A Look Back at Design Previews

Sometimes we all need a little validation. And while the goal for our annual OEM Design Previews is to inform our customers and partners about our plans, it was nonetheless wonderful to get such great feedback and, yes, validation in our recent Boston Design Preview. This was my first time meeting many of our largest partners, and I was excited to share our plans for new Connect drivers for Hadoop and many SaaS-based sources, and announce our market-changing new connectivity-as-a-service offering in the cloud based on Connect technology.

But the big surprise for me (and maybe not such a big surprise for my colleagues who've been with DataDirect longer) was how enthusiastically our biggest partners and market leaders in their respective spaces praised Connect for its quality, support, breadth, and performance. We spend a lot of effort at DataDirect to make sure we're the best and the fastest, and you told us loud-and-clear that we're succeeding. When I got back from Boston, there was an e-mail from one of our partners who attended saying that DataDirect was "a true technology partner with the product roadmap of the Connect series right in line with our vision of Big Data and Cloud Computing."

On behalf of all my colleagues at DataDirect, I want to extend a big thank you to each of you that joined us for one of our OEM Design Previews and a special thank you to those who shared feedback. Sometimes the best ideas for product innovation come from customers, and for that we are grateful.