Intelligent Enterprise

Appliance vendor Netezza has partnered with Kalido to deliver a data warehouse appliance that will make it possible for customers to roll out analytic applications much more quickly using Kalido's modeling tools and data warehousing software.

Under the partnership announced this week at the Gartner BI Summit in Washington, D.C., the two companies will also collaborate on customized hardware-software bundles for the life sciences, financial services and consumer-packaged goods industry. Based on the best practices determined by both companies, the combined products will include pre-built models, load processes and dashboards, the partners said.

The two companies claim their joint products will significantly reduce the time and effort needed to build a data warehouse. Netezza's appliances automate much of the database administration activities, such as hardware configuration and tuning; while Kalido software handles much of the development, such as physical schema management, data load, exception management, integrated master data management and business intelligence configuration.

Jim Baum, president and chief executive of Netezza, said adding Kalido software to the company's hardware makes it possible to deliver a BI appliance that can solve a number of business challenges, such as corporate performance, profitability analysis and third-party data management.

In a recent Forrester Research report, the analyst firm listed Netezza as suitable for niche deployments. While the company is building a credible enterprise data warehouse-grade appliance, Netezza primarily delivers special-purpose DW appliances for mid-market and tactical data mart deployments, Forrester said.

Forrester has identified Kalido as offering "end-to-end BI life-cycle management." Kalido last year started using partners to offer its BI software as a subscription-based managed service.

Kalido's Information Engine comprises three components: Information Modeler, Dynamic Information Warehouse and the Universal Information Director. The software is optimized for use with Microsoft's SQL Server Analysis Services. Kalido software also uses Microsoft's Excel spreadsheets to display BI data.