SURVEY CONFIRMS: END USERS ARE OPEN TO DATA WAREHOUSING AS A SERVICE MODEL

Published 27th June 2008

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Kognitio media contact:
Federica Monsone
A3 Communications
+44 (0)1252 875 203
fred.monsone@a3communications.co.uk



SURVEY CONFIRMS: END USERS ARE OPEN TO DATA WAREHOUSING AS A SERVICE MODEL

Kognitio-Commissioned Poll Confirms Confidence in DaaS


BRACKNELL, UNITED KINGDOM — 26th June 2008 — Kognitio®, a leading global provider of business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing solutions, today unveiled the findings of an independent survey of 100 UK organisations, uncovering their position on the Data warehousing as a Service (DaaS) delivery model. Despite this innovative approach has only been available for less than a year, it has already positively grabbed the attention of end users. The poll in fact showed that on average, in order to eliminate set-up, administration and running costs, more than one in three respondents (38%) would trade an on-site system for an on-demand ‘data warehousing as a service’ one where applications such as data analytics are hosted by a third party. The survey was carried out by market research firm Vanson Bourne in April 2008 and interviewed IT decision-makers in businesses across the financial services, manufacturing, retail, distribution, transport and utilities markets.

The most receptive group were the respondents in the retail, distribution, transport and utilities companies, with 44% of respondents happy to switch from the traditional in-house system for a service model. They were followed by the manufacturers, which ticked the yes box in 36% of the cases. Interestingly, the financial services respondents are instead still leaning towards the on-site approach (48%) rather than the new DaaS one (28%); this might be due to the fact that such organisations often have large IT departments and enough resources to purchase, manage and support most systems directly. This theory is also underpinned by the fact that the survey shows that smaller companies tend to prefer the service approach. The Kognitio-commissioned study in fact revealed that 42% of organisations with between 1,000 and 3,000 employees favour the new model, whereas this figure drops to 34% for businesses with a staff greater than 3,000.

“Wherever you look today in the IT industry, we are moving towards a service model; this is a natural evolution because end users no longer want to incur large upfront costs to buy hardware or licence software only then to spend even more money maintaining these solutions,” said Roger Llewellyn, Kognitio’s CEO. “In addition, DaaS is good news for system administrators and data analysts alike; it eliminates the pressures applied by the business on the IT department because users can query the data directly by relying on an outsourced service, and it provides results much quicker than in-house solutions can, usually within days instead of months.”

Kognitio launched its DaaS offering in late 2007, when most competing vendors were still focussed on the traditional and rigid way of delivering data warehousing solutions to the market. Thanks to DaaS, organisations with limited financial and staff resources can conduct large-scale data analytics projects very cost-effectively. When compared to in-house data warehousing solutions DaaS offers a number of advantages such as:

• Fast execution - with no software or hardware to buy, install, maintain, or upgrade, on-demand data analytics allows businesses to eliminate the delay associated with the deployment stages. Hence analysis projects can be brought to life quickly and easily;

• Flexibility - the DaaS on-demand model eliminates set up, maintenance and servicing tasks, allowing the IT team to focus on other areas, while simultaneously enabling business users to run even complex data analytics queries directly, quickly and easily;

• Lower costs - DaaS users benefit from being charged for usage only, in granular terabytes/hour increments. In addition, they also benefit from a lower cost of operation because they have access to an optimised IT environment and a dedicated support team on a utility basis. Also, finance directors can amortise their operational expenditure costs across the given contract period; this is much more appealing to them than having to incur large capital expenditure costs for software licenses and hardware that may not get used.

By using DaaS organisations can gain competitive advantage by exploiting the untapped information asset they already hold.

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About Kognitio

Kognitio (www.kognitio.com) is an innovative, technology-rich company, providing leading-edge solutions to business problems that require the acquisition, rationalisation and analysis of large or complex data. Kognitio's WX2 is the industry’s fastest and most scalable analytical database on the market, giving firms the ability to turn their raw data into valuable business insight fast, and empowering its customers to realise comprehensive answers to critical business questions.

Globally headquartered in Bracknell, UK, with North American headquarters in Chicago, Kognitio delivers competitive advantage to its clients across a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, financial services and utilities. More information is available from the company’s website or by phone at +44 (0) 1344 300 770.