A recent business headline tells me that Microsoft is acquiring DATAllegro. DATAllegro is a "Data Warehousing Appliance" vendor – which peripherally touches on some aspects of my last career. I have a lot of lingering curiosity about the data warehousing industry, I guess.
It's not really surprising that MS is chasing and acquiring large data warehouse appliance vendors – just the press release makes clear that it's all about adding value to the SQL Server product line, and "scaling out" to be able to better satisfy the largest enterprise customers with SQL Server, where, currently, large enterprise customers are more likely to stick to Oracle, or find a niche-market provider (such as Netezza, Teradata, or DATAllegro).
Still, the fact that the acquisition is specifically DATAllegro is surprising – according to their website, DATAllegro is currently partnered with Ingres, which is an open-source database management platform. Does that mean MS is going to be partnered with Ingres, now? Or does it mean MS is now going to try to migrate DATAllegro's hardware/software appliances to their proprietary SQL Server? I would assume the latter – but this causes me to visualize some extraordinarily miserable database gurus moaning in dark rooms, and much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair.
I suppose that in the world of high-end specialized data warehouse appliances (which can run several hundred thousand dollars per terabyte of capacity), choices were limited for Microsoft's M&A guys. But going out and acquiring a business such as DATAllegro, who is using an open-source competing product (Ingres), and running largely on Linux servers (another open-source competing product), strikes me as more of a preventive acquisition as opposed to a value-added one. These are common enough in big business: if you can't win in a given competitive market on the merits of your product, there's always the option of buying out the competition and mismanaging them into oblivion.
Hmm… Uh oh. That's starting to sound like the introduction to another rant on my current employers, isn't it? Sorry.
…and how is it that I end up hearing Bob Dylan singing "You Belong to Me" (in English, of course) in the soundtrack of episode 5 of 풀하우스? It seems it's all about love quadrangles: roughly, 영재 loves 혜원 loves 민혁 loves 지은 and around again…
-Notes for Korean-
잠깐만요=just a sec
걸다=hang, hook, suspend, talk to, start [an engine], call [on telephone] … clearly a very useful word.
거셨어요=[you've] called… note verb is irregular, drops -ㄹ…
그럼=well, surely … transition/filler word
