Quest Embraces Community Inspiration from the Toad Idea Pond


 ALISO VIEJO, Calif., April 24, 2012 – Quest Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSFT)

The release today of Toad® for Oracle 11.5 includes several enhancements that surfaced from the Toad Idea Pond, one of the newest and most interactive methods Quest utilizes in collecting user input. The Toad Idea Pond enables users to present their ideas for enhancing Toad directly to the Toad development team. As ideas are submitted, the Toad user community discusses and votes on them, and the best are included in the next release.

Innovations around Toad, the industry’s leading tool for database professionals, have incorporated community feedback for more than a decade – a development model that Quest, in fact, credits as one of the key contributors to the product’s popularity and success.

Tweet This: When community inspiration floats up from #Toad Idea Pond, @Quest embraces it – introducing Toad for #Oracle 11.5 (Bit.ly)

News Facts:

  • Sixty ideas from Idea Pond have been implemented into the past two major Toad for Oracle releases. The top four in Toad for Oracle 11.5 are:
    • Enhanced Query Builder: the updated graphical interface looks and feels like a real modeling tool, making it simpler to build complex queries, and more intuitive than ever before
    • Workspace Management: already a very customizable interface, Toad now enables users to save multiple interface layouts, or workspaces, that are customized for various tasks or specific projects
    • Added Flexibility and Control in Toad Editor Tabs: users can now seamlessly multi-task between multiple source files and database objects they are editing
    • Code Completion Enhancements: provides greater efficiency and helps reduce errors while developing source code
  • Version 11.5 also features enhanced Code Analysis, which automates code-quality and incorporates additional rules and customizations, all helping to reduce the risk of coding errors. With Toad’s one-click synchronization engine, DBAs can quickly and accurately compare and synchronize data used for development, testing and analysis.

 

Quest gives the power of the community back to users, too:

  • Toad for Oracle 11.5 integrates with its online communities for easy, direct access to millions of users, Quest developers, and database experts for a collaborative, social sharing experience and learning opportunity.
    • Toad World: an online resource for education, expertise and collaboration, averaging more than 280,000 unique visitors per month, where database professionals – Toad users or not – can access a wealth of free resources on development and administration best practices, connect with renowned experts through the blog community, and learn more about each product in the Toad portfolio. The new release of Toad for Oracle has enhanced integration with Toad World, offering direct search capabilities into the community that enrich users’ learning experience and encourage collaboration. Users can access the Toad Idea Ponds for Oracle, SQL Server and DB2 through Toad World.
    • Project Lucy: an online analytical resource for DBAs that offers unique insight on system and data performance. Users can upload, analyze, and compare their performance metrics with the community, to help DBAs determine what is (and isn’t) the norm based on experiences of their peers working in similar environments. Toad connects directly to this “collective intelligence” feature, delivering global statistics in real-time, and continuous, ongoing analysis and reporting on existing data.

 

Customer loyalty and the Toad success story go hand-in-hand:

  • After nearly 15 years of success, Toad for Oracle today is considered the industry de-facto standard productivity tool for Oracle database professionals. Of the 2 million-plus people using Toad solutions, more than 50 percent use Toad for Oracle, the original flagship product in the Toad portfolio.
  • Quest has been ranked No. 1 in Database Development and Optimization for three consecutive years by IDC. (IDC, Worldwide Database Development and Management Tools 2010 Vendor and Segment Analysis, Doc # 232122, December 2011) 

Supporting Quotes:

  • Darin Bartik, vice president and general manager, Database Management, Quest Software

“Part of being an innovator means listening to your customers, and not just your largest or loudest customers.  The Toad Idea Pond gives every one of our users a voice and helps us ensure the most impactful ideas get implemented.  All vendors talk about customer input, but we thrive on it. Our unique, community-driven model for product development is good for our customers, and good for Quest, too. “

  • Rich Stucke, database administrator, Meridian Enterprises

“I’ve used Toad for more than 12 years and, before Idea Pond, I was a beta tester. The life of a DBA is busy. We don’t always have time to participate in betas or submit formal feature requests. Having an open forum where I can jump in and quickly toss out an idea makes it easy to share my suggestions and see what other users are suggesting, too. I hope to see more Quest products adopt this concept, in fact. When users have a say in how the tool they use for their jobs each day evolves, it’s no longer just a tool that works for them – it becomes their tool.” 

  • Carl Olofson, research vice president, IDC

“At its inception, Toad was created by and for the Oracle developer community. It appears that Quest hasn’t changed that unique characteristic of the product over the years, and wisely so. To this day, the community that assembled around the product when it was first created continues to have a distinct presence, amassed in every corner of the world. That sense of community and appreciation for learning from others among IT developers is not going away anytime soon. In fact, looking ahead to the newest generation of developers joining the workforce, it’s highly plausible that they’ll be expecting their tools to be more personalized, more collaborative, and more social-media friendly.”

 

Supporting Resources:

 

About Quest:

Established in 1987, Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) provides simple and innovative IT management solutions that enable more than 100,000 global customers to save time and money across physical and virtual environments.  Quest products solve complex IT challenges ranging from database management, data protection, identity and access management, monitoring, user workspace management to Windows management.

 

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