Does The Holy Grail of Database Consolidation Really Exist?

Joshua Greenbaum asks: Should You Consolidate Your Database? According to Mr. Greenbaum's recent article he notes: "Or, you can try to actually do a business-level consolidation, which up until recently would have involved a massive, brute-force effort to reconcile an enormous set of complexities that typically exist between different database instances. That brute force effort is so brutal, and requires so much force, that – guess what – virtually no one has ever tried it. "

"I say virtually because I leave open the possibility that it has been done on a small scale, or in some benighted corner of the IT universe. But I’ve been looking for an example of this kind of deep business-level consolidation, and every time I’ve scratched the surface of a database consolidation project what I’ve come up with is something far short of “far enough.”

Maybe Mr. Joshua Greenbuam should contact Joe Kozak and the staff at ANTs Software and ask them if the Holy Grail for database consolidation really does exist?

Here's the bio on Joshua Greenbaum: http://www.eaconsult.com/bio.html

Joshua Greenbaum has over 25 years of experience in the industry as a computer programmer, systems analyst, author, consultant, and industry analyst. He spent three years in Europe as an industry analyst and as European correspondent for Information Week and other industry publications. In his role as an industry analyst, Josh regularly consults with leading public and private enterprise software, database, and infrastructure companies, and advises end-users on technology infrastructure and applications selection, development, and implementation issues.
An award-winning columnist, Josh is widely quoted in the trade and business press, blogs on ZDNet, and is a regular columnist for Managing Automation, Datamation.com, NetWeaver Magazine, and Redmond Channel Partner magazine.