INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Microsoft today announced that it has acquiredCitus Data, a company that focused on making PostgreSQL databases faster and more scalable
Citus’ open-source PostgreSQL extension essentially turns the application into a distributed database and, while there has been a lot of
hype around the NoSQL movement and document stores, relational databases — and especially PostgreSQL — are still a growing market, in
part because of tools from companies like Citus that overcome some of their earlier limitations.Unsurprisingly, Microsoft plans to work with
the Citus Data team to “accelerate the delivery of key, enterprise-ready features from Azure to PostgreSQL and enable critical PostgreSQL
workloads to run on Azure with confidence.” The Citus co-founders echo this in their own statement, noting that “as part of Microsoft,
we will stay focused on building an amazing database on top of PostgreSQL that gives our users the game-changing scale, performance, and
We will continue to drive innovation in this space.”PostgreSQL is obviously an open-source tool, and while the fact that Microsoft is now
a major open-source contributor doesn’t come as a surprise anymore, it’s worth noting that the company stresses that it will continue to
work with the PostgreSQL community
In an email, a Microsoft spokesperson also noted that “the acquisition is a proof point in the company’s commitment to open source and
accelerating Azure PostgreSQL performance and scale.”Current Citus customers include the likes of real-time analytics service Chartbeat,
email security service Agari and PushOwl, though the company notes that it also counts a number of Fortune 100 companies among its users
(they tend to stay anonymous)
The company offers both a database as a service, an on-premises enterprise version and the free open-source edition
For the time being, it seems like that’s not changing, though over time I would suspect that Microsoft will transition users of the hosted
service to Azure.The price of the acquisition was not disclosed
Citus Data, which was founded in 2010 and graduated from the Y Combinator program, previously raised more than $13 million from the likes
of Khosla Ventures, SV Angel and Data Collective.
