Oracle has just announced their Big Data Appliance in this press release. There’s some NoSQL stuff in there related to Oracle’s ownership of Berkeley DB. There’s some Hadoop stuff in there. And there’s some R stuff too.
Check out the post on the O’Reilly radar blog for more info.
Part of BMW Oracle’s upper hand in the most recent America’s Cup may have come from the use of data mining. The boat and all its sensors can generate 2,500 data points 10 times per second. Check out this article from the Oracle Data Mining and Analytics blog to read the rest.
Switching to open source can be a great way to reduce your cost and gain some independence. If you are considering migrating from Oracle to MySQL, here are 50 things you might want to consider first.
By Tom Taulli
April 4, 2007
When Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) acquired Hyperion Solutions a month ago, traders buzzed that the software sector’s next target might be Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN). Rumored suitors included Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), SAP (NYSE: SAP), and IBM (NYSE: IBM). But that’s all pure speculation; Cognos might not need a buyout to keep its shares growing.
Cognos develops business intelligence (BI) software that helps companies better analyze databases and business applications. Its 23,000 customers include marquee names like Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW).
Fiscal fourth-quarter revenues increased 12% to $284.5 million, while earnings per share spiked 55% to $0.67. Cognos’s sales team scored 25 contracts of $1 million or more, helping to push software license sales up 11% to $130 million. These revenues should lead to higher maintenance and service fees over the next few years.
The quarter’s only drag was Cognos’ drop in gross margins from 82.8% to 81.7% over the past year, drained by weakness in the company’s services business. To fix these flaws, Cognos is redeploying key employees, working to generate greater demand, and adding incentives for education and e-learning offerings.
Ironically, the Oracle-Hyperion deal might actually benefit Cognos. Hyperion customers are probably concerned that Oracle could rework Hyperion’s product line to fit better with its own databases and business applications. That could mean higher costs for Hyperion customers, should they eventually need to migrate to Oracle’s offerings, making Cognos’s rival products seem more appealing.
The Oracle deal also validates BI’s importance and establishes a valuation benchmark. Hyperion sold for 3.4 times sales, compared to the 3.1 times sales at which Cognos currently trades.
With ample momentum in license revenues, and growing opportunities to pick off more customers from Hyperion, Cognos’ management may not be interested in selling out right now — at least, not before it’s gained a bit more upside in its shares from Mr. Market.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/04/04/why-cognos-loves-oracle.aspx
