40 Vendors We're Watching in 2011
For our 2011 40 Vendors to Watch list, we rang up our most-trusted columnists and a few selected other sources for input, added our own ideas, did some background work and came up with a list we shaped and pared down to our standard. It's an editor's choice, to be sure, and like last year, we're happy to find many more positive stories than we can account for in our latest two score. Click here to skim the full list.
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40 Vendors We're Watching in 2011
For our 2011 40 Vendors to Watch list, we rang up our most-trusted columnists and a few selected other sources for input, added our own ideas, did some background work and came up with a list we shaped and pared down to our standard. It's an editor's choice, to be sure, and like last year, we're happy to find many more positive stories than we can account for in our latest two score. Eleven companies are repeats from last year (marked with asterisks).
Based on our decision to tilt toward vendors with customer traction that also seem agile or green field, we ruled out nominations for bigger outfits like TIBCO or Information Builders. It was clear though that the rebound of 2010 leading into this year has lifted larger businesses like those as much as it has an Aster Data (acquired by Teradata after we went to press) or Kognitio.
In the mix of high performance database, columnar, in-memory and appliance vendors, last year we chose to rule out many since the category had so many worthy contenders. But with acquisitions of Greenplum, Vertica and Netezza and others pending, we reopened the door to ParAccel, while wondering whether they and the others might still be around when next year's list arrives.
Compared to last year, even more providers on the list have ties to bigger service platforms like Salesforce.com. We almost broke out a SaaS-only list, though the database sellers and some others offer multiple ways to deploy. Software or service, where we might have fallen short is in areas of IT management and monitoring software and services, which, despite their obvious importance, we placed behind tools aimed at the front office and the top line.
So there you go. A lot of boats were lifted in 2010 and for what it's worth and for all the uncertainty that remains, we're pretty happy to have 2009 so far in our wake. See the complete list here.
