Infobright Blog

Last Wednesday (Feb 8th), I had the pleasure of speaking at the LA/Web Mobile Software Entrepreneurs meetup talking about "Data Warehousing for Ambitious Young Startups." (http://bit.ly/AAx7y1) Led by William Belk, this group boasts over 1,700 members, and in this past meetup, over 200 entrepreneurs attended.

The meetup lasted a bit long -- nearly 2.5 hours to get through all eight presentations. After a long day at the office or on a plane, most attendees probably enjoyed the social events more so than the speakers. Yet, they persevered, and we got through all eight topics. Yet, the most interesting aspects were not the presentations themselves; instead, there appeared to be undertones and subtleties that dug into the 'competition.'

Overwhelmingly, the conversation was about Hadoop. In fact, within the first sixty minutes, I had the distinct impression that Hadoop was the *only* way to go. Interestingly, the varied Hadoop and big data vendors began to show their muscle; one proclaimed the end of RDBMS' in general. I find that notion to be far-fetched; I would argue that you'll find specialized databases that are very good at their niche. The Oracle "one-size-fits-all" viewpoint is morphing. In my opinion, the data centers of the future will have several, specific data storage/retrieval options within their warehouse.

Nonetheless, after all of the Hadoop love, I gave a shout-out to my RDBMS brethren. Whether you're MySQL, PostgreSQL, Infobright, Netezza, or someone else, relational databases perform quite well in many environments. Big data isn't just for behemoths; big data is for the guys who do more with less. Your server farm may handle 10 petabytes worth of data, but TODAY, your average company may hold 5 Terabytes worth of data. While I concede that data growth is massive (40% average per year), the math shows growth to just 27 Terabytes in the next five years. [Data Pulled from Geminare's "Navigating the Digital Haystack"].

Infobright holds 50TB+ in just one node. In fact, one of our ICE users reports over 127 Terabytes in just one node. With the great compression and query capabilities, Infobright is a great choice when you fit into this paradigm:

With that criteria, we could be a great fit for you. Plus, I've just also told you what we are *not* designed to handle. We're not OLTP. We're not NoSQL or NewSQL. Plus, we are proud to point you in the right direction when you *do not* fit our criteria.

After the talk, several (at least a dozen) approached me to thank me for the candid remarks; they also wanted a copy of our “Emerging Database Landscape” whitepaper which outlines the pros/cons of many current databases. While Infobright must sell to keep the lights on, we also hope to sell to the right customer (and not just to sell blindly). It's in everyone's best interest to buy their software for the right reasons. Anyone who tells you they are the end-all, be-all, caveat emptor (even if they are Hadoop-based).