TD Canada Trust
been around better productivity Shiau also noted the ISV
and reduced costs, Engel added. population is perhaps more
“We’ve been able to reallocate aligned with Microsoft than rival
resources to other departments database vendors. A recent report
deploys SQL Server to more important tasks and have from the firm (sponsored by
pushed the whole notion of drill Microsoft) claims that 77 per cent
down capabilities into our busi- of ISVs believe SQL Server 2005
ness partners’ hands, alleviating a is the most critical enterprise
lot of ad hoc requests.” database platform for supporting
Rollout enhances IT staff productivity,
reduces costs BY RYAN B. PATRICK
What: Microsoft Corp’s
SQL Server 2005
Last month, Microsoft CEO future growth.
Steve Ballmer said SQL Server But Oracle Canada’s David
2005 should eliminate any “last Rumer countered that claim.
bit of hesitancy” that enterprise Noting that the study was paid
While Microsoft features capabilities such as users may have about the for by Microsoft, he said the
Corp’s SQL Server database partitioning, parallel database’s ability to scale. current release of SQL 2005 still
2005 was officially index creation, 64-bit processor Microsoft has long been a lags behind Oracle’s 10g database
launched a little over support and, by the middle of major force within the low-end in terms of functionality.
a month ago, TD Canada Trust next year, database mirroring. Windows database market. Ac- The senior director of mar-
reports that it is already using the TD Canada Trust — which has cording to Stamford, Conn.-based keting for the Mississauga, Ont.-
database tool to streamline its moved to a 64-bit computing en- IT research firm Gartner Inc., based firm said the fact that
report-generation processes. vironment — is taking advantage the company controlled exactly it’s taken Microsoft five years
According to Lawrence of some of these new features. half of that part of the market to release the database upgrade
Engel, associate vice-president, The bank used to consolidate that the shift increases the firm’s last year. But Microsoft’s share of is evidence of that. “If you’re
risk strategy development and information from a variety of overall computing capability. “We the overall database market was working with SQL 2005, you’ve
risk retail management for the disparate sources, and this often needed a solution that would al- about 20 per cent. The Redmond, got a lot of limitations in the
Toronto-based financial institu- required IT staff to manually low us to basically cut through a Wash.-based software giant hopes choices you can make. You’re
tion, TD Canada was one of the input data into Excel spreadsheets significant amount of information to use SQL Server 2005 to chip locked into Windows, you’re
beta testers for SQL Server 2005. for analysis. The bank’s retail over a very [short] period of time, away at the high-end strongholds locked into a specific develop-
Released last month, the risk analysts were spending a and [offer us] the flexibility to of Oracle Corp.’s 10g database ment environment…we’ve gone
feature set of SQL Server 2005 great deal of time generating data engineer this sort of infrastruc- and IBM Corp.’s DB2. with open standards allowing
includes embedded reporting reports, Engel said. ture ourselves given the resources According to one industry customers to work on Windows
and data analysis tools, and an He said TD Canada Trust of our department.” insider, the SQL server upgrades as well as Linux.”
integrated data management and needed a better method to coordi- The current setup, he said, was are long overdue, and something TD Canada Trust initially
analysis platform. These features nate more than 50 types of reports developed over a four-month end users have long waited for. looked at other database offer-
are designed to help enterprises generated for its executives and period. The new environment SQL Server 2005 represents ings, but ultimately decided that
run business applications and credit centres nationwide. features OLAP functionality, the first upgrade of the database SQL Server 2005 was a more cost-
handle vital information. The choice of SQL Server runs on a HP (ProLiant DL585 software in five years, said effective solution for the bank,
Microsoft appears to be 2005 is in line with the bank’s Opteron) hardware platform, and Warren Shiau, an IT analyst with and one that could handle the
targeting enterprise-class users move to a 64-bit computing handles 30GB of data each month. Toronto-based research firm, The firm’s high-end IT environment,
with this latest release — which environment, Engel said, adding The impact on the IT team has Strategic Counsel. Engel said. 058780
The big deal: five
years in the making, SQL
Server 2005 is chockablock
with improvements aimed at
making the database a better
fit in demanding enterprise
environments.
IBM pushes data middleware tools
BRIEFS
ADVANTAGE
DATABASE SERVER
RELEASED
BY RYAN B. PATRICK DWL (customer data integration content, such as images and IAnywhere Solutions Inc., a subsidi-
soft ware); Ascential Software catalogues, while the Ascential BUSINESS OBJECTS ary of Sybase Inc. in Dublin, Calif.,
IBM last month launched mid- (enterprise information integra- Software purchase brought core UPGRADES BI APP released Advantage Database
dleware offerings the vendor says tion); and SRD (identity resolu- tools for moving and synchroniz- Business Objects SA last month Server 8.0. Advantage is a client/
will help enterprises deal with the tion software). ing data among repositories. released an upgrade to its suite server data management system
incomplete data scattered various On the tools side, IBM’s pur- On the analysis front, SRD’s of business intelligence software, targeted at Borland Delphi and
databases and formats. chase of Venetica added technol- identity-resolution software helps including a new application that C++ Builder developers. Version
According to Justin LaFayette, ogy for dealing with unstructured companies discover “non-obvi- aims to let nontechnical users 8.0 includes the newly designed
director, EMDS product strategy ous” relationships among their generate reports and queries from Advantage Data Architect module.
for IBM Canada. the new IBM customers, while DWL’s technol- company data. The current release Pricing starts at US$645 for a
middleware — WebSphere ogy helps consolidate customer of BusinessObjects XI, which five-user license. An unlimited user
Product Center, Customer Center data from multiple enterprise includes reporting tools gained license is US$7,870.
13.8%
According to IT research firm IDC,
enterprises are looking to invest in
master data management (MDM)
tools. This is motivated by business
goals such as compliance and
supply chain efficiency. A renewed
focus on information governance
should push the market for master
data management to US$10.4
billion by 2009 with a compound
annual growth rate over the next
five years of 1 3.8 per cent.
Source: IDC Master Data Management:
Worldwide Software and Services
Forecast, 2005-2009 (2005)
Version 6, and Integration Center repositories, IBM said. through the company’s purchase
— comprise a “information LaFayette said the tools are a of Crystal Decisions, came out late SAP BOOSTS RETAIL
service” solution. part of IBM’s “master data” ap- last year. Release 2 includes a new SOFTWARE
The soft ware is designed to proach. Last month, IBM’s US$15 application called BusinessObjects EXPERTISE
accelerate the adoption of service billion software division unveiled Intelligent Question, which lets us- SAP AG plans to acquire Khimetrics
oriented architectures (SOA) and a newly formed business unit, ers create queries in their everyday Inc., a U. S. customer-demand man-
to help customers remove the dubbed master data management language by answering questions agement software vendor with
traditional barriers to informa- (MDM), a term IBM uses to from a series of drop-down menus. a focus on the retail market. The
tion sharing, LaFayette said. describe its platform of informa- The application aims to prevent move follows the Germany-based
The tools are primarily a con- tion integration wares. users from making invalid queries ERP (enterprise resource planning)
solidation of products acquired For example, WebSphere by steering them through the company’s September announce-
in an IBM shopping spree that Customer Center Version 6, questions they ask. It should help ment that it would purchase retail
included the purchase of Trigo features improved integration to bring business intelligence to a player Triversity Inc., which special-
Technologies (product informa- and streamlined implementation wider audience of users, according izes in selling customer-centric,
tion middleware); Toronto-based SEE IBM PAGE 19 to Business Objects. point-of-sale software.
