Microsoft Closes Acquisition of DATAllegro

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 16, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. continues to rapidly expand the capabilities of its data platform and is already revealing product road map details following the acquisition of DATAllegro Inc., a provider of large-volume, high-performance data warehouse appliances. As part of its focus on helping organizations manage and access even the largest quantities of data, Microsoft will offer a new solution based on DATAllegro’s technology that extends Microsoft SQL Server to scale into hundreds of terabytes of data. The company will begin giving customers and partners early access to the combined solution through community technology previews (CTPs) within the next 12 months, with full product availability scheduled for the first half of calendar year 2010.

“Microsoft recently launched SQL Server 2008, which is already attracting a great deal of attention thanks to all of the new functionality for mission-critical data management and business intelligence — in fact, it’s been downloaded more than 500,000 times,” said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. “These capabilities, combined with DATAllegro’s ability to scale to hundreds of terabytes, present an extremely powerful solution set for customers and partners, and we are committed to getting it in their hands as soon as possible.”

“SQL Server has already brought so much value to our organization, whether it’s giving us more insight into our data, reducing demands on our hardware or simply speeding up the performance of our applications,” said Ron Van Zanten, directing officer of Business Intelligence, Premier Bankcard Inc. “Perhaps more important, it’s delivered all of these benefits without requiring changes to our existing infrastructure. DATAllegro’s technology is a natural complement to SQL Server, so we are excited about the possibilities this acquisition will bring.”

Already a recognized leader in data warehousing and business intelligence (BI), SQL Server 2008 is the only solution in the industry that includes comprehensive, tightly integrated functionality for data management and advanced BI out of the box. Microsoft is positioned in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for the Business Intelligence Platforms1 and the Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems2 and in the Visionaries quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2007.3 Together, we believe that these placements validate the importance of Microsoft’s overall BI vision — to provide all individuals, teams and entire organizations with BI solutions that drive bottom-line performance and operational excellence. By extending SQL Server with DATAllegro’s technology, Microsoft will now be able to offer customers and partners one of the highest scales of data warehousing.

Information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals turn to appliances not just to accelerate time-to-value on short-fuse DW deployments, wrote James Kobielus, senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc., but also to deliver an order-of-magnitude greater performance on OLAP and BI transactions at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. 4

DATAllegro’s data warehouse appliance installations boast some of the largest data-volume capacities in the industry — up to hundreds of terabytes on a single system.

With the close of the acquisition, Microsoft is retaining most of DATAllegro’s team as well as its headquarters in Aliso Viejo, Calif., making it a Center of Excellence for data warehousing. Existing DATAllegro customers will continue to be supported. The majority of DATAllegro’s key executives, including its chief executive officer, Stuart Frost, will remain with Microsoft.

Customers and partners should attend the second annual Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference, October 6–8 in Seattle. This is one of the best places to get the latest business strategy, product information, Microsoft team interaction, implementation best practices and deep customer insights into Microsoft BI products.

About the Magic Quadrants

The Gartner Magic Quadrants are copyrighted date by Gartner, Inc., and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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1 Gartner Inc., Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 2008” by James Richardson, Kurt Schlegel, Bill Hostmann, Neil McMurchy, Feb. 1, 2008

2 Gartner Inc., “Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse Database Management Systems, 2007” by Donald Feinberg,  Mark A. Beyer, Oct. 10, 2007

3 Gartner Inc., “Magic Quadrant for CPM Suites, 2007” by Nigel Rayner, Neil Chandler, John E. Van Decker, Dec. 19, 2007

4 Forrester Research Inc., “Appliance Power: Crunching Data Warehouse Workloads Faster and Cheaper Than Ever,” by James Kobielus, April 2008

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