EMC enters data warehousing with Greenplum buy
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Storage giant picks up massively parallel database systems vendor, aims to disrupt BI infrastructure industry
EMC has announced its intention to acquire Greenplum, a company whose massively parallel database architecture allows companies to construct large data warehouses using commodity, x86 server hardware.
The acquisition sees the storage giant move into the business intelligence infrastructure market. In explaining the deal, EMC said Greenplum’s massively parallel approach, wherein number-crunching workloads are split into component tasks and distributed across many networked machines, combined with the fact that its software can be gradually scaled up on cheap hardware, means that it is well placed to help businesses deal with rapidly increasing volumes of data that requires analysis.
“The data warehousing world is about to change,” said Pat Gelsinger, EMC’s president for information infrastructure products. “Greenplum's massively-parallel, scale-out architecture has enabled it to separate itself from the incumbent players and emerge as the leader in this industry shift toward 'big data' analytics.”
Greenplum is a privately held organisation, with backers including SAP and Sun Microsystems. Financial terms of the deal were not revealed.
According to recent IDC research, European organisations are planning to spend 40% more on business intelligence this year than they did during 2009.
