On the back of blooming second quarter results, Ardent Software Inc’s CFO says the company is preparing itself for huge growth in the data warehousing market by the end of the fourth quarter. Last week, the Westboro, Massachusetts-based company, reported second quarter net profits up 215% at $3.0m on revenues up 5.5% at $29.2m. But CFO Chuck Kane says the real success story lies behind its data warehouse business, revenues for which grew 232% from last year and 40% from the previous quarter. While those figures only represent about 12% of the company’s total business revenue, Kane says the percentage is on the increase. By the end of the fourth quarter we expect 15% to 16% of our total revenue to come from our data warehouse business, which averages out to about 14 or 15% for the full year. And we’re expecting that ramp up to continue. He added, The relational database market is extremely lucrative but we see data warehousing as a huge potential growth area. Still, by far the majority – some 83% – of Ardent’s annual revenue is generated by sales of its Pick and relational database products, while the remaining 5% comes from its object offerings. Next week, Kane says the company will unveil enhancements to its existing data warehouse product, Data Stage, and a completely new tool set, called Meta Stage, will be launched later this year. Ardent Software was formed by the union of Pick-poppers VMark Software Inc and Unidata Inc and the French object house O2. Ardent gets its data warehouse technology from VMark who launched the current product, Data Stage, at the beginning of 1997. But Kane added that the new software, Meta Stage, will also feature technology incorporated from Dovetail Software Inc, which Ardent purchased in June (CI No 3,432).
