Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Vendor Solutions and Products

Vendor Solutions and Products

As an information technology professional, you 'are familiar with database vendors and database products. In the same way, you are familiar with most of the operating systems and their vendors. How many leading database vendors are there? I hoc, many leading vendors of operating systems are there? A handful? The number of database and operating system vendors pales in comparison with data Warehousing products and vendors. There are hundreds of data warehousing vendors and thousands of data warehousing products and solutions.

In the beginning, the market was Filled with confusion and vendor hype. Every vendor, small or big, that had any product remotely connected to data warehousing jumped on the bandwagon. Data warehousing meant what each vendor defined it to be. Each company positioned its own products its the proper set of data warehousing tools. Data warehousing was a new concept for many of the businesses that adopted it. These businesses were at the mercy of the marketing hype of the vendors.

Over the past decade, the situation has improved tremendously. The market is reaching maturity to the extent of producing °off-the-shelf packages and becoming increasingly stable. Figure 3-2 shows the current state of the data warehousing market.

What do we normally sec in any maturing, market? We expect to find a process of Consolidation. And that is exactly what is taking place in the data warehousing market. Data warehousing vendors are merging to form stronger and more viable companies. Some major players in the industry are extending the range of their solutions by acquisition of other companies. Some vendors are positioning suites of products, their own or ones from groups of other vendors, piecing them together as integrated data warehousing solutions. 

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