HP reboots BI strategy with Vertica buy

Hewlett-Packard has rebooted its business intelligence strategy by announcing its intention to acquire analytics database vendor Vertica, for an undisclosed sum.

The news comes just weeks after the company announced it has stopped “actively selling” its data warehousing range Neoview.

"Our customers are demanding options for addressing an emerging set of requirements around the explosive growth of data, new types of information, new classes of analytics and new delivery models,” HP said in Janaury. Writing in March 2010, IT analyst Curt Monash said that “HP Neoview is reeling. Almost nobody sees Neoview competitively.”

Vertica, founded by MIT professor and database pioneer Michael Stonebreaker, is one of a generation of database vendors that uses massively parallel processing to support large analytical tasks. These vendors have capitalised on large organisations’ need to analyse volumes of data that are growing exponentially.

According to a recent research report by analyst company the 451 Group, Vertica has tripled its customer based to over 300 since 2009. Author Matt Aslett remarked that the company was at the time “arguably the biggest independent challenger to the data-warehousing giants”.

Pete Swabey

Pete Swabey

Pete was Editor of Information Age and head of technology research for Vitesse Media plc from 2005 to 2013, before moving on to be Senior Editor and then Editorial Director at The Economist Intelligence...

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