EMC Moves to Acquire Greenplum

EMC is purchasing Greenplum, Inc., a provider of what EMC terms “disruptive” data warehousing technology. Through the acquisition, EMC hopes to increase its ability to process massive amounts of data.

Greenplum utilizes a “shared nothing” massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture designed for analytical processing using virtualized x86 infrastructure. Greenplum says the architecture is capable of delivering 10 to 100 times the performance of traditional database software at a lower cost.

In this architecture, data is automatically partitioned across multiple "segment" servers, and each segment owns and manages a distinct portion of the overall data. All communication is via a network interconnect with no disk-level sharing or contention.

Specifically, EMC is touting what it says will be its ability to create “big data” clouds as part of personalized virtualized private cloud infrastructure. EMC hopes to create a best-of-breed self-service solution for processing what are likely to be steadily increasing amounts of data in years to come.

The acquisition of Greenplum will be an all-cash transaction and is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2010, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Upon completion of the acquisition, Greenplum will form the foundation of a new data computing product division within EMC's Information Infrastructure business. The companies did not release specific financial information.