Hi Alastair,
no problems...no upset at my end!!
Yes, many of us consider doing software development but don't get around t o it.....
On the ETL software I have developed I wrote the first version in 1995......I upgraded it bit by bit but figured the ETL tool ve ndors would do a much better job....
We did many jobs in the late 90s using this software and we were able to bid and build EDWs faster than the guys from Prism using my software. It
was a cobol generator then and the full source code is published on my personal web site
When I joined Ardent (1999) I gave them all my source code with the suggestion the features could make it into DataStage......alas , the answer was DataStage would never be able to do much of what I had written........so I didn't bother about it all again until I was complaining to Ralph one day just how limiting the ETL tools were still...(2002)...that by 2002 the vendor ETL tools could still not do what I had written in 1995 seemed a bit strange to me....especially sin ce the features I wrote were driven by direct needs of clients I worked for.
A little while later I had some enforced free time coutesy of the recessio n and so I figured I might as well completely re-write what I had previously
done to include all the features I wanted in an ETL tool for myself........since the ETL tool vendors didn't....
.and then when the
recession ended I could use it in my consulting business.....so I only wrote the software to really help my colleagues and I be more productive i n our consulting businesses.....
As it happened some clients wanted to go into production with it so I 'beefed it up' to be 'product quality' so it could be sold as a product......simple evolution really......
One example of how we use it is that we do not charge for use of the software in development. This is because SeETL makes us much more productive than anyone else in development and we use it as a 'key differentiator' in our consulting business.
I am sure SeETL will 'take off' because consultants who use it in their consulting business will have an automatic competitive advantage over consultants who do not......by a factor of at least 2x even if a vendor ETL tool is then used at a later date.
I know this because that is about what our competitive advantage is over anyone else.... :-)
When the word gets out that there is a free tool available that just about
halves the development cost of a BI project I am sure companies implementing Enterprise BI systems will be keen for their consultants to use it....or will get some other consultants who will use it..
.
I am not going to be very popular with the BI consulting community because
SeETL 'eats their lunch' by vastly reducing the fees they can earn for any
given project.....LOL!!
SeETL is open source so clients have the ability to provide feedback on what they want to see next and even point out how to do it.....a bout 60% of all the source code is 'public' and on my company web site for download.
I would also invite people here to use SeETL in development for free and provide feedback as to 'new features' desired.
I would love to have 100 development users using it for free telling us what they want next because all that good feedback goes into the next version.....and all those features will assist more and more com panies build BI Systems for less and less money.
I would love SeETL to evolving into some kind of 'open source community'
project which grows to support the vast majority of mid tier companies needs in the ETL space.....
We are committed to delivering Enterprise BI at the 'lowest possible total
cost of ownership over 5 years'...and we think that increasing ROI o f BI by driving down the costs is interesting to a lot of companies....of course, we also increase ROI by increasing returns....but that is much mor e about consulting than about software....
We shall soon see if there is a market for 'lowest cost provider' for Enterprise BI...
And yes...I make no apologies for the fact that I fully intend SeETL to contribute to my income... ;-)...
Best Regards
Peter
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Alastair McKeating via dw-select dw-select@Groups.ITtoolbox.com
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:31:55 -0500 (EST)
To: peter@peternolan.com
Subject: RE: RE:[dw-select] Re: RE:Re: RE:ETL tools comparison analysis
No worries. I misread your intent. Good luck. I alway thought I coul d do a better job than software vendors but never got around to trying my hand at
it.
" pete... via dw-select" wrote:
(It seems as though a couple of posts did not go through.)
Well Alastair,
there is no 'they'......my colleagues and I are funding oursel ves in the products we are developing. Any business benefit 'lost' is our own as we
are investing....and that is our choice....
We are building a platform that any company can afford.....we ar e building an end to end BI solution that delivers BI at the lowest possible cost to the greatest possible benefit. Something of a challenge I admit, but one
that I have chosen to take on. :-)
And what we are doing is in no way comparible to 'building apps in vb rather than buying an ERP.' What we are doing is comparable to taking the 'next step' beyond merely managing the transactions in a business...
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 20:16:56 -0400 (EDT)
And how much are they paying you and your team?
And how long will it take to build comparable functionality and how much business benefit will be lost waiting for it?
By that reasoning, people could avoid buying ERP systems and build an application in VB.
And Enterprise Edition is USD25K per CPU making it around USD100K minus whatever discount you get for a decent sized server....a lllloooonnnnngggggg way from 'free'.
This is why we are building our next product to Standard Edition.
We will then also investigate MySQL on Linux clusters......we are just about to release run time support for our ETL software on Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition. (We already have source code licenses for Linux)....so it will be possible to tie together a cluster of RHL servers with MySQL and have quite a passable EDW......all with out paying much at all in license fees....this is the way of the future..
..
-----Original Message-----
From: SQLUSA via dw-select [
Sent: 10 October 2006 11:30
To: pete...
True. You need Enterprise edition for serious work.
The standard edition much cheaper, but has severe limitations for
enterprise-level operations.