To check the owners of a domain you can use www.checkdomain.com.

When checking www.olapreport.com I was extremely surprised to find out that
the domain is in fact owned by "Creethe, Richmond and Associates" with the
contact domain as www.creethrichman.com

What are the general market vendor thoughts about this?

Regards
Howard Taylor
Howard.Taylor (AT) o2olap (DOT) com
www.o2olap.com

Correction: Administrative and technical contacts


"Howard Taylor [O2OLAP]" <Howard.Taylor (AT) o2olap (DOT) com> wrote

- As the Managing Director of Optima Publishing Ltd, an independent
publishing house, I can confirm that it owns both The OLAP Report title and
the www.olapreport.com domain. No vendors hold shares in Optima.

- The OLAP Report has been published since 1995, originally in periodic
paper editions and latterly only on the Web.

- It is, and has always been, strictly vendor-independent, and takes no
advertising or sponsorship. This provides it with the regularly-excercised
freedom to be critical as required.

- Nigel Pendse is the editor and in the interests of maintaining his fierce
neutrality, he has a policy of declining invitations to serve as a director
of OLAP vendor companies and does not invest or trade in OLAP vendor
stocks.

- Both Nigel Pendse and Richard Creeth have been listed as the main authors
of The OLAP Report ever since the first edition in 1995.

- Vendors do not pay for their products to be reviewed and they do not even
have to subscribe to it. We do not believe that any industry analysts
maintain stricter standards of neutrality than The OLAP Report. See
http://www.olapreport.com/about.htm

- Creeth, Richman & Associates, Inc (not Creethe, Richmond and Associates)
was the exclusive distributor for The OLAP Report in the Americas from 1995
to earlier this year. As such, it originally set up and owned the
www.olapreport.com domain, though content has always been exclusively under
the control of Nigel Pendse as the editor. Optima purchased this domain
from CRA earlier this year, though some sources may still show the previous
owndership. There has been no change in the management or content of the
site.

- The OLAP Report, not vendors, decide whether a product should be
included. It is not the policy to include reviews of minor products from
obscure start-up vendors with very few live customers as most of the many
such vendors soon disappear without trace. Such vendors cannot simply
"submit their products for review," expecting free publicity, and perhaps
some resent it.

This information is all in the public domain, well known and most of it is
years old. I therefore cannot understand why anyone should be surprised by
any of it.

David Harvey
Managing Director
Optima Media

http://www.optimamedia.co.uk

David

Some OLAP vendors do support the OLAP Report while others use other sources
such as Gartner (http://www3.gartner.com/Init) to review their products and
to publish user stories. The choice of the vendor to supply their product
for review could be based on various material qualitative factors. O2OLAP
will be publishing a list of factors to be considered which I hope will be
expanded on by the industry and used as a basis for review of market
commentary and their coverage of OLAP products. The maintenance and final
determination of these factors would be maintained by say, The OLAP Council
(http://www.olapcouncil.org/) where various vendors are represented. The end
result, hopefully a fair set of factors. Hopefully this would include open
disclosures of market analyst relationships within the OLAP vendors, speaker
and consulting revenue sources, if applicable.

Briefly, my experience within the OLAP market, with Nigel Pendse and the
OLAP Report include;

1. Entered the OLAP market in 1991/1992, i.e. before the term OLAP was even
coined.
2. Only purchased the first copy in 1995. I have not found the need to
purchase another.
3. Various user stories from clients supported by Dimension Software, my
previous company that I owned, have appeared in the OLAP report. These
included Reuters, Henry Ansbacher and possibly another few. Dimension
Software had around 75 % of the Applix TM1 UK market before being sold
around 1997. Per their "Services and Products" page, Creeth, Richman &
Associates primarily support Applix TM1 and their TM1 dependent product.
4. Used Nigel as speaker at various client user conferences. I think the
last time we used Nigel was probably in 1997.
5. In 2000, recommended to Reuters that they refer to Nigel Pendse when they
were considering moving to the Microsoft's Analysis Services platform. This
they did.
6. Last direct email correspondence with Nigel, except on forums, 7 October
2002.
7. 2000 to date - developed and marketed Microsoft Analysis Services product
O2OLAP for Excel.
8. May 2003 - Invited to Microsoft's Redmond office and met the Analysis
Services team. Thank you.

My experience is hardly "start-up". From being in the OLAP arena since 1991
I know that publicity is not FREE. If I was not resilient I would have left
the OLAP industry a long time ago.

Regards
Howard Taylor
Chartered Accountant CA(SA)
Howard.Taylor (AT) o2olap (DOT) com


"David Harvey" <david (AT) optimamedia (DOT) co.uk> wrote

David

Some OLAP vendors do support the OLAP Report while others use other sources
such as Gartner (http://www3.gartner.com/Init) to review their products and
to publish user stories. The choice of the vendor to supply their product
for review could be based on various material qualitative factors. O2OLAP
will be publishing a list of factors to be considered which I hope will be
expanded on by the industry and used as a basis for review of market
commentary and their coverage of OLAP products. The maintenance and final
determination of these factors would be maintained by say, The OLAP Council
(http://www.olapcouncil.org/) where various vendors are represented. The end
result, hopefully a fair set of factors. Hopefully this would include open
disclosures of market analyst relationships within the OLAP vendors, speaker
and consulting revenue sources, if applicable.

Briefly, my experience within the OLAP market, with Nigel Pendse and the
OLAP Report include;

1. Entered the OLAP market in 1991/1992, i.e. before the term OLAP was even
coined.
2. Only purchased the first copy in 1995. I have not found the need to
purchase another.
3. Various user stories from clients supported by Dimension Software, my
previous company that I owned, have appeared in the OLAP report. These
included Reuters, Henry Ansbacher and possibly another few. Dimension
Software had around 75 % of the Applix TM1 UK market before being sold
around 1997. Per their "Services and Products" page, Creeth, Richman &
Associates primarily support Applix TM1 and their TM1 dependent product.
4. Used Nigel as speaker at various client user conferences. I think the
last time we used Nigel was probably in 1997.
5. In 2000, recommended to Reuters that they refer to Nigel Pendse when they
were considering moving to the Microsoft's Analysis Services platform. This
they did.
6. Last direct email correspondence with Nigel, except on forums, 7 October
2002.
7. 2000 to date - developed and marketed Microsoft Analysis Services product
O2OLAP for Excel.
8. May 2003 - Invited to Microsoft's Redmond office and met the Analysis
Services team. Thank you.

My experience is hardly "start-up". From being in the OLAP arena since 1991
I know that publicity is not FREE. If I was not resilient I would have left
the OLAP industry a long time ago.

Regards
Howard Taylor
Chartered Accountant CA(SA)
Howard.Taylor (AT) o2olap (DOT) com

"David Harvey" <david (AT) optimamedia (DOT) co.uk> wrote

I highly recommend the OLAP Report to any company evaluating OLAP products.
Nigel knows his stuff.

tom @ the domain below
www.tomchester.net

Agree, Nigel knows his stuff but lately he has been showing not too subtle
bias towards Microsoft.

paschal.

"Tom Chester" (publicNOSPAM (AT) tomchester (DOT) net) writes:

I concur , the subscription cost was well worth it , and in my
experience Nigel has been more than helpful with any questions i have
asked him...

Mark