ParAccel

ParAccel, Inc.
Subsidiary
Industry Data Warehousing
Enterprise Software
Database Management
Business Analytics
Founded 2005
Headquarters Campbell and San Diego, California United States
Products The ParAccel Analytic Platform
ParAccel Base / Advanced Analytic Packages
Informatica Adaptor for ParAccel
Parent Actian
Website www.actian.com

ParAccel, Inc. was a California-based software company. It provided a database management system designed for advanced analytics for business intelligence. ParAccel was acquired by Actian in April 2013.[1]

History

ParAccel was a venture-backed company focused on developing software for data analysis. It acquired some intellectual property from the company XPrime, which ended operations in 2005.[2][3] It was officially incorporated in February 2006, founded by Barry Zane who became chief technology officer, and was first funded by angel investors. In August 2006 the first series of venture capital came from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners and Tao Venture Partners. In 2007 the company was based in San Diego, California, with an office in Ann Arbor, Michigan. David J. Ehrlich was chief executive, and Bruce Scott, vice president of engineering.[4] In November 2007, a second round of $20 million included previous investors and was led by Walden Ventures.[5] In December the company opened an office in Cupertino, California (part of Silicon Valley).[6]

A third round of $22 million in June 2009 was led by Menlo Ventures. In January 2010 Mark Lockareff replaced Ehrlich as interim chief executive.[7] In March 2010 the Wall Street Journal listed ParAccel as a "top" venture backed company.[8] A result from the TPC-H benchmark from the Transaction Processing Performance Council in April 2010 had record performance at 1 TB data size using VMware.[9][10] Charles W. Berger was appointed chairman and CEO in September 2010.[7]

By early 2011 many of its competitors had been acquired.[11] During its July 2011 funding round, existing investors were led by Amazon.com.[12] In December 2012, the Amazon Redshift database service was announced (and generally available in early 2013) using ParAccel technology.[13][14]

ParAccel is based in California with offices in Campbell and San Diego. Competitors include Greenplum (from Pivotal), EXASOL, Vertica (from Hewlett-Packard), Netezza (from IBM), Oracle Corporation, and Teradata (including its Aster Data Systems technology).[15][12] ParAccel was acquired by Actian in April 2013.[1][16] Berger left at that time to become CEO of Extreme Networks.[17]

Products

In 2008 ParAccel offered two different products: Amigo and Maverick.[18] Amigo was designed to accelerate queries directed at an existing data warehouse while leaving the data warehouse remained as the database of record. In contrast Maverick was designed as a stand-alone data store.[18][19] ParAccel discontinued Amigo in favor of the stand-alone offering which evolved into the ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB).

The ParAccel Analytic Database is a parallel relational database system using a shared-nothing architecture with a columnar orientation, adaptive compression, memory-centric design.[20] ParAccel's DBMS engine is built for analytics, initially based on PostgreSQL. ParAccel began phasing in a new optimizer (Omne) in release 2.0 and made significant changes to Omne in subsequent releases (3.1 released in June 2011). ParAccel implements compiled queries, and a proprietary interconnect protocol for inter-node communications. It integrated with storage area network technologies such as those from EMC Corporation.[21]

Starting with V3.0, customers could use mathematical, statistical and data mining functions within PADB to complement native SQL-based analytics. Customers have the option to build their own custom functions or buy functions "off-the-shelf". ParAccel offers built-in analytic functions (like standard deviation, variance, etc.) while also offering two off-the-shelf Analytic Packages (Base Package and Advanced Package). Additional functions specific to Financial Services are also available.

ParAccel offers on-demand integration (ODI) modules for analytics and data that lie outside of the ParAccel Analytic Platform. These modules were built using the Extensibility Framework. Therefore customers, partners and 3rd-parties can quickly build their own custom modules. ParAccel offers ODI modules for Teradata, Apache Hadoop (MapReduce), NYSE Technologies and FIX messages.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Maria Duetscher (April 29, 2013). "Actian Picks Up ParAccel to Boost Analytics Portfolio". Silicon Angle. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  2. ↑ Philip Howard (December 13, 2005). "Warehouse appliances: boom or bust?". The Register. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  3. ↑ Philip Howard (March 30, 2006). "ParACCEL up and running: The new boy on the data warehouse appliance block". The Register. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  4. ↑ "Company: Accelerating Business Intelligence". Old ParAccel web page. Archived from the original on August 20, 2007. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Notice of Sale of Securities [Regulation D and Section 4(6) of the Securities Act of 1933], item 06" (PDF). US Securities and Exchange Commission. November 28, 2007. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  6. ↑ "ParAccel Secures $20 Million in Venture Financing and Opens Cupertino Office". Press release. December 10, 2007. Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "ParAccel Appoints Charles W. Berger as CEO". Press release. September 8, 2010. Archived from the original on September 12, 2010. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  8. ↑ "Then Next Big Thing: The Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies". The Wall Street Journal. March 9, 2010. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  9. ↑ "ParAccel, VMware Break 1TB TPC-H Performance Record with World’s First Virtualized TPC-H". Press release. April 12, 2010. Archived from the original on October 24, 2011. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  10. ↑ "VMware ESXi platform/HP DL380/ParAccel Analytic". TPC-H Result Highlight. April 11, 2010. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  11. ↑ Derrick Harris (March 11, 2011). "Why ParAccel’s Time on the Big Data Singles Circuit Won’t Be Long". Giga Om. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Derrick Harris (July 7, 2011). "Amazon invests big in big data startup". Giga Om. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  13. ↑ Doug Henschen (December 6, 2012). "Amazon Redshift Leaves On-Premises Opening, Says ParAccel". Information Week. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  14. ↑ Barb Darrow (February 15, 2013). "Watch out HP, IBM, Teradata, Oracle: Amazon Redshift is here". Giga Om. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
  15. ↑ Curt Monash (August 19, 2008). "Comparing Vertica, ParAccel and Exasol". Information Week. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  16. ↑ Doug Henschen (April 25, 2013). "Actian Acquires ParAccel, Fuel Behind Amazon RedShift". Information Week. Retrieved November 19, 2013.
  17. ↑ Jim Duffy (April 25, 2013). "Extreme Networks replaces its CEO again". Network World. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Thomas C. Briggs (February 25, 2008). "Getting to Know ParAccel, Part II". Full Table Scan blog. Retrieved December 6, 2013.
  19. ↑ "ParAccel Corporate Brief". HP partner web site. March 4, 2009. Retrieved January 13, 2014.
  20. ↑ Yijou Chen, Richard L. Cole, William J. McKennal, Sergei Perfilov, Aman Sinha, Eugene Szedenits, Jr. (June 29, 2009). "Partial join order optimization in the paraccel analytic database". Proceedings of the 2009 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of data: 905–908. doi:10.1145/1559845.1559945. ISBN 978-1-60558-551-2.
  21. ↑ Thomas C. Briggs (March 17, 2009). "ParAccel Update". Full Table Scan blog. Retrieved December 6, 2013.

External links