muCommander Replaces Windows Explorer, xplorer_
This Java-based file manager supports FTP, SFTP, SMB, NFS, HTTP, Amazon S3, Hadoop HDFS and Bonjour. Other key features include built-in compression and decompression tools and a universal bookmarks and credentials manager. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
39. PCManFM Replaces Windows Explorer, xplorer_
While it's the default file manager for LXDE, you can also use PCManFM with other Linux desktop environments. It's currently undergoing a major re-write, but you can still download the older code. Operating System: Linux.
40. QTTabBar Replaces Windows Explorer
Like Explorer++, QTTabBar adds tabs to the Windows Explorer interface. It's technically still in alpha, but has a large and enthusiastic user base. Operating System: Windows.
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41. SurF Replaces Windows Explorer, xplorer_
This file manager offers a unique, tree-based view. Other key features include real-time highlighting of new and changed files, directory auto-complete search and support for advanced NTFS capabilities. Operating System: Windows.
42. TuxCommander Replaces Windows Explorer, xplorer_
For Linux only, TuxCommander offers a familiar two-panel tabbed graphical interface. It's not flashy, but easy-to-use. Operating System: Linux.
Open Source: File Transfer
43. FileZilla Replaces CuteFTP, FTP Commander
With FileZilla you can set up an Windows-based FTP server or download FTP files from another site using any operating system. It supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), and it's ready for IPv6. Operating System: Windows, Linux, OS X.
44. WinSCP Replaces: CuteFTP/GlobalSCAPE, FTP Commander
This very popular FTP client has been downloaded more than 40 million times. It supports SFTP, FTP, SSH, and SCP transfers. Operating System: Windows.
Open Source: NAS Software
45. FreeNAS Replaces Isilon products, IPDATA appliances, Netgear ReadyNAS
This BSD-based app allows you to create your own NAS server. It supports CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP. Operating System: FreeBSD.
46. Gluster Replaces Isilon products, IPDATA appliances, Netgear ReadyNAS
Gluster offers open-source scale-out storage for on-premise NAS, virtual machine images and cloud storage. In addition to the free community edition, the company offers several subscription-based support options. Operating System: Linux.
47. Openfiler Replaces , IPDATA appliances, Netgear ReadyNAS
With Openfiler, you can convert almost any standard PC into a unified NAS/SAN appliance. You will need to be fairly knowledgeable in order to use it, but support and other add-ons are available for a fee. Operating System: Linux.
48. Turnkey Linux Replaces , IPDATA appliances, Netgear ReadyNAS
Turnkey offers a variety of pre-configured appliances, including a NAS appliance, which lands it on our list. In addition, all Turnkey appliances come with TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration pre-installed. Operating System: Linux.
Open Source: Utilities
49. Bulk File Manager Replaces NoClone 2010, FalconStor Data Deduplication
This helpful utility finds duplicate files and gives users the options of deleting or moving them. It also offers bulk file moving, re-naming and secure deletion capabilities. Operating System: Windows.
50. Copy Handler Replaces standard Windows copy and move capabilities
If you're re-organizing or cleaning up your hard drive, Copy Handler can help. It's faster than the standard Windows copy and move features, and it gives you more options, like task queuing, filtering files according to specific criteria, pausing and resuming copying files and changing the copying parameters on the fly. Operating System: Windows.

SOURCE:http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/12068_3920996_4/50-Open-Source-Replacements-for-Storage-Software.htm

Syncsort Sigma Manages Database Aggregates

Programmers and administrators of large databases and data warehouses can create, manage and process data aggregates with speed, ease and accuracy with a new software product unveiled by Syncsort Incorporated.
Called Sigma, the vendor states that the product combines a high-performance data aggregate engine with an intuitive graphical user interface. By simplifying aggregation creation, Sigma reduces the time it takes to define and maintain aggregates, saves computer resources when processing aggregates, and dramatically cuts response time for database queries.
"Having the right aggregates available can improve runtime performance up to a thousand times according to leading data warehouse experts," said Vic Werner, director of marketing at Syncsort. "Sigma helps database administrators manage the explosive growth of data in their companies and meet the demands by their users for faster query processing of click-stream data from web sites, 24/7 business operations and electronic commerce initiatives. Sigma frees administrators to concentrate on selecting those aggregates that will optimize query performance."
Data warehouse administrators have long been vexed by the difficulty of creating aggregations of data. (An aggregate is defined by Ralph Kimball in his "Data Warehouse Toolkit" as "the items in a SQL Select list that are one of: SUM, COUNT, MIN, MAX, or AVG"). They are a method to improve query response time for frequently used reporting questions such as "what were my sales numbers by region for the last month?"
IT professionals have used Syncsort for many years to sort data into a predetermined order to reduce processing time in programs (i.e., sorting data for batch input to a COBOL program on mainframes), and they have extensive experience in this area. Many data warehousing products have very counter-intuitive approaches to creating aggregates. Syncsort, in contrast, should have a strong influence in this market because IT professionals are familiar with the Syncsort product family.
Customers evaluating aggregation engines should include Syncsort's Sigma product on their list of vendors to be considered. The importance of aggregation in a data warehouse to reduce query response time and overall database load cannot be underestimated. Syncsort has much experience in the details of sorting data, and will doubtless make a strong impact on this market. The largest drawback we currently see in the product is the lack of ability to output data into IBM's DB2 Universal Database, except via an ODBC driver. However, they do have native support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

http://www.technologyevaluation.com/research/articles/syncsort-sigma-manages-database-aggregates-15977/

