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Microsoft has acquired Metanautix, a Palo Alto, Calif., data analytics startup, for an undisclosed amount, the software giant revealed on Dec. 18.
Metanautix’s software can pull data from several databases, enabling enterprises to use data from several sources and applications for business analytics and intelligence purposes. Enterprises are growing more adept at capturing information, but capitalizing on all of it remains a challenge, according to Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Data Group.
“Companies continue to generate enormous volumes of information and aspire to be more data-driven in their strategies and operations,” said Sirosh in a Dec. 18 announcement. “But many struggle to bring together their various sources and siloes of data, and only analyze and use a fraction of all the available information.”
The acquisition will help Microsoft free that data from its technical constraints in a cost-efficient manner, enabling its enterprise cloud customers to draw business-boosting insights from a variety of IT systems and applications. “With Metanautix technology, IT teams can connect a diversity of their company’s information across private and public clouds, without having to go through the costly and complex process of moving data into a centralized system,” said Sirosh.
Metanautix casts a wide net for enterprises seeking to connect the dots between information that is typically locked away in several disparate databases. Sirosh added that the technology can “integrate data across traditional data warehouses like SQL Server, Oracle and Teradata; open source NoSQL databases such as MongoDB and Cassandra; as well as business systems like Salesforce.com and wide array of other cloud and on-premises data stores,” continued Sirosh.
Despite its reach, the startup’s tech remains approachable to database professionals. The key, said Sirosh, “is making a wide variety of data query-able by SQL, the most widely used data query language—at speed and high scale.”
Theo Vassilakis, co-founder and CEO of Metanautix, wrote on the company’s now-shuttered Website that Metanautix “started out with the vision to integrate the data supply chain by building the Quest data compute engine that enables scalable SQL access to any data.”
After the buy, the technology will help flesh out Microsoft’s ever-expanding cloud analytics portfolio.
“Three years in, we can take this work to the next level by joining forces with Microsoft,” Vassilakis said. “We look forward to being part of Microsoft’s important efforts with Azure and SQL Server to give enterprise customers a unified view of all of their data across cloud and on-premises systems.”
The technology will also be featured in Cortana Analytics Suite, a managed set of cloud services from Microsoft that gathers information management, machine learning and big data processing into a predictive (and prescriptive) business analytics platform.
“As someone who has led complex, large scale data warehousing projects myself, I am extremely excited about the technology and talent we are bringing to Microsoft with this acquisition,” said Sirosh. “It is another important part of our ongoing efforts to build the intelligent cloud and help our customers fully realize the value of their data.”