Merv Adrian's IT Market Strategy

January 2020 Hadoop Apache Project Tracker

Merv Adrian — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 01:15:10 +0000

Until 2018, I published comparisons of the supported versions of components in the multiple available Hadoop distributions. Those older posts showed the ebb and flow of new additions to the typical stack supported by “most” distributors slowed to a halt after everyone (mostly) added Kafka. The relative version currency was fairly stable, with Hortonworks typically first to market with many of the newest Apache versions and Cloudera often close behind and leading on some where they were more dominant on the project committee.

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There is Only One DBMS Market!

Merv Adrian — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 16:36:17 +0000

On 16-Jul-2019, Gartner published new research titled “There is Only One DBMS Market”, by?Adam Ronthal,?Donald Feinberg?and?Merv Adrian. This follows closely on last month’s declaration that “The Future of the DBMS Market Is Cloud” by the same authors. This is the second of two notes that aim to redefine how we cover this market. The first introduced the thesis that the cloud is now the default platform for managing data. In this note, we remove the artificial separation of the DBMS market into analytic and operational focused segments. There is only one DBMS market with six use cases, and while this applies to on-premises use as well as cloud, it will increasingly be realized in the cloud.

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The Future of Database Management Systems Is Cloud

Merv Adrian — Sun, 23 Jun 2019 18:43:12 +0000

On Friday, 20-June-2019, Gartner published new research titled “The Future of the DBMS Market Is Cloud” by Donald Feinberg, Merv Adrian and Adam Ronthal.?The thesis: cloud is now the default platform for managing data. On-premises is the past, and only legacy compatibility or special requirements should keep you there.? Some might think we are early; others might think we are late, and some may even think us crazy! Well, in a word, NOT.

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Microsoft Nods Again to “Open” With Github Deal

Merv Adrian — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 21:46:42 +0000

This post co-authored with my esteemed colleague and Gartner Vendor Lead for Microsoft, Ed Anderson.

Microsoft, already a significant contributor to GitHub, and a frequent contributor to open source over the past several years, doubled down this week.

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Open – For Business – At the ASF

Merv Adrian — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 16:05:53 +0000

The Apache Software Foundation is about to celebrate an anniversary, and its extraordinary contribution to the economic refactoring of software stacks seems to be gaining more momentum with every passing year. After three Gartner Data and Analytics events on 3 continents with thousands of attendees in the past 4 weeks, I find myself more impressed than ever by the pervasive interest in and influence of open source software. I had several dozen one-on-one meetings with attendees (many, but not all, Gartner clients), and its appeal and impact on data management was reinforced again and again. Donald Feinberg and I noted in? State of the Open-Source DBMS Market, 2018?that

7.6% of DBMS revenue was attributable to OSDBMS-based offerings; a growth rate of 50% over the previous year in a broad market that grew 7.7%. This growth followed on the heels of a doubling in its size during the previous year.

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Sportswriters: Keep Olympic Coverage Factual. We Don’t Need Your Uninformed Opinions

Merv Adrian — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 02:50:01 +0000

Guest post by my colleague and friend, Mark Beyer, whose daughter has participated in figure skating for much of her life.

I have seen multiple online articles about how this year was the “worst Olympic finish ever” in Figure Skating. I have a bit of a passion for this sport due to my daughter’s long involvement. Do me a favor if you hear anything from anybody like this about ANY sport or athletic competition, if you would indulge me.

–??????? Our athletes do not receive government subsidies nor are they excused from regular education requirements while training.

–??????? To compete at the Olympic level, our athletes have to WIN, so many times, over and over through layers of competitions to make it to the Olympics.

–??????? Families pay money out of their livelihoods, forgoing leisurely vacations so they can travel to events and competitions for 10-15 years.

–??????? The athletes take low-paying, irregular hourly jobs to fit in all their training and pursue their talent.

–??????? Coaches make a full livelihood collecting large sums of money from the athletes.

–??????? Entire facilities charge fees so high (because they cannot, in this case, put 100+ people on a crowded sheet of ice during training ice time) that some clubs forego using local rinks and find it actually cheaper to build their own!

–??????? The Clubs have fund-raisers, do community service to earn local corporate sponsorships in $100, $500 and sometimes 3 0s (rarely) amounts a piece at a time, then pay for the travel, food and lodging of the professional judges who work without COMPENSATION for entire weeks.

–??????? Only the top athletes ever receive equipment and travel sponsors.

–??????? Clubs use their fund-raising and donations to pay limited stipends that can ONLY go to lodging, food or equipment to keep the athletes amateur status.

So sportswriters can keep their summary, ill-informed, unwanted and inaccurate positions about the efforts to themselves. They are sportswriters because they cannot create content unlike editorial opinion writers or unlike actual authors who create works of literature that last through the ages. They are REPORTERS, so report. The next time you read or hear a sports writer say anything about the results of these long efforts and dedication in any sport when it is FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT, tell them to “SHUT THE HELL UP” and stick to their profession: witnessing the greatness of others.

