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The open-source PostgreSQL (typically additionally known as Postgres) is outwardly a extremely popular commodity for giant enterprise information platform distributors.
Snowflake is buying privately-held PostgreSQL supplier Crunchy Knowledge, 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 Knowledge 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 Knowledge Warehouse that brings the platform to information lakehouse environments.
In keeping with Snowflake, Crunchy Knowledge’s expertise would be the basis of a brand new providing generally known as Snowflake Postgres. It would permit customers to mix Crunchy Knowledge’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 Knowledge was seeing from the operational database world have been additionally obvious to Snowflake,” Paul Laurence, co-founder of Crunchy Knowledge wrote in a weblog put up. “With right this moment’s announcement, we’re concentrating on the big on-line transactional processing (OLTP) market, leveraging Snowflake’s attain and Crunchy Knowledge’s versatile, scalable options for enterprise workloads and builders alike.
What PostgreSQL assist 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 grow to be a highly regarded database, not only for conventional enterprise purposes but additionally for agentic AI. In any case, that’s why Databricks acquired Neon.
It additionally brings in a stable developer neighborhood. Knowledge analyst Sanjeev Mohan instructed VentureBeat that in his view, this is a wonderful acquisition.
“In contrast to Neon, Crunchy is really enterprise,” Mohan stated.
He added that Crunchy Knowledge has a really deep PostgreSQL neighborhood of customers and it’s additionally engaged with Kubernetes. Crunchy Knowledge isn’t simply centered on PostgreSQL for operational workloads; it’s additionally capable of assist analytics as nicely. PostgreSQL by default was initially simply an OLTP (On-line Transaction Processing) database, but it surely has been expanded by Crunchy Knowledge in addition to different distributors like Google with its AlloyDB, to additionally assist OLAP (On-line Analytics Processing) database workloads.
Mohan is total extraordinarily optimistic on the continued prospect of PostgreSQL for enterprise use circumstances.
“The neighborhood 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 obtainable,” he stated.
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 motive why Databricks acquired Neon and why Snowflake is now buying Crunchy Knowledge.
It’s all a part of a broader multi-year effort at Snowflake to have interaction with builders in an open means.
“The recognition of PostgreSQL with builders, coupled with CrunchyData’s assist for information warehousing on Iceberg, align nicely with Snowflake’s core technique,” Kevin Petrie, vp of analysis at BARC instructed 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 corporations would use CrunchyData expertise throughout the Snowflake platform to construct AI purposes for widespread use circumstances akin to telemetry, geospatial and commercial analytics.
He’s additionally not too stunned that Crunchy Knowledge is being acquired.
“Crunchy Knowledge’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 stated. “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 Knowledge reinforces a key level which will have already been apparent to some: PostgreSQL issues.
PostgreSQL is now not simply an open-source different to proprietary relational databases. It’s an open, broadly used platform that’s quickly changing into a de facto customary 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 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.
