EMC on Tuesday announced an agreement to acquire privately held data-warehousing technology provider Greenplum. The acquisition will give EMC the resources it needs to enable big data clouds and self-service analytics.
When the acquisition is complete later this year, Greenplum will form the foundation of a new data-computing product division within EMC’s Information Infrastructure Products business. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.
EMC was motivated by the realization that massive amounts of data are emerging from a number of sources, including the web. IDC estimates the amount of digital data created annually will grow 44-fold over the next 10 years. EMC’s Greenplum acquisition sets the stage for the company to be part of the big data-cloud solution.
Data Warehousing 2.0
Pat Gelsinger, president and COO of EMC’s information division, boldly declared that “the data-warehousing world is about to change.” The industry is shifting toward big data analytics, he said, and Greenplum technology fits into EMC’s virtualized Private Cloud infrastructure to meet enterprise needs.
Greenplum uses a “shared-nothing” massive parallel processing architecture designed for analytical processing using a virtualized x86 infrastructure. The company’s customers include NASDAQ OMX, NYSE Euronext, Skype, Equifax, T-Mobile and Fox Interactive Media.
“EMC’s strength in the enterprise and Greenplum’s push to fully transform data warehousing and business analytics makes for a perfect fit,” said Scott McNealy, executive adviser to Greenplum. “Together they are brilliantly bringing together the power of cloud computing, virtualization and social collaboration to help customers as they venture into the next phase of computing and business analytics.”
EMC’s Cloud Evolution
The Greenplum acquisition fits into EMC’s strategy well on more than one level, according to Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Gardner noted Greenplum’s history of creating appliances that combine the best of hardware and software integration to handle massive data and allow key metrics to be drawn…