I’ve just got back from TDWI in Las Vegas where we spent a couple of days showing off our bi tools, Toad for Data Analysts and Quest Business Intelligence Studio. The latter has been in beta since the fall, and we are very proud to announce that today it is generally available. You can download a full version of the product for trial from www.quest.com.

Quest Business Intelligence Studio enables users to connect to sanctioned IT systems without impacting IT and do self-service data integration and self-service business analysis. I think this cartoon sums it up best:

Quest Business Intelligence removes the tension that exists between IT and the business

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The big Hadoop news of the week is that Oracle has partnered with Cloudera to bring their Hadoop expertise to Oracle’s Big Data Appliance. As Computer World notes the prevailing wisdom had been that Oracle would put together their own distribution, and it may seem surprising that the world’s largest database vendor would use someone else’s database software. The next year will certainly be interesting – is this a try before you buy move for Oracle? Or is it rinse and repeat of what they did with RedHat; partner first, then try to take them out?
Anyway, the net of all of this for Quest and Toad for Cloud Databases is positive. Quest users want to be assured that Toad has them covered whatever the database landscape looks like and however it changes. We brought our product to market early, and have broad support for the Hadoop ecosystem with HBase and Hive support, as well as having partnered with Cloudera in 2010 on the Quest Data Connector for Oracle and Hadoop , a high-speed data connector to move data between Oracle and Hadoop that unlike Oracle’s Hadoop loader enables you to move data in both directions. We also have support for other systems – Cassandra, MongoDB, Amazon, and Microsoft SQL Azure and Azure Table Services. In 2012 we’ll be adding support for Oracle’s noSQL database and a couple of others that I’ll write about as our roadmap gets firmed up.

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Toad for Cloud Databases Now Supports MongoDB

August 16, 2011

TweetIt’s been a fast, furious and fascinating year since we first launched Toad for Cloud Databases just over a year ago. The noSQL landscape continues to evolve, with Hadoop already finding its place in the enterprise. In the development and start-up community 10Gen’s MongoDB continues its rapid adoption – its document-oriented approach designed with development [...]

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Branding vs Positioning: how they’re different…with a use case!

July 28, 2011

Tweet  This vblog (above) helps to describe the difference between ‘branding’ and ‘positioning’…they’re the same thing right? Nope. Sometimes when they begin an engagement with a customer, they initially want us want to dive straight into the branding of their business. More often than not when beginning these discussions, we and our customers find that [...]

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What is ‘Positioning’? A 2 Blokes mini vblog

July 27, 2011

TweetHello! We’re going to be posting short video blog posts that describe the service offerings that we provide. First up, as the title indicates, is ‘positioning’. I don’t think we can overstate how important clarity in your positioning is for the success of your business. Whether already established or starting up, a thorough positioning exercise [...]

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Do you need a new website?

July 11, 2011

TweetWe’re in the midst of a website upgrade for 2BlokesMarketing. Now we have real customers we need a real website and our generic wordpress site isn’t cutting it any longer (if ever it did). Andy and I have been discussing usability, navigability, layout and design. About three months ago we worked with a SQL Server [...]

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Set up your call to action for success – get customers to push your button

June 2, 2011

TweetA “call to action” is the crucial element of any promotion you may be running, whether it’s an email blast, landing page, site element, etc. You’re probably wondering “oh my gosh Andy, why, why why??? Well, it’s the single most important action that you want your end user to take, so you really need to [...]

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How to enter a new market

June 1, 2011

TweetTraditionally dairy products such as milk, cheese, yoghurt were not part of Thai culture and cuisine. The ‘milk’ role being primarily fulfilled through coconut milk. Now however, dairy products are enjoying unprecedented growth in the country, and can be found on street vendor carts, in supermarkets, restaurants, and specialty milk bars. The graph below shows [...]

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Using landing pages to convert freeware users to paying customers…an experiment.

May 24, 2011

TweetIt’s an ongoing mystery for our employer – “How do we convert users of our freeware products to paying customers???”. Any business that offers a free product is hoping to get these folks that use the freebie to see the value in the pay for product and do just that – pay for it (“the [...]

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2 Blokes experiences the “power of crowdsourcing” first hand…and get a logo, yay!

May 18, 2011

TweetIn an effort to turn this blog into a proper website – which we’ve decided to do - had us discussing the branding of this site. (As much as we would like to keep the McKenzie brothers, I’m afraid that MGM might not be on board.) Initially, we thought to contract out the job, but then [...]

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