NOTE: Part of a blog stream, with related items here.

Microsoft recently completed its acquisition of DATAllegro, a data warehouse appliance vendor.

I interviewed Stuart Frost, founder and CEO, and Quentin Clark about their plans for integrating DATAllegro's technologies into Microsoft's product line. Several months ago, I had blogged about the acquisition and mused that Microsoft should be renamed to 'Microhard' since they were going to ship some 'real iron'. Well, my musings were a bit off. But, my prediction of the significance of the acquisition was correct.

The style of delivering a Microsoft data warehouse appliance is through partnership with four major hardware vendors (yet to be named but obvious to most). In early 2010, customers would purchase the MPP version of SQL Server through these vendors, following a strict 'reference architecture' specification. The pre-assembled rack would contain all components required to plug into power and networking. Minimal configuration would be needed by the customer. That is the plan.

An interesting aspect is the potential that DATAllegro's Hub-and-Spoke architecture could have for Microsoft's current SQL Server customer base. Many are pushing the capacity limits of the current SMP system. The MPP offering could be a comfortable migration path. Since SQL Server is typically used to support data marts, the MPP version could replace each of these data marts as the spokes. The company could then concentrate resources on the hub as their emerging enterprise data warehouse, while retaining their past investments. If Microsoft refined the tools and best practices for this 'data mart integration' strategy, it could be successful for them in retaining their DW customer base from the other big DW players.