Greenplum's Chorus builds data marts from multiple sources

IDG News Service - Database and data warehousing vendor Greenplum plans today to unveil Chorus, a bundle of software that allows users to quickly provision new data marts composed of many sources.

Many enterprises have sought to build a centralized data warehouse under the rationale that it provides a "single source of the truth" compared to multiple data marts, as well as more control over how information is governed and protected.

But that model has become "untenable" given the upkeep involved, as well the IT bottleneck it causes when multiple business analysts want to analyze information it contains, said Scott Yara, co-founder and president of Greenplum.

"Customers should have enterprise data warehouses, they're an important thing to have. But they shouldn't be the only way of storing and thinking about data in the enterprise," Yara said.

In addition, there is untapped potential in information held outside the data warehouse, Greenplum contends.

Once a certain data set is proved to have value for ongoing analysis, it could be pushed into the main data warehouse, he said.

Chorus is the first product to emerge from the "enterprise data cloud" marketing strategy Greenplum launched last year. It is available via perpetual license or subscription, and will be generally available at the end of April, Yara said. He declined to disclose pricing.

Database analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research described Chorus as "basically a new class of data-integration middleware."

"The perfectly integrated grand central database is a pipe dream," Monash said. "Different portions and subsets of analytic data belong on different qualities of equipment and that's also a barrier to putting everything in one integrated system."

Meanwhile, Chorus "takes something that people are already doing and makes it easier," he said.

Greenplum also announced version 4.0 of its database, which includes a range of performance, reliability and administrative improvements.

The company believes the database has achieved a level of functionality that makes it a potential "floor-sweep replacement" for platforms sold by larger rivals such as Teradata, Yara said.

The vendor "has been at this longer than some of the other analytic DBMS startups," Monash said. "They have dotted more I's and crossed more T's."