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The open-source PostgreSQL (generally additionally known as Postgres) is seemingly a extremely popular commodity for large enterprise information platform distributors.
Snowflake is buying privately-held PostgreSQL supplier Crunchy Information, 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 information and AI workflows.
In contrast to 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’s additionally a particular model of the platform for Kubernetes environments and a more moderen product referred to as Crunchy Information Warehouse that brings the platform to information lakehouse environments.
Based on Snowflake, Crunchy Information’s know-how would be the basis of a brand new providing often known as Snowflake Postgres. It is going to permit customers to mix Crunchy Information’s enterprise-grade and developer-friendly Postgres capabilities inside Snowflake’s safe and ruled perimeter. The aim is to simplify how builders construct, deploy and scale production-ready AI brokers and apps.
“In our discussions, it rapidly turned 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 put up. “With at the moment’s announcement, we’re focusing on the massive 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 help brings to Snowflake
Snowflake has its personal information cloud platform that gives a cloud information warehouse for its enterprise clients.
Whereas Snowflake has a rising buyer base, it’s not the identical because the open-source PostgreSQL neighborhood. PostgreSQL has emerged to turn out to be a extremely popular database, not only for conventional enterprise purposes but in addition for agentic AI. In any case, that’s why Databricks acquired Neon.
It additionally brings in a stable developer neighborhood. Information analyst Sanjeev Mohan advised VentureBeat that in his view, this is a wonderful acquisition.
“In contrast to Neon, Crunchy is really enterprise,” Mohan mentioned.
He added that Crunchy Information has a really deep PostgreSQL neighborhood of customers and it’s additionally engaged with Kubernetes. Crunchy Information isn’t simply centered on PostgreSQL for operational workloads; it’s additionally capable of help 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 help OLAP (On-line Analytics Processing) database workloads.
Mohan is general extraordinarily optimistic on the continued prospect of PostgreSQL for enterprise use instances.
“The neighborhood has repeatedly added distinctive capabilities not just for conventional relational and SQL use instances but in addition for time-series, JSON and vector search, whereas boasting a number of the greatest geospatial options obtainable,” he mentioned.
Why PostgreSQL issues to the Snowflake and its enterprise customers
PostgreSQL is extensively 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 cause 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 have interaction with builders in an open method.
“The recognition of PostgreSQL with builders, coupled with CrunchyData’s help for information 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 information lake desk format that Snowflake helps as a part of the corporate’s rising methods to embrace extra open applied sciences. Petrie famous that it’s not too exhausting to think about how firms would use CrunchyData know-how inside the Snowflake platform to construct AI purposes for frequent use instances comparable to telemetry, geospatial and commercial analytics.
He’s additionally not too shocked that Crunchy Information is being acquired.
“Crunchy Information’s progress appears to have flattened within the final couple of years, so it’s not stunning to see them go for this exit,” Petrie mentioned. “The consolidation wave amongst information instruments and platforms continues.”
Why it issues to the enterprise
For enterprise information 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 not simply an open-source various to proprietary relational databases. It’s an open, extensively used platform that’s quickly turning 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 record of smaller distributors together with EDB, Aiven and Netapp Instaclustr are all already supporting PostgreSQL.
Now, with Snowflake and Databricks throwing their help and a whole bunch of thousands and thousands 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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