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A system up to 50 times faster than the competition, at half the
cost—that's the sounds-way-too-good-to-be-true marketing spiel of
Netezza, a data warehouse startup now in its fifth year. Can it back
up its swagger? ADVERTISEMENT
Netezza made a believer out of Ahold USA, which operates 1,000
retail grocery stores. Al Clevenger, director of data management,
needed a faster data warehouse for analyzing customer purchases than
the company's existing system, which was running the Oracle 8i
database on four IBM servers. Some reports took 18 hours; one
required 72, broken into nine eight-hour pieces.
Clevenger says Netezza's small size was a concern at first. But
his team grew more comfortable after talking to reference accounts,
including Shoppers Drug Mart, a Canadian drugstore chain.
The clincher: Ahold ran the 72-hour query on Netezza's system,
which did it in one four-hour pass. "We were like, 'Where do we
sign?'" Clevenger says. "The performance was just awesome." On top
of that, the system was two-thirds the cost of the Oracle-based data
warehouse, including ongoing support and maintenance.
Others also gush about Netezza's speed. "It's borderline
mind-boggling how fast this thing is," says Mike Coakley, vice
president of marketing technology at Epsilon, a database marketing
firm. He says Netezza's system takes 45 minutes to perform a series
of queries on 250 million records that a 16-processor Oracle system
would need more than six hours to complete.
But a fast finish doesn't win over everyone. Netezza's system
"seemed like a 'Teradata Light' solution ... We were concerned about
scalability," says Terri Kowalchuk, director of business
intelligence at T-Mobile USA, which picked Teradata instead.
Teradata certainly has put in more miles: It counts 750 customers
worldwide, compared with Netezza's 29.
Netezza, though, listens to customers and has constantly improved
its software, says Gary Feierstein, vice president of information
technology at Premier, a health-care buying consortium. For example,
based on customer feedback, Netezza added a feature to segment users
by group, so one complex query won't slow down the whole system.
But Feierstein hasn't totally flipped to Netezza—Premier runs
IBM's Red Brick Warehouse software for several of its data-analysis
applications. As he explains: "We didn't want to put all our eggs in
one basket."
Netezza
200
Crossing Blvd.
Framingham, MA 01702
(508)
665-6800
www.netezza.com
TICKER: Privately
held
EMPLOYEES: 172
Jit
Saxena
CEO
Prior to co-founding Netezza in
2000, he was CEO of Applix, a developer of analytical
customer relationship management software. Before that,
he was in charge of software products for Data General
(now part of EMC).
Bill Blake
Senior
VP, Product Development
Joined in 2002 after heading
Compaq's high-performance technical computing
division.
PRODUCTS
Netezza Performance
Server (NPS) 8000 data warehouse appliances, which
preprocess queries on individual storage units, provide
1 to 27 terabytes of raw storage capacity; 50- and
100-terabyte versions are scheduled to be released by
the end of 2005.
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Ahold USA
Al
Clevenger
Dir., Data Management
(864)
987-5600
Project: Grocery store company runs an NPS
8250 data warehouse, which has 224 processors and 9
terabytes of disk storage, to analyze customer purchase
data.
Premier
Gary Feierstein
VP,
I.T.
gary_feierstein@premierinc.com
Project:
Health-care purchasing consortium based in San Diego
with 400 member hospitals has five NPS systems to query
clinical and operational data.
Vibrant
Solutions
Jim Hayden
VP, Business
Intelligence
(703) 270-2000
Project: Provider of
data-processing services for telecommunications
companies, including Verizon, uses Netezza's system to
analyze call-record
information.
Epsilon
Mike
Coakley
VP, Marketing Technology
mcoakley@epsilon.com
Project:
Database marketing company first installed Netezza's
system in January 2003; it runs five NPS boxes to let
clients query consumer data.
J. Craig Venter
Science Foundation
Marshall
Peterson
CTO
mpeterson@tcag.org
Project:
Genetic medicine research organization in Rockville,
Md., has used Netezza for various projects, including
analyzing seawater samples to identify genes in microbe
species.
Merkle
Lance
Williams
Executive VP
(301)
429-4156
Project: Database marketing agency in
Lanham, Md., uses Netezza's data warehouse to generate
marketing campaigns for several
clients.
Executives listed here are all users of
Netezza's products. Their willingness to talk has been
confirmed by
Baseline.
| | Financials
Revenue,
2004 (est.): $36M
Sales growth: 100% from 2003 to '04
Expected
profitability: Q3 2005
Total funding: $68M in four
rounds
Investors: Matrix Partners, Charles River Ventures,
Battery Ventures, Orange Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Meritech Capital
Partners
TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
Business Objects,
Cognos, Informatica, MicroStrategy
KEY
CUSTOMERS
Retail: Ahold USA, Amazon.com, Shoppers Drug Mart,
The TJX Cos.
Telecommunications: Orange, Nextel Communications,
Telus Mobility
Internet: CNET Networks, Google
Marketing
services: Acxiom, Epsilon
OFFICES
Framingham, Mass.
(headquarters); McLean, Va.; Bracknell, England; Sydney,
Australia
MILESTONES
2000 Netezza
founded
2002 Ships first product in
September
2003 Raises $15M third round
2004
Opens U.K. office
2005 Raises $15M fourth
round
Sources: Company Reports; Baseline
research
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