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The open-source PostgreSQL (typically additionally known as Postgres) is outwardly a extremely popular commodity for large enterprise knowledge platform distributors.
Snowflake is buying privately-held PostgreSQL supplier Crunchy Data, in a deal that’s reportedly valued at $250 million. The acquisition comes barely two weeks after Snowflake’s rival Databricks acquired serverless PostgreSQL vendor Neon. The pair of PostgreSQL acquisitions highlights the crucial significance of the open-source database to fashionable enterprise knowledge and AI workflows.
Not like Neon, which was solely a three-year-old firm, Crunchy Information has been round for over a decade, having been based in 2012. The corporate’s core platform, Crunchy Postgres, is a managed, automated and absolutely supported model of PostgreSQL. There may be additionally a selected model of the platform for Kubernetes environments and a more recent product known as Crunchy Information Warehouse that brings the platform to knowledge lakehouse environments.
In response to Snowflake, Crunchy Information’s expertise would be the basis of a brand new providing generally known as Snowflake Postgres. It’ll permit customers to mix Crunchy Information’s enterprise-grade and developer-friendly Postgres capabilities inside Snowflake’s safe and ruled perimeter. The objective is to simplify how builders construct, deploy and scale production-ready AI brokers and apps.
“In our discussions, it shortly grew to become clear that the identical traits that Crunchy Information was seeing from the operational database world had been additionally obvious to Snowflake,” Paul Laurence, co-founder of Crunchy Information wrote in a weblog post. “With at present’s announcement, we’re concentrating on the big on-line transactional processing (OLTP) market, leveraging Snowflake’s attain and Crunchy Information’s versatile, scalable options for enterprise workloads and builders alike.
What PostgreSQL assist brings to Snowflake
Snowflake has its personal knowledge cloud platform that gives a cloud knowledge warehouse for its enterprise clients.
Whereas Snowflake has a rising buyer base, it’s not the identical because the open-source PostgreSQL group. PostgreSQL has emerged to change into a very talked-about database, not only for conventional enterprise purposes but additionally for agentic AI. In spite of everything, that’s why Databricks acquired Neon.
It additionally brings in a stable developer group. Information analyst Sanjeev Mohan advised VentureBeat that in his view, this is a superb acquisition.
“Not like Neon, Crunchy is actually enterprise,” Mohan mentioned.
He added that Crunchy Information has a really deep PostgreSQL group of customers and it’s additionally engaged with Kubernetes. Crunchy Information isn’t simply targeted on PostgreSQL for operational workloads; it’s additionally in a position to assist analytics as nicely. PostgreSQL by default was initially simply an OLTP (On-line Transaction Processing) database, nevertheless it has been expanded by Crunchy Information in addition to different distributors like Google with its AlloyDB, to additionally assist OLAP (On-line Analytics Processing) database workloads.
Mohan is total extraordinarily constructive on the continued prospect of PostgreSQL for enterprise use circumstances.
“The group has repeatedly added distinctive capabilities not just for conventional relational and SQL use circumstances but additionally for time-series, JSON and vector search, whereas boasting a few of the greatest geospatial options out there,” he mentioned.
Why PostgreSQL issues to the Snowflake and its enterprise customers
PostgreSQL is broadly used within the enterprise. However maybe much more importantly, builders more and more use it as a basis for agentic AI. That is one other key purpose why Databricks acquired Neon and why Snowflake is now buying Crunchy Information.
It’s all a part of a broader multi-year effort at Snowflake to interact with builders in an open method.
“The recognition of PostgreSQL with builders, coupled with CrunchyData’s assist for knowledge warehousing on Iceberg, align nicely with Snowflake’s core technique,” Kevin Petrie, vp of analysis at BARC advised VentureBeat.
Apache Iceberg is an open-source knowledge lake desk format that Snowflake supports as a part of the corporate’s rising methods to embrace extra open applied sciences. Petrie famous that it’s not too arduous to think about how firms would use CrunchyData expertise throughout the Snowflake platform to construct AI purposes for frequent use circumstances akin to telemetry, geospatial and commercial analytics.
He’s additionally not too shocked that Crunchy Information is being acquired.
“Crunchy Information’s development appears to have flattened within the final couple of years, so it’s not shocking to see them go for this exit,” Petrie mentioned. “The consolidation wave amongst knowledge instruments and platforms continues.”
Why it issues to the enterprise
For enterprise knowledge and AI leaders, Snowflake’s acquisition of Crunchy Information reinforces a key level which will have already been apparent to some: PostgreSQL issues.
PostgreSQL is now not simply an open-source various to proprietary relational databases. It’s an open, broadly used platform that’s quickly changing into a de facto normal for builders and the enterprises they work for to construct agentic AI and enterprise purposes at scale.
The massive hyperscalers, together with Google, Amazon and Microsoft, in addition to a protracted listing of smaller distributors together with EDB, Aiven and Netapp Instaclustr are all already supporting PostgreSQL.
Now, with Snowflake and Databricks throwing their assist and tons of of tens of millions of {dollars} at PostgreSQL, it’s clear that enterprises ought to have it as a part of their developer and AI stacks.
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