I'm here at the Objectivity WorldView 2005 User's Conference. It's in Bethesda Maryland - looks like a large government audience. The first thing is the stock "Here's the Company" talk from the CEO. I suppose I shouldn't sound so jaundiced, but there it is :)

Here's the interesting piece of information - since 2001, the size of the average database has quadrupled. "Data is the capital of the new economy". We'e now into exabyte databases [ed] -can relational really scale to handle that if you have to do anything that resembles a complex join? I suppose Alan knows better than I do :)

He's focusing in on the audience (in particular, the security audience) with the "need to sift out the wheat from the huge piles of chaff" bit.

Ok, here we go with some of the examples/target markets:

• Security agencies (pattern detection across multiple disparate data sources)
• Investigation (FBI, et. al.) doing much the same thing
• Environmental control (lots of disparate data coming in from various sorts of sensors [ed] - here's where manifest typing just gets in the way.
• Telecommunications - usage of Objectivity here tends to be embedded in other apps. Pros touted here: reducing time to market, simplifying complex data types, OO reuse
• Scientific applications - genomics, bio-informatics. Dealing with huge volumes of data

Key areas targeted: Customer focus, innovation, platform for growth, drive increased adoption of OO (and OODB) technology. One of the things being touted is what they might call "mass customization" of the product within their customer base. Put another way, this is services led product direction. On the performance side, they've been focused on enhancements to their query engine - seems to be customer/service led. Heavily focused on bringing in additional partners who add value in various niche areas.

Here's a new thing - they are about to introduce a rental (subscription) license in order to lower the barrier to entry to their technology. Subscription plans are breaking out all over.The other big take away here - Objectivity is profitable and growing.