Microsoft closes on its acquisition of DATAllegro. The acquisition is being pitched as a way to extend SQL Server deeper into the data warehouse by allowing it to scale to support large volumes of data. Though Microsoft remains mum on the exact features of the software it plans to offer based on DATAllegro's technology, the company confirms the product is scheduled for 2010.Microsoft having closed on its acquisition of data warehousing vendor DATAllegro,
Microsoft officials were ready Sept. 16 to start talking about their road map.
Microsoft has plans to offer software based on DATAllegro's technology in
2010, and to have CTPs (community technology previews) ready within the next 12
months. Though Microsoft officials were unwilling to talk about actual features,
the stated plan is to leverage DATAllegro's technology to help SQL Server scale
into hundreds of terabytes of data.
"Microsoft has made significant investments in data warehouse
scalability in SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008," Fausto Ibarra,
Microsoft's director of product management for SQL Server, said in an interview
with eWEEK. "The acquisition reinforces Microsoft's comprehensive and
integrated BI [business intelligence] … [and] enables everyone to do business
intelligence effectively in companies of any size using SQL Server."
The DATAllegro
acquisition by Microsoft touched off speculation about whether there would
be additional acquisitions in the data warehousing space. There were also
questions about how the purchase related to Microsoft's stance on hardware, but
Ibarra said Microsoft is not pursuing a hardware strategy with this
acquisition.
"Microsoft's core business is software, and although we do have some
hardware devices, such as Xbox, we are not a hardware vendor," Ibarra said.
"The acquisition of DATAllegro allows Microsoft to expand our already rich
ecosystem of hardware partners and solutions with a new software offering we
will bring to market."
Founded in 2003, DATAllegro marketed an MPP (massively parallel processing)
data warehouse appliance based on the Ingres database. With the close of the
acquisition, Microsoft is retaining most of DATAllegro's team and its
headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif.
More details are expected at the Microsoft Business
Intelligence Conference in October.
