Netezza's monster appliance, dubbed the Performance Server 8000, is essentially a Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW - message board) server, an EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC - message board) storage array, and an Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL - message board) database, all rolled into one.

How about that? G'bye Sun, EMC, and Oracle -- you are all the weakest link!

Netezza claims its box will transform slow and expensive business intelligence activities, such as crunching customer data to feed into a marketing program, into agile information. The purpose-built box can run ad hoc and complex database queries in a fraction of the time that existing solutions need, company executives say.

"For decades, companies have been deploying generic servers, storage, and databases to hold growing amounts of information and handle large volumes of transactions," says Jit Saxena, founder and CEO of Netezza. "This infrastructure wasn't designed for the timely analysis of terabytes of data."

Netezza isn't so bold -- or so daft -- as to believe that customers will ditch the tens of millions of dollars they have invested in EMC, Sun, and Oracle equipment and replace everything with a Netezza box. Rather, it hopes to partner and integrate with these companies so it can sit alongside them.

"Their systems are handling huge amounts of data at the terabyte level, but some of this data can be fed into our data warehouse to do analysis against it -- for fraud detection, tracking customer buying patterns, and that kind of thing," says Saxena. This would take weeks to do using standard servers, he says.

The Netezza box is currently in beta testing with a telecom company, an online retailer, and an analytics outsourcing firm.

Netezza has qualified its database software to work with all the major business intelligence application vendors including Business Objects, Brio, Cognos, MicroStrategy, and Excel, among others. These apps run on top of its appliance and perform all the data-crunching tasks. Netezza is unwilling to divulge specifics on how its hardware works until the launch this summer. But it will say it has a massively parallel architecture and that all software functions are implemented in silicon for high-speed performance.

Netezza completed a Series B round of financing totaling $20 million in March 2002. The round was led by Battery Ventures and included initial investors Matrix Partners and Charles River Ventures, boosting the company's total funding to $28 million. It currently employs approximately 70 people.

The startup's biggest coup on the personnel front is Ed Zander, former president and chief operating officer at Sun, who recently agreed to be on Netezza's board (see Ed Zander Quits Sun). Saxena worked with Zander when Saxena was at Applix Inc., an analytical CRM software vendor. "He's one of the best marketing minds in the business and will help with introductions," says Saxena. [Ed note: Weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, Zander's your man.]

The management team at Netezza is an interesting bunch. Saxena was previously chairman and CEO of Applix, which he took public in 1994. Barry Zane, VP of technology at Netezza, was also at Applix as CTO. Foster Hinshaw, Netezza's CTO, developed on-screen TV guides at VideoGuide before going on to be an Internet and Y2K consultant for Staples, among other clients. He has no Zs or Xs in his name. Neither does Steve Millard, VP of worldwide sales for Netezza, most recently VP of global strategic partnerships at Teradata, a division of NCR Corp.; prior to that he developed Cabletron Systems' indirect sales model. He's also held various sales positions at Sun and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM - message board).

Another interesting catch on the management team is Vin Femia, VP of software development, who was previously director of software engineering at Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board), where he was responsible for the development and testing of all Cisco's IP services and broadband management software products. Together they look like a formidable team.

"What will differentiate companies in the future will be how well they understand their customers," says Saxena. "A telecom company, examining hundreds of thousands of calls to work out who its most important customers are, can't look at a month's data in a couple of days, there isn't enough processing available today at an affordable price. With our box, there will be."