Opening New Doors

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Microsoft Corp.'s acquisition of DatAllegro Inc. will give the software giant an entry into the nascent data warehouse appliance market. And that means opportunities for Microsoft ISVs as well.

Last month Microsoft wrapped up its acquisition of Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based DatAllegro for an undisclosed sum. While Microsoft's SQL Server database is already used by some customers as the foundation for data warehouse systems and smaller "data marts," Microsoft executives said the DatAllegro acquisition, announced in late July, would elevate Microsoft's standing in the data warehouse market.

"This acquisition extends Microsoft's leadership in business intelligence and data warehousing and provides a great opportunity to accelerate our data warehouse road map and leapfrog key competitors," said Fausto Ibarra, Microsoft director of product management for SQL Server, in an e-mail interview.

For Microsoft solution providers, the DatAllegro acquisition at the very least means a higher profile for Microsoft in the data warehousing market against competitors IBM Corp. and Oracle Corp., said Scott Stein, chief operating officer of Solver Inc., a Microsoft Gold partner in Los Angeles that develops performance management solutions using SQL Server, PerformancePoint Server and other Microsoft products.

"We focus on the enterprise space," Stein said. "The big win for us is the perception in the marketplace that Microsoft can now play in the multiterabyte data warehouse market."

Most data warehouses today are large, complex systems, often built by big companies for storing and analyzing terabytes—even petabytes—of data. At their core, most data warehouses use database software, data management tools and other technology from a handful of vendors including IBM, Oracle and Teradata Corp.

But a hot market is developing around data warehouse appliances—preassembled packages of hardware, software and data storage developed by such companies as Dataupia Corp., Cambridge, Mass., DatAllegro and Netezza Corp., Marlborough, Mass. (Last month Teradata, Miamisburg, Ohio, announced the second generation of its own data warehouse appliance.) These "data warehouses in a box," with their lower price tags and faster implementation times, appeal as much to midsize companies as they do to large corporations.

Given the growing popularity of data warehouse appliances, Sandeep Walia wasn't surprised that Microsoft went out and acquired one. What did surprise Walia, CEO of Cerritos, Calif.-based Ignify Inc., a Microsoft Gold partner, was that Microsoft chose a relatively low-profile vendor with a relatively high-end system. "DatAllegro is very much an enterprise product [and] it has almost no name recognition in the business intelligence market."

"We chose DatAllegro because we believe in the technology and feel it is a perfect match with the data warehousing and scalability investments Microsoft has already made in SQL Server," Ibarra said in his e-mail.

The DatAllegro technology "allows SQL Server data warehouses to grow from less than 5 gigabytes to hundreds of terabytes," Microsoft said in a FAQ posted on its Web site when the acquisition was announced.

The DatAllegro appliance is currently based on the Ingres open-source database, incorporates a massively parallel processing architecture and runs on a range of hardware including Dell and Bull servers and EMC data storage systems.

Microsoft has yet to provide a detailed road map for its DatAllegro plans. More information was expected to come out at the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference at the company's Redmond, Wash., headquarters. But company executives have made it clear Microsoft intends to move the DatAllegro technology to the Windows Server and SQL Server platforms. In the statement announcing the completed acquisition, Microsoft said it would assemble a solution based on the DatAllegro technology that would push SQL Server "to scale into hundreds of terabytes of data."

The statement also offered a hint of a timetable for the new system, saying Microsoft expects to provide partners and customers with community technology previews of the data warehouse appliance within the next 12 months. Full product availability is slated for the first half of calendar 2010.

Next: Data Warehouse Of Excellence

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