Catch Up on What You Missed—a 2018 DataDirect Retrospective

2018 was an eventful year—and 2019 is already off to a fantastic start. Look back at the data connectivity highlights of last year and get excited about the year to come.

Last year was an eventful one for the team at Progress DataDirect. We were honored to be invited to speak at conferences and receive awards, and of course continued to devote ourselves to solving all your data connectivity challenges. Before we get too far into 2019, I wanted to look back at the year that was, and then talk a little about some of the things we’re most excited about for this year.

Conferences

API World 2018

I had the wonderful opportunity to present my featured talk, “Data APIs Don’t Discriminate,” on the main stage at API World 2018. If you weren’t able to be there, you can find a summary of my talk right here. The short version is that the $30 billion API economy is exploding, and its time to expand your API strategy to include Data APIs that address the analytics needs of data developers.

Big Data London

In November I spoke at Big Data London, where I dissected the results from our annual Data and Analytics Survey. We had over 1,400 respondents in our survey and some really interesting trends emerged. Here are a few key findings:

• NoSQL adoption increased from 57% to 68% and big data from 61% to 68%
• Tableau (22%), Power BI (18%) and Qlik (16%) are leading the data visualization market
• 44% are challenged with integrating cloud data with on-premises data

Download the report yourself to see all the connectivity trends from 2018. I can’t wait to see what 2019 will bring.

And Many More

We attended several other conferences, including AWS Summit London, Strata and AWS Summit SFO. It’s always exciting to keep learning and sharing the latest in data connectivity, so next time you see any of these gleaming faces do stop by and talk data with us!

Good start to the day with @AdonisBrent @Cbale3 and Trisha. Lots of interest in #HybridCloud at #awssummit #london. Come visit @ProgressSW at booth B9. ✌️ pic.twitter.com/KJU3Yx2eQt

— Nishanth Kadiyala (@nish_kadi) May 9, 2018

Awards

We were honored to win a pair of notable awards in 2018.

The DBTA 100, an annual list of the “companies that matter most in data,” is put out by the Database Trends and Applications magazine. The list highlights companies that are addressing today’s evolving data demands for hardware, software and services. We’ve been on the DBTA list now six times out of six, and we appreciate the recognition each time and intend to continue working hard to keep our top spot.

The SD Times 100 list, their annual list of the “’Best in Show’ in Software Development,” features us among just 12 selections in the Database and Database Management category. The SD Times 100 recognizes innovation and leadership across a range of software categories and we’re thrilled to be included.

Webinars

One of the favorite things that we get to do is help you solve your data connectivity problems by sharing our knowledge through webinars. We host quite a few in any given year, but here are a few of my favorites.

• What’s New in REST APIs for Your Database (With Gartner and 1000+ of you)
• Certify Tableau, Power BI, Qlik Connectors with Your Enterprise Apps (With Tableau)
• Modern ETL Tools for Cloud and Big Data (With Gluent and a record number of you)

Success Stories

More and more enterprises are leveraging connectivity to drive more value with their data. Some of my favorite stories from the past year include a real estate firm in California and a global manufacturer that both owned troves of data across disparate sources, and who used Hybrid Data Pipeline to seamlessly integrate it all with Salesforce, saving them time and money. BlueBay, a global asset management firm, similarly leveraged our OpenAccess SDK to connect their highly-customized database with Tableau and deliver analytics-friendly data to its customers.

This quote says it all.

Data is at the heart of every business. To meet investor and regulatory requirements, as well as our internal reporting needs, our data must be easy to manage, re-use and scale. We wouldn’t have been able to achieve that without Progress. —Andy Archer, CTO, BlueBay Asset Management  (click to tweet)

This is why we do what we do! As the leading provider of connectivity services, we’re here to share our expertise and solve your problems in a way no other provider can.

Product Releases

We had many releases in 2018, highlighted by high-performing Salesforce JDBC/ODBC drivers that support the Bilk API and many enterprise-grade improvements to Hybrid Data Pipeline.

Hybrid Data Pipeline is now more IT-friendly than ever—it can be quickly deployed on any cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or any other), and is simple to integrate with existing IT infrastructure. Third-party JDBC support, OAuth 2 support, and much more debuted in 2018. You can check out the full release history here.

2019 and Beyond with the Autonomous REST Connector

We’ve kicked off 2019 strong with an exciting new offering, the Autonomous REST Connector. This new connector allows you to codelessly connect any application to any API—it’s never been easier for your analytical tools to query your REST APIs. You can finally get SQL over REST. We introduced this a few weeks back, and are eager to hear your feedback and how you’re using it. If you’re curious to try it out, as with all our drivers you can test it with a free 15-day trial.

We’ve got a lot more planned for 2019, so stay tuned for more updates to come or feel free to get in touch if you have any questions. Hope your new years are off to an excellent start, and here’s looking forward to a great 2019.