Event
Summary
Ardent has
announced a number of initiatives to strengthen their DataStage product, most
recently a partnership with NEON Systems (NASDAQ: NESY), a provider of OS/390-MVS
mainframe access through their NEON Shadow Direct middleware. This development,
coupled with their earlier acquisition of Prism Solutions, greatly improves
their ability to access legacy mainframe data. See TEC News Analysis Articles:
"Data
Warehouse Vendors Moving Towards Application Suites", September 29, and
"Ardent
Software Enters the SAP Data Extraction Market", September 13, 1999, for
additional details on new features.
On October
18, Ardent Software (NASDAQ: ARDT) reported record financial results for their
third quarter ended September 30, 1999. Pro forma earnings were reported to
have increased 64%. Total revenues for the third quarter increased 53% to $45.3
million from $29.7 million in the same quarter of 1998. Data warehouse revenues
increased 309% to $19.2 million in the third quarter of 1999, compared to $4.7
million in the third quarter of 1998. Peter Gyenes, chairman, president, and
CEO of Ardent, reported the addition of 114 new name accounts using Ardent's
data warehousing solutions, including AT&T Network Services, SmithKline Beecham,
and The Weather Channel.
Fig. 1
Market
Impact
The tremendous
rise in earnings indicates that Ardent has correctly sensed the direction in
which the Extract/Transform/Load segment of the data warehousing market is moving.
One of the traditional weaknesses of ETL tools has been the difficulty in accessing
mainframe legacy data. The solution provided by the Prism acquisition is host-based,
while NEON's Shadow Direct is a gateway which optimizes DB2 connectivity, simplifies
access, and allows the invocation of DB2 stored procedures. These legacy access
improvements, coupled with the addition of the ability to extract data from
enterprise resource planning packages, has made DataStage an attractive choice.
User
Recommendations
Ardent DataStage
should be included on any company's list of candidates for a data extraction
tool, especially when source data is located on IBM mainframes. Customers should
question whether Ardent is modifying their software to optimize NEON access
to DB2, or simply forming a consulting/marketing alliance.