Diamond Notes

I finally get to talk a little about a company that I have been having discussions with since either December or November (can’t remember actually). I posted a small taste about Kickfire last week when it was revealed that they are one of the major sponsors of the MySQL Users Conference.

Well, I finally get to write a little more.

Kickfire will be bringing a revolutionary product out this year. It is a MySQL appliance that contains a new storage engine and the equivalent of a graphics accelerator chip for your SQL read queries. And yes, that is really what it is. The hardware component parallelizes query processing and brings massive performance gains to your reporting and data warehouse setup. The software component employs column store and compression to minimize disk I/O. It is a fascinating paradigm shift in thought about how we deal with large dataset issues.

I have seen tests comparing what will be their product to other data warehousing products. It is phenomenal the performance of the product, but what will really blow you away is the price differences between the competing products. While Kickfire hasn’t released their final pricing, testing results or a release date (in fact, their website isn’t even up yet) it won’t be much longer and it will be worth the wait.

They will be presenting their technology at the conference so it will be a good chance for any conference attendees to get a first hand look at Kickfire and their coming products.

Don’t forget on the 15th of this month the Spring issue of MySQL Magazine comes out. I have a full length article about Kickfire in the magazine.