Acquisition Targets Scalability for SQL Server

Acquisition of data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro could help Microsoft compete with IBM, Oracle, and other specialty vendors in the growing market for very large databases—those on the order of tens to hundreds of terabytes. DATAllegro currently markets appliances designed to provide fast query performance for large data warehouses. However, DATAllegro’s products employ the Ingres open source database management system, which runs on the Linux operating system, combined with proprietary software. Consequently, it could be several years before interested customers see a Microsoft product based on the acquired company’s technology.

Large Databases on Stock Hardware

In July 2008, Microsoft announced plans to acquire DATAllegro, a California-based, privately held provider of appliances geared towards large-scale data warehouses. Data warehouses are special-purpose databases designed and organized to store large volumes of historical data to aid decision making in organizations. As a whole, data warehousing is an estimated US$30 billion market, and is one of the main drivers behind the growing demand for database systems that can support tens or hundreds of terabytes of data.