5 Signs of an Aging Data Warehouse

It’s not a stretch to say that data warehouses are maturing. Most of our clients’warehouses and marts have not only reached adulthood, many are showing their age. This has prompted some executives and business users to inquire about their retirement. Read on to see whether or not predictions of your data warehouse’s demise are premature.
In consulting with companies on their data warehouses over the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed the evolution of data warehouses from a technology proof of concept reserved for the “early adopters” to a widespread solution found, in one form or another, in most of today’s companies. Information has gone from a luxury to a must-have for these companies, and thus their IT environments have likewise evolved to support data delivery. With this evolution comes the assumption of the data warehouse as a commodity. Data warehousing is simply not as sexy as it used to be, and many  arehouses and marts are showing their age. Outdated ETL processes, shaky logical data models, slipshod business requirements, and an emerging “back burner” approach to new BI needs have put many otherwise valuable data warehouses in peril.
How does your data warehouse measure up? This report introduces five signs that indicate your data warehouse or mart might need help:
1. No description of the overall role of the warehouse People assume—and we know what that means!—that the data warehouse is fulfilling a stated purpose, be it to integrate cross functional data, or to serve as the system-of-record for critical data subject areas like Customer. Although the warehouse may be operating well and providing data to a range of business users who are making powerful and differentiating business decisions, if there is no consensus around its purpose, it’s likely to be put on the chopping block when the inevitable IT budget cuts are taken up. I once sat in a meeting where an executive got no answer to the question, “What’s the EDW doing for us that it didn’t do last year?” After an uncomfortable silence, someone spoke up and added that new compliance measures were going to drive the need for data audits from the warehouse. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, and the executive erased the data warehouse from her list. You can be sure, though, that the team convened the next day to come up with a mission statement and application inventory for the warehouse. Better late than never.
2. Lack of consistent business requirements To practitioners who have been around data warehousing since the early days, this one is what Baseline Partner Jill Dyche calls “an old standby.” We learned the hard way that a business-driven data warehouse—in which the data answers key business questions enabling end-users to take quick business action—is one of the basic enets of a sustainable data warehouse.
You’d be surprised at how few companies actually create and maintain business requirements for BI applications in a consistent and repeatable way. A formal requirements definition process enlists usually reluctant business people to become involved in defining new information capabilities for the enterprise. It also makes it easier to incrementally extend an existing environment with new requirements to add functional capabilities. In our Data Warehouse Scorecard projects, Baseline actually maps the clients’ requirements against a comprehensive set of best practices. These include a solid overall requirements definition process; differentiating between business and data requirements; and making requirements activities iterative. The exercise usually illustrates that companies aren’t doing as good a job as they think they are when gathering and documenting BI business requirements.
3. Few internal checks and balances You can usually spot a data warehouse development team that is under fire. They hoard project plans and don’t publicize successes. They aren’t user focused. They don’t really answer to anyone. Most of our clients now have some sort of a governance body in place that establishes accountability measures for a range of IT projects, including the data
warehouse. Governance committees not only sign off on new BI business cases, they approve capital expenditures and upgrades, rendering it easier for the data warehouse to deploy value to the business over time. This committee needs to understand how the data warehouse has delivered value in the past—back to the concept of internal PR!—so that it can approve its future growth. There are other checks and balances involved in the data warehouse. Data auditability, security, and control are common and often high-profile concerns. The data warehouse development team should be beholden to a Chief Security Officer or a privacy czar for the deployment and use of company-sensitive information.
4. Rigid and inflexible infrastructure You’ve probably heard about a data warehouse that can’t support end-user, ad-hoc queries, or one that can only support ten concurrent queries simultaneously. Many of these data warehouses have hit the funding wall and are thus constrained by inadequate resources. (Sorry, but I have to bring up that all-important internal PR on this one. If the value is easily perceived, funding is probably flowing.)
However, other data warehouses were simply built in an inflexible and rigid way. Bad designs, poor ETL processes, technologies that can’t scale, or standards and conventions that have become “religion” can reduce the data warehouse to a mere technology platform for discrete processing. We recently asked a Scorecard client, “If a new, high-profile business initiative required the addition of a dozen new tables and a few hundred gigabytes of data from a handful of source systems, would the work take weeks, months, or years?” The quantified answer isn’t as interesting to us as the reasons why, indicating the problem areas and the potential fixes.
5. Nothing new It doesn’t matter how valuable your actuarial reporting is, or the fact that you can match your customers with the products they’ve purchased. If the data warehouse isn’t adding business value in a regular and visible way, it will eventually be at risk. Sure, as long as you have a consistent and updated return-on-investment story, you’re probably safe for now. But the constituency will take you for granted and people’s attention will wander to the technologies or projects they perceive are adding bang for the buck. The data warehouse must be perceived to be continuously creating value, be it through the support of new business analytics, the deployment of new data, or the ability to take fresh and deliberate business decisions as a result of data inquiry. If no one has this opinion, the data warehouse is just another isolated island in a long archipelago of technologies. In a follow-up article, I’ll suggest some tips and techniques for rejuvenating an aging data warehouse. Some may need major surgery, while others may only require a simple “nip and tuck.”

