Microsoft to acquire DATAllegro in pervasive business intelligence bid

Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft, says it will also make it easier and more cost-effective for customers of all sizes to manage and glean insights from their mountains of data. “DATAllegro is a tremendously innovative company that has started to redefine the data warehouse market,” he says. “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers enterprise-class capabilities in business intelligence and data warehousing, and the addition of the DATAllegro team and its technology will take our data platform to the highest scale.” It’s certainly interesting: unlike so many data warehouse appliance vendors that target the 1–25 terabyte range, DATAllegro looks after large-volume, high-performance data warehouses. Its appliance installations typically cover up to hundreds of terabytes on a single system in sectors ranging from retail to telecoms and manufacturing. Kummert intimates that Microsoft wants to build on this, the intention being to deliver the next level beyond a database – what he calls a data platform. It seems that Microsoft’s vision for ‘pervasive BI’ will be anything but restricted on size.