Monday, 28 July 2008

Microsoft Acquires Data Warehousing Appliance Provider

Microsoft Corp said that it intends to acquire DATAllegro Inc., a provider of data warehouse appliances.

The Redmond based Microsoft considers the acquisition as a strategic move to extend the capabilities of its mission-critical data platform, making it 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.

“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.”

DATAllegro specializes in large-volume, high-performance data warehouses— up to hundreds of terabytes on a single system. Its clients span such markets as retail, telecommunications and manufacturing.

In addition to offering large capacities, DATAllegro’s patent-pending technology is designed for complex workloads including high concurrency and mixed queries. DATAllegro is one of the few data warehouse appliances built on a nonproprietary hardware platform including Dell and Bull servers and EMC storage. This flexible architecture makes it ideally suited to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server.

“Integrating 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.”

After completing the acquisition, Microsoft will retain most of DATAllegro’s team as well as its headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif., making it a Center of Excellence for data warehousing. Existing DATAllegro customers will continue to be supported.