DATAllegro
A data warehouse appliance maker based in Aliso Viejo, California, whose large-scale, commodity-hardware technology was acquired by Microsoft in 2008 to strengthen SQL Server's enterprise business intelligence capabilities for the very-large-database market.
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- Established
- 2003
- Location
- Aliso Viejo, California, United States
- Country
- United States
- Founding
- Founded in 2003 in California by Stuart Frost and Mark Thacker
- Business
- Made data warehouse appliances scaling from 1 terabyte to hundreds of terabytes, serving retail, telecommunications and manufacturing customers, targeting the market above 10 terabytes
- Technology
- Built on an Ingres database engine running on Linux, using commodity, nonproprietary hardware (Dell and Bull servers with EMC storage) and standard ANSI SQL, rather than proprietary hardware such as Netezza's PowerPC-based appliances
- Market position
- Competed with Netezza, HP, IBM, Oracle, Sybase and Teradata for large-scale deployments, and with newer entrants Vertica, ParAccel and Infobright; some customers reportedly used its appliances to offload data from existing Teradata systems
- Early funding
- Raised $22.5 million in Series C funding in September 2006, led by JAFCO Ventures, with continuing participation from Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associatesstated by the subject
- Funding
- Raised $19.6 million in Series D funding in May 2008, led by Hillman Company, with Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, JAFCO Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates
- Acquisition
- Acquired by Microsoft, announced July 24, 2008; deal terms not disclosed
- Legacy
- Its massively parallel processing technology became the technical foundation of Microsoft's SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, code-named 'Madison,' released in December 2010 and later rebranded the Analytics Platform System
Overview
DATAllegro was a data warehouse appliance company based in Aliso Viejo, California, founded in 2003 by Stuart Frost and Mark Thacker (TechCrunch), that built large-volume, high-performance systems — scaling from 1 terabyte to hundreds of terabytes on a single system — for retail, telecommunications and manufacturing customers, competing against Oracle in the space (VentureBeat). Its appliances were built on an Ingres database engine running on Linux, using commodity, nonproprietary hardware — Dell and Bull servers with EMC storage — and standard ANSI SQL, an architectural choice TDWI’s analysis contrasted with rival Netezza’s proprietary, PowerPC-based appliances (TDWI).
Early history and product line
DATAllegro shipped its P3 appliance, with capacity up to 3 terabytes, in March 2005, then announced the larger C25 appliance that July, scaling to 25 terabytes and priced at $450,000, which the company described as the lowest price-per-terabyte data warehouse appliance on the market at the time; the two models could be linked together for capacity beyond 25 terabytes, with an “Intelligent Query Router” partitioning workloads between them (TDWI). CEO Stuart Frost said the C25 was aimed at “the gap between Oracle and Teradata,” positioning DATAllegro’s appliances for historical, large-volume data storage where he argued Oracle’s capacity was too limited and Teradata’s minimum deployment size too high (TDWI). The C25 launch followed Netezza’s own announcement of appliances scaling to 50–100 terabytes, and an industry analyst quoted in the same TDWI report noted DATAllegro still lacked publicly cited customer success stories despite the P3 having already shipped (TDWI). In September 2006, the company raised $22.5 million in Series C funding led by JAFCO Ventures, with continuing participation from Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates — the same investor group, apart from JAFCO, that would go on to join Hillman Company in DATAllegro’s 2008 Series D round (GlobeNewswire).
Technology and market position
DATAllegro targeted the market for databases above 10 terabytes, a segment TDWI’s analysis described Microsoft’s SQL Server as having struggled to compete in. Its customer base included companies using its appliances alongside, or to offload data from, existing Teradata deployments — a use case TDWI termed “Teradata augmentation.” Beyond Netezza, DATAllegro’s competitive set included established vendors HP, IBM, Oracle, Sybase and Teradata, as well as newer specialized entrants Vertica, ParAccel and Infobright. DATAllegro’s CEO, Stuart Frost, was quoted acknowledging that SQL Server had “very little market share” above the 10-terabyte mark prior to the deal — a gap TDWI’s analysis said the acquisition was intended to close by giving Microsoft a reference architecture it could point to for very large deployments, rather than requiring an immediate, full technical integration into SQL Server itself.