SOURCE:http://www.baseline-consulting.com/uploads/BCG_pub_5SignsOfAgingDW_2009.pdf

Dell, HP Roll Out Virtual Solutions

OEMs selling software and services is nothing new. IBM does it; HP does it; and Oracle now does it. Dell has slowly been moving in this direction, and this week it more firmly cemented its positioning, announcing three new service and support agreements. Chief among them, a new management plug-in for VMware vCenter.
With the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) customers can provision bare metal servers, deploy hypervisors, roll out firmware and BIOS updates, and manage alerts directly from VMware's vCenter console. The solution is tailored to Dell's servers, specifically its 11G PowerEdge servers, although it will also work (albeit minus some of the functionality) on ninth and tenth generation PowerEdge servers, Doug Iler, senior manager of virtualization systems management for Dell, told ServerWatch.
The software leverages technology found in the most recent generation of PowerEdge servers to connect the hardware to the BIOS and firmware and the virtual servers within. Functionality unique to Dell hardware, such as alerts and warnings, has been added to the code. Ideally, customers would be hard pressed to notice where vCenter ends and where Dell's solution begins.


Iler described the ideal customer for the plugin as an organization looking to accelerate its virtual adoption or streamline a deployment, as well as anyone having trouble with BIOS and firmware updates.
Customers already on board include SuperValu, Rules-Based Medicine and Southwest Airlines.
Dell claims its software is superior to other vendors' solutions because the offering integrates server management functionality directly into vCenter and enables customers to work from a single, familiar console.
Iler said future versions of the software will incorporate networking and storage functionality as well as integration with VMware Update Manager.
Although the Dell Management Plug-in for VMware vCenter is being described as a plug-in virtual appliance, Iler was quick to note that it is not an extension of its KACE Family of Systems Management Appliances, which are positioned at client virtualization deployments.
With the plug-in so closely aligned to vCenter, it's not surprising that its pricing mirrors that of vCenter, with a three-server license priced at $299 and an unlimited license priced at $2,999. Because of Dell's midmarket focus, however, it added two additional tiers: a 10-server license for $799 and a 50-server license for $1,799.
The two other products announced Wednesday were the Dell Lifecycle Controller and Embedded Systems Management, and the Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller.
HP's Virtual Appliances
Dell was not alone in unveiling virtual offerings this week. HP and Microsoft further cemented their partnership with the announcement of four new converged application appliances that combine applications, infrastructure and productivity tools into a single system. Under the terms of their agreements the two companies will work together to deliver cloud, virtualization and converged applications solutions over next three years, Dave Peterson, group manager, Industry Standard Server and Software, explained.
Application services that the new offerings will deliver include business intelligence, data warehousing, online transaction processing and messaging.
One, the HP Business Decision Appliance, is available now. Another, the HP E5000 Messaging System for Microsoft Exchange Server, is scheduled for release in 45 days. The remaining two, the HP Business Data Warehouse Appliance and the HP Database Consolidation Appliance, are expected to be available in June and the second half of 2011, respectively.
The HP Database Consolidation Appliance is aimed squarely at the private cloud. This appliance consolidates hundreds of databases into a single, virtual environment. This provides customers with a private cloud database solution that offers self-service, on-demand scalability and dynamic elasticity with the additional control offered through an on-premises deployment.
The appliance is packaged as complete, pre-installed, pre-tuned hardware with rapid deployment and enhanced manageability. It is optimized for SQL Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud.
Appliances have long had a rocky path in the physical world. If recent developments are any indication, virtual appliances are a completely different kettle of fish. With the OEM marketplace being increasingly commoditized and virtualization differentiation boiling down to management capabilities, bringing them together to maximize value seems a natural fit.
Amy Newman is the senior managing editor of Internet.com's server vertical. She has been covering virtualization since 2001, and is the coauthor of Practical Virtualization Solutions, published by Pearson in 2009.
http://www.serverwatch.com/virtualization/article.php/3921526/Dell-HP-Roll-Out-Virtual-Solutions.htm