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The open-source PostgreSQL (typically additionally known as Postgres) is seemingly a highly regarded 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 essential significance of the open-source database to fashionable enterprise information and AI workflows.
Not like 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 moderen product known as Crunchy Knowledge Warehouse that brings the platform to information lakehouse environments.
Based on Snowflake, Crunchy Knowledge’s expertise would be the basis of a brand new providing often 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 turned clear that the identical tendencies that Crunchy Knowledge was seeing from the operational database world had been additionally obvious to Snowflake,” Paul Laurence, co-founder of Crunchy Knowledge wrote in a weblog put up. “With at this time’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 turn into a very talked-about database, not only for conventional enterprise purposes but in addition for agentic AI. In spite of everything, that’s why Databricks acquired Neon.
It additionally brings in a strong developer neighborhood. Knowledge analyst Sanjeev Mohan advised VentureBeat that in his view, this is a wonderful acquisition.
“Not like 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 targeted on PostgreSQL for operational workloads; it’s additionally in a position to assist analytics as properly. 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 general extraordinarily constructive on the continued prospect of PostgreSQL for enterprise use instances.
“The neighborhood has constantly added distinctive capabilities not just for conventional relational and SQL use instances but in addition for time-series, JSON and vector search, whereas boasting among the finest 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 purpose 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 interact with builders in an open approach.
“The recognition of PostgreSQL with builders, coupled with CrunchyData’s assist for information warehousing on Iceberg, align properly with Snowflake’s core technique,” Kevin Petrie, vice chairman 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 arduous to think about how firms would use CrunchyData expertise throughout the Snowflake platform to construct AI purposes for widespread use instances similar to telemetry, geospatial and commercial analytics.
He’s additionally not too shocked that Crunchy Knowledge is being acquired.
“Crunchy Knowledge’s development appears to have flattened within the final couple of years, so it’s not shocking 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 that 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, broadly used platform that’s quickly changing into a de facto commonplace for builders and the enterprises they work for to construct agentic AI and enterprise purposes at scale.
The large 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 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.
