Microsoft is buying MPP data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro. This is big news on multiple levels.

Microsoft announced today that it is buying privately held data warehouse appliance vendor DATAllegro.  This is big news, for a number of reasons.

1. The MPP-versus-shared-everything argument for data warehouse DBMS is over.  MPP (Massively Parallel Processing) has won.
2. Oracle, the only remaining holdout on the shared-everything side, will have to capitulate soon, presumably via an acquisition of its own.
3. For the first time ever, Microsoft has leapfrogged Oracle at the very high end of database management.
4. Now that new technologies are unquestionably winning, data warehousing will become a lot cheaper, and new kinds of analytic endeavors will become affordable.
5. Among the new data warehouse technologies, row-based approaches are holding their own versus columnar, at least in Microsoft’s eyes.
6. We’re about to learn how good Microsoft server technologies are at scale-out.

Less significantly, Infiniband just got a shot in the arm, and Microsoft is at least temporarily in bed with Cisco.

Related links

• Microsoft/DATAllegro deal basics and a long list of related/background links.
• Why Microsoft had to acquire a company like DATAllegro.
• Why the Microsoft/DATAllegro deal will succeed.
• How Oracle will save its data warehouse business.