Can EII Scale China?

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.

Focus on the ROI of EII

Ever get the feeling that some people would rather throw stones than do anything constructive? It happens quite a bit in high tech. People do it because it’s easier to bash an older technology than truly justify a new one.

So I was saddened today when I saw that Dan Linstedt of Business Intelligence Network   was still having to deal with those that claim EII will kill the data warehouse. In Dan’s entry “Is an EDW Legacy Technology because of EII?” he has to (yet again) debunk the claims some are making about how EII will replace the data warehouse.

I dealt with this myself a few months ago in my entry “An EII/ETL Détente: Can’t We All Just Get Along?” So I won’t rehash the whole thing again. Suffice it to say that ETL and EII both have a place, and EDWs aren’t going away. In fact, many of our customers tap their DW as a data source in an EII deployment. That’s part of the reason we were pleased to become official Teradata partners, which we announced this spring. It not only helps to demonstrate that EII + DW can be a powerful combination, but it also allows us to work closely with Teradata and their customers to develop integration best practices.

The real focus for those considering EII (as with any new technology) should be how it saves time and money. At Ipedo, we’re working with our clients to show how EII can generate cost savings and productivity improvements in the following areas:

· Increased flexibility to respond to changes in IT requirements

· Better analyst utilization (see "Turning 60/40 into 40/60")

· Higher developer productivity

· Lower data consolidation costs

· Less expensive application maintenance

So focus on the ROI. Spend your time reading our new “Determining Financial Returns on Enterprise Information Integration” instead of the waning screeds from the misinformed.