Funding and acquisition
In May 2008, DATAllegro raised $19.6 million in a Series D funding round led by Hillman Company, with participation from Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, JAFCO Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates. On July 24, 2008, Microsoft announced its acquisition of the company to strengthen its enterprise business intelligence offering around SQL Server; the deal’s financial terms were not disclosed. Microsoft’s Ted Kummert called DATAllegro “a tremendously innovative company that has started to redefine the data warehouse market,” while DATAllegro’s CEO Stuart Frost said integrating the company’s hardware platform and software architecture into SQL Server would “provide customers with the strongest offering in the market” (Microsoft). Microsoft closed the acquisition on September 16, 2008, retaining most of DATAllegro’s team at its Aliso Viejo offices as a data-warehousing “Center of Excellence.”
After the acquisition
DATAllegro’s massively parallel processing architecture became the technical basis of Microsoft’s SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, internally code-named “Madison.” Redmond Magazine reported that Madison was “Microsoft’s reworking of the DatAllegro Inc. massive parallel processing product that Microsoft acquired nearly two years” earlier, with the first appliance, built by HP, scheduled to ship in mid-December 2010 (Redmond Magazine). The Register independently reported the same lineage more than a year earlier, describing Parallel Data Warehouse as based on “large-scale data-analysis software [Microsoft] bought in 2008 with DataAllegro,” running on the Ingres database engine, and noted expanding hardware-partner support from Bull, Dell, HP and IBM (The Register). In April 2014, Microsoft rebranded Parallel Data Warehouse as the Analytics Platform System, adding Hadoop-based capability through PolyBase to the same appliance architecture (Microsoft).
What this profile does not claim
This profile does not disclose the acquisition’s financial terms, which neither company made public. It does not independently verify DATAllegro’s funding history before its 2006 Series C round — including whether earlier Series A or B rounds took place — because no independently verifiable source describing them could be found. Sources give differing dates for the exact Parallel Data Warehouse-to-Analytics Platform System rebrand (see “What we could not verify,” below), and this profile does not resolve that discrepancy. It also does not trace, beyond what Redmond Magazine’s and The Register’s contemporary reporting describe, the technical detail of how Microsoft’s engineers reworked DATAllegro’s original Ingres-and-Linux architecture into a Windows-and-SQL-Server-based product.
Timeline
- 2003
- DATAllegro is founded in California by Stuart Frost and Mark Thacker.
- 2005-03
- Ships its P3 data warehouse appliance, with capacity up to 3 terabytes.
- 2005-07
- Announces the C25 appliance, scaling to 25 terabytes, priced at $450,000, positioning it against Netezza's larger appliances and in the capacity gap CEO Stuart Frost described between Oracle and Teradata.
- 2006-09
- Raises $22.5 million in Series C funding led by JAFCO Ventures, with continuing participation from Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates.
- 2008-05
- Raises $19.6 million in Series D funding, led by Hillman Company with participation from Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, JAFCO Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates.
- 2008-07-24
- Microsoft announces its acquisition of DATAllegro, framing it as a reference-architecture move to give SQL Server credibility above the 10-terabyte mark, where Microsoft's database had little presence; financial terms are not disclosed.
- 2008-09-16
- Microsoft closes the acquisition and retains most of DATAllegro's team at its Aliso Viejo headquarters as a data-warehousing "Center of Excellence."
- 2010-12
- Microsoft's SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, code-named "Madison" and built on the acquired DATAllegro technology, reaches general availability, first shipping on an HP appliance.
- 2014-04
- Microsoft rebrands Parallel Data Warehouse as the Analytics Platform System, adding Hadoop/PolyBase capability to the appliance built on DATAllegro's original architecture.
What we could not verify
These claims came up in research and could not be confirmed. They are recorded here rather than published as fact or quietly dropped. If you hold a source that settles one, please tell us.
- Sources give differing dates for when Parallel Data Warehouse was rebranded the Analytics Platform System: Microsoft's own product-lifecycle documentation lists 'SQL Server 2012 Parallel Data Warehouse (Analytics Platform System)' with a July 2013 start date, while Microsoft's SQL Server blog post introducing the Analytics Platform System by that name is dated April 2014. This profile does not resolve which date marks the official rename.
Sources
9 sources (6 tier 2, 3 first-party), each opened and read against the claim it supports. Statements the subject makes about itself are marked as such and are not treated as independent evidence. See the source policy.
