EMC Introduces Greenplum Data Appliance

The appliance, announced just 75 days after EMC acquired Greenplum, will expand EMC's massively parallel processing database software to compete more aggressively in the data warehousing analytics market. It places EMC in direct completion with IBM and its Netezza unit, Oracle and its Sun Microsystems unit as well as with Teradata. EMC said it will embed sophisticated business analytics applications in the new offering, which combines computer, storage, network and database functionality in one solution.

"The amount of data that businesses have at their disposal is greater than ever before and new tools are required to gain business insight from it," said EMC vice chairman Bill Teuber in a statement. "The EMC Greenplum technology provides the deep analytic processing that enables customers to leverage all of their data, taken from many sources, to make smarter decisions, faster."

An indication of the big things EMC has in store for the Greenplum Data Computing Appliance is the storage colossus' decision to make Greenplum the foundation of EMC's new Data Computing Products Division.

Built on Greenplum Database 4.0, the appliance delivers up to 10 terabytes an hour, putting the appliance in the vanguard of big data cloud loading. The system delivers advanced scalability and is available in flexible half-rack, full-rack and multiple-rack appliance configurations in terabyte to petabyte-scale requirements. Information protection is provided via EMC's replication, backup and recovery and deduplication technologies.

Available additionally as a licensed software-only solution for industry standard x86 hardware, Greenplum Database 4.0 is already in use in more than 100 major enterprises worldwide, EMC noted. EMC Global Services professional staff members are available to assist customers deploy and optimize the new appliance in designing complex correlations across massive data sets. They are ready also to assist customers in migrating from competitive systems to the new EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance, EMC said.