Last week, in a meeting at a large bank, I was asked a
question I am frequently asked: Yeah, but does it scale? In the EII market, where optimization of
federated queries is key, this question comes up a lot. What’s under the hood really matters.
I answered as I normally do: Yes, it scales. I went on about how we use cost-based
optimization (CBO) and intelligent caching to
handle even the most demanding queries and user loads. The answer satisfied (of course, they still want
to see it, which they will when we get an eval installed.)
Driving home on 101, I was listening to a story about China’s middle class on NPR (Podcast).
Now, Ipedo has been selling our software in China for over two years now, so we are believers in China. In fact, we were just honored by the Red
Herring for what we, as a U.S.-based startup, have been able to achieve China. (We’re what I’ve been describing as a “multinational
startup” to VCs.)
Anyway, despite our experience in China, what I heard next almost
caused me to rear-end the car in front of me as traffic slowed near SFO. According to predictions, the middle class in
China
-- about 25% of their population -- will be over 300 million people by 2010. China’s middle class alone will be larger than
the entire population of the United States today! These will be people with money to spend on
items more than a few larger multinational companies would like to sell – cars,
DVD players, mobile phones, movies, you name it.
Ipedo has been selling integration software in China in some
pretty big markets: utilities, banking, telco and government. And our installations continue to grow in
size. But when you think of the number
of customers that a U.S. bank or telco has compared to where China will be, we could be talking
about an order of magnitude difference.
China will become the largest IT market in Asia by
2007 at US$46B (IDC). And you wonder whether it
might someday become the largest IT market period. But one thing’s for sure, with China’s
emergence, the meanings of words “big” and “scale” will grow to whole new
levels in IT circles. Vendors, take note.
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