Redmond, Wash., — At its analyst meeting, the software behemoth Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said that it plans to make a small acquisition, scooping up Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based DATAllegro Inc., a provider of breakthrough data warehouse appliances.
Microsoft’s plans to purchase DATAllegro could spur off similar purchases by rivals such as Oracle and Hewlett-Packard as marketers look to expand their data management capabilities. The DATAllegro buyout is an effort to strengthen Microsoft’s position in the data warehousing market.
It intends to utilize the acquired technology as the basis for a SQL Server 2008 appliance. The acquisition will broaden the capabilities of Microsoft’s mission-critical data platform, making it easier and more cost-effective for customers of all sizes to manage and glean insight from the ever-expanding amount of data generated by and for businesses, employees and consumers.
Addressing the meeting, server and tools unit head Bob Muglia said that the acquisition will help the company reach the highest-end enterprise data stores, even reaching higher than Oracle can get today.
“We have never been able to do that before,” Muglia said.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed, is aimed squarely at beefing up Microsoft’s position in the data warehousing market, which is rapidly expanding because of the explosive growth of enterprise data volumes.
“We really do have limitations in terms of high-scale data warehousing, and our customers have been applying pressure to us to go address that,” said Quentin Clark, general manager of SQL Server at Microsoft. “It allows [us] to extend our reach into the market into the highest places.”
“DATAllegro is a tremendously innovative company that has started to redefine the data warehouse market,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers enterprise-class capabilities in business intelligence and data warehousing, and the addition of the DATAllegro team and its technology will take our data platform to the highest scale of data warehousing.”
“Incorporating DATAllegro’s nonproprietary hardware platform and flexible software architecture into Microsoft SQL Server will provide customers with the strongest offering in the market,” said Stuart Frost, CEO of DATAllegro. “We are excited to join forces with Microsoft and continue the innovation this company was founded on.”
“For the first time ever, Microsoft has leapfrogged Oracle at the high end of the database market,” wrote independent database analyst, Curt Monash, a former Computerworld columnist, in an e-mail. “Of all the data warehouse start-ups, DATAllegro was the one whose technology could be most smoothly rolled into Microsoft’s or Oracle’s product line. Microsoft was smart to snatch DATAllegro up.”
DATAllegro specializes in server appliances that come installed with a version of the Ingres database optimized to handle as much as hundreds of terabytes of data.
One DATAllegro customer reportedly runs data warehouses totaling 450TB.
“While several other data warehouse start-ups have achieved more overall customer success, DATAllegro is second only to Teradata in proven high-end data warehouse scalability,” Monash wrote.
DATAllegro customers span such markets as retail, telecommunications and manufacturing. In developing its appliances, the company has taken a technology strategy that makes it possible to optimize its hardware based on the needs of the installed software, Mark Beyer, a researcher for Gartner, said. DATAllegro appliances are typically used with Ingres’ open source database, but could be easily be optimized for Microsoft’s SQL Server.
Microsoft plans to retain most of DATAllegro’s team, as well as its headquarters in Also Viejo, Calif., making it a “Center of Excellence” for data warehousing, the software maker said. Microsoft will continue to support current DATAllegro customers.