"The [Netezza] marketing hype about the simplicity of the box, I agree with it. I have not even half of a [full-time employee] administering that box," Ingle said.

Financial software maker Intuit is also using Netezza to analyze clickstream data, both for marketing purposes and product development, said Arup Ray, director of development, data systems.

Information gathered from Intuit's hosted software products such as Quickbooks Online can be probed for insights about which product features are and are not getting used by customers, right down to a single button element on a given screen, Ray said. This helps Intuit's development teams figure out which features should stay, go or be improved.

While Netezza is apparently making some customers happy, its products are fighting in an increasingly competitive market with the likes of Oracle, EMC, Teradata and Hewlett-Packard, which recently purchased data warehousing vendor Vertica.

Netezza CEO Jim Baum conceded the point in an interview, but not without dishing a little trash talk, particularly in HP's direction. "The competitive dynamic is very real," he said. "[But] I honestly feel like HP has completely missed the boat on the whole opportunity around warehousing and analytics."