Greenplum Software has released a free version of its database software to appeal to data analysts.
The new version shares much of the same capabilities as Greenplum Database 3.3, except it can only be run on a single node.
“This product is for the new class of power user data analysts who are
pushing the envelope with new techniques and huge volumes of raw data,”
said Richard Snee, vice president of marketing at Greenplum. “These
individuals are emerging as the difference-makers inside the modern
data warehousing environments.”
Dubbed
the Single-Node Edition, the free software gives the analysts access to
the database for large-scale analytical projects outside the enterprise
data warehouse (EDW). The software can participate as a distributed
node of Greenplum’s Enterprise Data Cloud, enabling centralized
management, data discovery and data sharing across databases. In
addition, the database features hybrid row and column-oriented
processing as well as fully parallel SQL and MapReduce processing.
According
to Greenplum, there is also unlimited production usage on a single
commodity x86 server using up to 2 CPU sockets or in a single virtual
machine using up to eight virtual cores.
As
part of its pitch, Greenplum cited a recent survey of more than 400
data warehousing professionals by Greenplum and B-Eye-Network that
found companies are now conducting the majority of analytical projects
outside the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW). Over half of respondents
said that the data their team needs lies outside the data warehouse,
and more than 75 percent are using tools such as SAS, Excel and MySQL
to work with their data. The majority also said that they prefer to
work with "raw" rather than "clean" data.
“In
most cases the tools available to these [data analysts], at their
desks, are sub-optimal,” Snee said. “We want to arm these individuals
with Greenplum’s enterprise-class analytic database. Making it
available for free accelerates the adoption of a distributed system
model for data warehousing, such as Greenplum’s Enterprise Data Cloud.”
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