InterSystems

Last Updated: 23rd January 2018
Analyst Coverage: Philip Howard

InterSystems Corporation is a privately owned company that was founded in the USA in 1978 and it opened its first office in the UK in 1986. While the company does not make its figures generally available, it is a $446m+ company. Apart from North America it has offices throughout Europe (including Russia and Israel), across both South America and South East Asia, and in Australia, South Africa and the Gulf in a total of 33 countries. It also has distributors around the globe, with InterSystems Caché installations in more than 90 countries in all.

Historically the company has largely relied on VARs and ISVs for its sales, with a relatively small direct sales force. While the company’s partner base remains a major strength (it now has over 1,300 partners) InterSystems has also expanded its direct sales force to deal with the large corporations that demand a direct relationship and because of the company’s healthcare applications. In recent years this has also placed an increased focus on working with large systems integrators and other service and technology partnerships.

Company Info

Telephone: +1 (617) 621-0600

Company Links

Caché

Last Updated: 7th March 2013

What it does

We have no doubt that Caché offers better performance both for the developer and in production than comparable systems from much more well-known vendors and, indeed, the same would apply if you compared Caché with many environments that you not think of as being comparable. While these benefits are accentuated in complex application environments they actually apply to any and all sectors.

Let us be clear, Caché can do what conventional transactional databases can do, only better. Not only that, it can support operational business intelligence at the same time, or master data management or complex event processing. We don't know of any other database, anywhere, that can make those claims in a credible manner. Of course, Caché is not just a database but also a development environment and it wouldn't be what it is as a database if it wasn't for the development tooling, and the latter wouldn't be as flexible and powerful as it is without the database. We are big fans: you should go and look at Caché.

Markets and channels

While InterSystems has customers in all vertical sectors, the company has a particular focus on healthcare and financial services. For example, Ensemble (remember that Ensemble is effectively a layer implemented on top of Caché) has a dominant position in the UK's National Health Service. However, looking forward, InterSystems has the potential to be a significant player in areas such as social media analysis (because of iKnow), smart metering and other machine-to-machine environments.

Users

Users of Caché specifically, as opposed to any other products, include Press Computer Systems (PCS), Epic Systems, The Belgian Police, BNP Paribas, Epic Systems, The European Space Agency (this is a 'big data' implementation), IBM, Johns Hopkins, Optalert (a sensor-based 'breakthrough application'), SPAR, TD Ameritrade, Whitbread and many others.

Technology

Caché is the company's database and development environment which acts as the basis for all of the company's other products: InterSystems Ensemble (a platform for connected applications), InterSystems HealthShare and InterSystems TrakCare (specialised solutions for the healthcare sector, DeepSee (for embedding analytics into operational applications) and iKnow (which offers a text analytics capability). DeepSee and iKnow (which can run together) are collectively known as Active Analytics.

Caché, which was first introduced in 1997, is available to run under HP-UX, AIX, HP Tru64 UNIX, HP OpenVMS, Sun Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows (various versions) and the Apple Macintosh. In modern parlance the product is a NoSQL database though, of course, the product existed long before anyone came up with the term.

Caché is, on the one hand, a database and, on the other, a rapid application development environment. As a database the product uses a multi-dimensional storage engine. This means that if you want to use it for relational tables then you can do so, because a table is just a two-dimensional array. Alternatively, the engine supports an object-oriented approach (with no impedance mismatch) that allows you to store business objects, customers or patients, for example, as complete entities without having to disperse this information across multiple tables with all the complications of referential integrity that you would require when using a relational approach. There is a free-to-download version of Caché that provides just the storage engine.

As a development environment you can continue to use a relational paradigm if you wish, for the environment supports SQL as well as a wide range of popular programming languages. However, there are also Caché-specific development capabilities that take advantage of tight integration with the database to provide superior performance. In some cases this integration has also been extended to standard languages such as Java. Note that you are not limited to any particular choice: it is common, for example, for Caché developers to use InterSystems' provided capabilities for some purposes but still use SQL for reporting, say.

Services

InterSystems offers a worldwide central response centre as well as local support and individual support groups for each of its main product lines. The company also provides a specialised portal on its web site for developers as well as a formal education and training programme. There is also a campus programme for students and faculty.

GlobalsDB

Last Updated: 10th February 2015

What it does

Globals DB is a NoSQL Database offering by InterSystems. It is free to download. It exposes the multi-dimensional data engine that lies at the core of the company's commercial product Caché. It can be deployed as a document store, a key value store or as a graph database. In the latter category it can act as a true graph database with index-free adjacency (that is, nodes point to adjacent nodes without the need for indexing). In theory, because of the multi-model nature of the engine you could also deploy GlobalsDB as a triple store or RDF database if you preferred.

Markets and channels

As a free product the intention behind GlobalsDB is to encourage a broader community of users and developers that are familiar with InterSystems' technology, that will/may in due course wish to adopt the full Caché product.

InterSystems has customers in all vertical sectors, though the company has a particular focus on healthcare and financial services. Looking forward, InterSystems has the potential to be a significant player in areas such as social media analysis, smart metering and other machine-to-machine environments (the Internet of Things).

Users

There are no case studies or user details on the GlobalsDB website. However, users of Caché specifically, as opposed to any other InterSystems' products, include Press Computer Systems (PCS), Epic Systems, The Belgian Police, BNP Paribas, The European Space Agency (this is a 'big data' implementation), IBM, Johns Hopkins, Optalert (a sensor-based 'breakthrough application'), SPAR, TD Ameritrade, Whitbread and many others.

Technology

Caché is the company's database and development environment which acts as the basis for all of the company's other products, while GlobalsDB is the database engine inside Caché.

Caché (and therefore GlobalsDB), which was first introduced in 1997, is available to run under HP-UX, AIX, HP Tru64 UNIX, HP OpenVMS, Sun Solaris, Linux, Microsoft Windows (various versions) and the Apple Macintosh. In modern parlance the product is a NoSQL database though, of course, the product existed long before anyone came up with the term.

As a database GlobalsDB uses a multi-dimensional storage engine. This means that if you want to use it for relational tables then you can do so, because a table is just a two-dimensional array. Alternatively, the engine supports an object-oriented approach (with no impedance mismatch) that allows you to store business objects, customers or patients, for example, as complete entities without having to disperse this information across multiple tables with all the complications of referential integrity that you would require when using a relational approach. Similarly, you can build your own NoSQL implementations on top of GlobalsDB: key-value stores, document stores, graph databases or customised database types.

Currently supported APIs for GlobalsDB are Java, Node.js and .NET. The company will add new APIs subject to user demand.

Services

For GlobalsDB there is documentation available online, along with FAQs, a forum and blogs.

More broadly, InterSystems offers a worldwide central response centre as well as local support and individual support groups for each of its main product lines. The company also provides a specialised portal on its website for developers as well as a formal education and training programme. There is also a campus programme for students and faculty.

What's Innovative?

InterSystems data technologies - the innovative database platform that you've never heard of

What's Changed?

InterSystems and Caché

Where's The Value?

Coming soon.

Solutions

The company offers the following solutions:

Caché
GlobalsDB

Downloads and Further Information

Further resources to broaden your knowledge:

SQL Engines on Hadoop
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InterSystems “Joined Up Health and Care” - a healthcare technology conference
Report on the InterSystems "Joined Up Health and Care" conference, 2017

InterSystems data technologies - the innovative database platform that you've never heard of
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InterSystems Caché
Caché can do what conventional transactional databases can do, only better.

InterSystems Ensemble
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Caché 2008
We have no doubt that Caché offers better performance both for the developer and in production than comparable systems from much more well-known vendors.