Netezza Opens Architecture

New TwinFin appliance runs on commercially available hardware

Information Management Online, August 4, 2009

August 4, 2009 – Netezza Corporation introduced the Netezza TwinFin appliance today, which consists of Netezza software running on a configuration of industry standard blade servers.

The TwinFin appliance scales to more than a petabyte of user data, according to Neteeza, and pricing for the appliance starts at less than $20,000 per terabyte.

“This is the kind of commodity where the price point is paramount,” said Jim Kobielus, senior analyst for data warehousing at Forrester Research. “Neteeza has heretofore, with the current generation, had a proprietary closed architecture, which makes the appliance more expensive than commercially available hardware,” Kobielus said.

By opening up their architecture, Neteeza is sourcing from other hardware vendors and following the lead of companies like Greenplum, Dataupia, DATAllegro and Sybase by working from a lower price point, according to Kobielus. This is particularly relevant to companies whose IT budgets are restricted due to the economic climate.

Donald Feinberg, vice president and distinguished analyst in Gartner Intelligence in the Information Infrastructure group, was quoted in the release to say that uniting data is paramount as the volume of enterprise data rapidly expands, which is why the purchase of infrastructure in data warehousing continues to see significant growth in tough economic times.

The TwinFin appliance is the first in a family of four appliances that will include an entry level system, a high-capacity system and a memory-intensive system that will enable a generation of real-time analytic applications, according to the Neteeza release.