Microsoft's own announcement (first-party) was fetched and read in full for acquisition mechanics and direct quotes, and independently corroborated by VentureBeat, a technology-industry trade publication unaffiliated with either company. TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute), an independent industry-analyst publication, was also fetched and read in full for a technical and competitive analysis of the acquisition, including DATAllegro's Ingres/Linux architecture, its commodity-hardware approach versus Netezza's proprietary hardware, its competitive set, and Microsoft's stated strategic rationale. A second, independent fetch-and-read pass checked Wikipedia's DATAllegro article purely as a lead index for the company's founding, pre-2008 history, and the fate of its technology after the acquisition; every lead was then independently verified against fresh, non-Wikipedia sources before being added, and no claim from Wikipedia was cited directly. The 2003 founding and its founders were independently confirmed by TechCrunch's own contemporary acquisition report. An earlier TDWI article from 2005 and a GlobeNewswire press release from 2006 (first-party) supplied independently verified pre-2008 product and funding history. The technology's fate inside Microsoft was independently confirmed by Redmond Magazine and The Register, two technology trade publications, both of which state directly that Parallel Data Warehouse (code-named "Madison") was built on the acquired DATAllegro technology; the later Analytics Platform System rebrand was confirmed via Microsoft's own SQL Server blog (first-party, an uncontested naming fact) and its product-lifecycle documentation, with a discrepancy between the two on the exact rebrand date flagged in openItems rather than silently resolved. DATAllegro's funding history prior to its 2006 Series C round, and any earlier Series A/B rounds, could not be independently verified and are not claimed.
- Microsoft acquires DATAllegro data warehouse appliance company Supports: Independent confirmation of DATAllegro's business focus, its May 2008 Series D funding round and investors, and the acquisition's strategic rationale.
- Analysis: What's Behind Microsoft's DATAllegro Acquisition? Supports: DATAllegro's Ingres-on-Linux architecture and commodity-hardware approach (versus Netezza's proprietary PowerPC-based appliances), its use of standard ANSI SQL, its competitive set (Netezza, HP, IBM, Oracle, Sybase, Teradata, Vertica, ParAccel, Infobright), a reported "Teradata augmentation" use case among some customers, CEO Stuart Frost's comments on SQL Server's weak share above 10 terabytes, and the analysis of Microsoft's reference-architecture rationale for the deal.
- Microsoft Acquires Datallegro Supports: Independent confirmation that DATAllegro was founded in 2003 by Stuart Frost and Mark Thacker in California, and of Microsoft's stated intent to integrate DATAllegro's technology into SQL Server.
- DATAllegro Announces Massive Data Warehouse Appliance Supports: Pre-acquisition product history: the P3 appliance (shipped March 2005, up to 3 terabytes) and the C25 appliance (announced July 2005, up to 25 terabytes, priced at $450,000), CEO Stuart Frost's comments on targeting the capacity gap between Oracle and Teradata, and independent analyst commentary on the company's early market challenges.
- UPDATE: Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse Hits Metal Next Month Supports: Independent confirmation that Microsoft's Parallel Data Warehouse, code-named "Madison," was "Microsoft's reworking of the DatAllegro Inc. massive parallel processing product that Microsoft acquired nearly two years ago," and that the appliance was scheduled to ship via HP in mid-December 2010.
- Microsoft's SQL Server gets appliance of iron Supports: Further independent corroboration that Parallel Data Warehouse ("Madison") was based on the DATAllegro technology and Ingres database engine Microsoft acquired in 2008, and of expanding hardware-partner adoption (Bull, Dell, HP, IBM).
- Microsoft to Acquire DATAllegro Supports: DATAllegro's product technology, its Aliso Viejo headquarters, the July 24, 2008 acquisition announcement, and quotes from Microsoft's Ted Kummert, DATAllegro's CEO Stuart Frost, and Intel Capital's Lisa Lambert.
- DATAllegro Completes Series 'C' Funding Supports: The $22.5 million Series C funding round, led by JAFCO Ventures with continuing participation from Adams Capital Management, Focus Ventures, Intel Capital, Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates, and confirmation that Stuart Frost was CEO at the time.
- Introducing the Microsoft Analytics Platform System – the turnkey appliance for big data analytics Supports: Microsoft's own announcement introducing the Analytics Platform System as the rebranded successor to Parallel Data Warehouse, an uncontested naming fact.
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