January 2018 Hadoop Tracker

Merv Adrian — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 01:34:07 +0000

Last month’s update was obsolete before it published. This often happens because of multiple moving parts and?my extended gestation period. I needed to correct entries for both AWS and Hortonworks. The new Tracker is correct as far as I know as of January 2, 2018. Enjoy.

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December 2017 Tracker – Where’s Hadoop?

Merv Adrian — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 00:27:39 +0000

The?leading 2017 story of Hadoop distributions?is that nobody seems to want to be accused of being in the business of providing them.?Some former champions?are expanding their shiny new positioning:?Cloudera?is selling Enterprise Data Hubs and Analytic?DBs;?Hortonworks?offers DataPlanes and Next-Gen Data Platforms;?MapR?touts the Converged Data Platform. In the cloud world, Amazon’s?EMR?is at least designed to “run and scale Apache Hadoop, Spark, HBase, Presto, Hive, and other Big Data Frameworks” while on Google’s?Cloud Platform?page the word Hadoop appears once inside the description of?Cloud Dataproc.

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The Era of Microsoft on Windows-Only Is Over – OMG

Merv Adrian — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 14:55:23 +0000

Written by Donald Feinberg and Merv Adrian

On 25-Sep-2017 at Ignite,?Microsoft?announced general availability of?SQL Server 2017, now supporting both?Windows?and?Linux?platforms, as well as support for containers. It can now book revenue for a product already widely used by early release customers.

What does this imply for the $34.4 billion database management system (DBMS) Market? Over the years, Microsoft has grown SQL Server revenue substantially, capturing over 20 percent of the DBMS market without a Linux offering. Few thought we would see the day where a major Microsoft software product would run on anything other than Windows.

Microsoft SQL Server started life as Sybase SQL Server. In 1988, Microsoft acquired joint rights on x86 and called it SQL Server. In 1993, the partnership was dissolved and Microsoft retained SQL Server and developed it independently of?Sybase, running on x86 and Windows OS.?SAP ASE, formerly Sybase ASE, (Sybase was acquired by?SAP?in 2010) shares the procedural language?Transact-SQL?(T-SQL) with SQL Server.

Linux support has been a long time in coming. Both of us were in (separate) meetings at Microsoft 10 or 12 years ago, where we suggested that SQL Server be ported to Linux. The notion was met by the senior management of the then Server & Tools Group (STG) with strong disagreement (and several “expletives deleted.”). Our premise then – and still – was that this would position SQL Server as a portable DBMS,?boosting sales, offering more addressable market to compete in. Customers would know they could move to Linux if desired, removing the notion of lock-in to the Windows Server OS.

Today, SQL Server runs on Windows and Linux – and containers (Docker?and?Kubernetes), putting it on an equal footing with other DBMS products. It supports Availability Groups that span both OSs, enhancing cross-OS testing and migration projects. Microsoft claims over 2 million Docker pulls of SQL Server 2017 for Linux since November 2016. With the generally lower pricing of SQL Server, including availability on-premises with a subscription instead of a license + maintenance, as well as pricing and discount programs including a joint marketing program with?Red Hat?(see?Microsoft’s press release), we expect increased competition?with other relational DBMS players, like?IBM Db2,?Oracle?and SAP ASE.

The momentum is clear.?Gartner Software Market?numbers show that Microsoft passed IBM in total DBMS revenues in 2014 and is now second only to Oracle. In 2016 overall DBMS revenues grew at 7.7 percent and Microsoft grew at 10.3 percent,?strengthening its #2 position, while Oracle grew 3.3 percent – off a much larger base that includes the Linux workloads Microsoft did not compete for. With a competitively priced product that is now portable across more than one operating system, Microsoft SQL Server is positioned to gain even more market share. To further support this, SQL Server on-premises is now?fully compatible to?Azure SQL Database, allowing customers full flexibility in choosing the desired platform, using on-premises SQL Server licenses for Azure deployments. Its on-premises subscription pricing positions it competitively with open-source RDBMS products, with no upfront license fees. In the year ahead, competition will be more heated than is has been for years.

IBM Ends Hadoop Distribution, Hortonworks Expands Hybrid Open Source

Merv Adrian — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 01:12:22 +0000

IBM has followed Intel and EMC/Pivotal in abandoning efforts to make a business of Hadoop distributions, and followed Microsoft in making Hortonworks its supplying partner. At the former Hadoop Summit, now called Dataworks (itself a sign of the shift from Hadoop-centric positioning), IBM announced it will discontinue its IBM Open Platform/BigInsights offering, and will instead OEM Hortonworks’ HDP.

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