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The open-source PostgreSQL (typically additionally known as Postgres) is seemingly a very popular commodity for large enterprise knowledge 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 vital significance of the open-source database to trendy enterprise knowledge 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 totally supported model of PostgreSQL. There may be additionally a particular model of the platform for Kubernetes environments and a more recent product known as Crunchy Knowledge Warehouse that brings the platform to knowledge lakehouse environments.
Based on Snowflake, Crunchy Knowledge’s know-how would be the basis of a brand new providing often called Snowflake Postgres. It’ll permit customers to mix Crunchy Knowledge’s enterprise-grade and developer-friendly Postgres capabilities inside Snowflake’s safe and ruled perimeter. The aim is to simplify how builders construct, deploy and scale production-ready AI brokers and apps.
“In our discussions, it rapidly grew to become 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 publish. “With at present’s announcement, we’re focusing 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 help brings to Snowflake
Snowflake has its personal knowledge cloud platform that gives a cloud knowledge 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 change into a very fashionable database, not only for conventional enterprise functions but in addition for agentic AI. In any case, that’s why Databricks acquired Neon.
It additionally brings in a stable developer neighborhood. Knowledge analyst Sanjeev Mohan advised VentureBeat that in his view, this is a superb acquisition.
“Not like Neon, Crunchy is actually 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 capable of help analytics as nicely. PostgreSQL by default was initially simply an OLTP (On-line Transaction Processing) database, however it has been expanded by Crunchy Knowledge in addition to different distributors like Google with its AlloyDB, to additionally help OLAP (On-line Analytics Processing) database workloads.
Mohan is total extraordinarily constructive on the continued prospect of PostgreSQL for enterprise use instances.
“The neighborhood has repeatedly 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 greatest geospatial options out there,” 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 method.
“The recognition of PostgreSQL with builders, coupled with CrunchyData’s help for knowledge warehousing on Iceberg, align nicely with Snowflake’s core technique,” Kevin Petrie, vice chairman of analysis at BARC advised VentureBeat.
Apache Iceberg is an open-source knowledge 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 laborious to think about how corporations would use CrunchyData know-how inside the Snowflake platform to construct AI functions for frequent 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 stunning to see them go for this exit,” Petrie stated. “The consolidation wave amongst knowledge instruments and platforms continues.”
Why it issues to the enterprise
For enterprise knowledge 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 turning into a de facto normal for builders and the enterprises they work for to construct agentic AI and enterprise functions at scale.
The massive hyperscalers, together with Google, Amazon and Microsoft, in addition to an extended listing of smaller distributors together with EDB, Aiven and Netapp Instaclustr are all already supporting PostgreSQL.
Now, with Snowflake and Databricks throwing their help and a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} at PostgreSQL, it’s clear that enterprises ought to have it as a part of their developer and AI stacks.
