Greenplum
| File:Greenplumlogotype.jpg | |
| Company type | Product of Broadcom |
|---|---|
| Industry | Big data technologies |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California |
| Products | Database management system software |
Greenplum represents a big data solution constructed on a MPP framework combined with the open source Postgres database. Established circa 2005 in San Mateo, California, it became part of EMC Corporation following its July 2010 acquisition.
Starting in 2012, the database management system was rebranded as Pivotal Greenplum Database and distributed through Pivotal Software, which open sourced its core engine and encouraged community involvement.
Following the 2020 acquisition of Pivotal by VMware, VMware maintained support for the Greenplum community and marketed the platform under the name VMware Tanzu Greenplum. Later, in November 2023, Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware.
In May 2024, Tanzu by Broadcom declared that Greenplum Database would transition to a closed source model, with all upcoming versions incorporated into the VMware Tanzu Data Suite.
Company
Greenplum was created in September 2003 by founders Scott Yara and Luke Lonergan through the unification of Metapa (founded in 2000 near Los Angeles) and Didera based in Fairfax, Virginia. Initial funding came from investors such as SoundView Ventures, Hudson Ventures, and Royal Wulff Ventures, contributing $20 million at the time of the merger.
Operating out of San Mateo, California, Greenplum launched its PostgreSQL-derived database software named Bizgres in April 2005. Additional funding rounds occurred in 2006 and 2007, each raising approximately $15 million.
In July 2006, Greenplum entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems, which had acquired MySQL AB. Sun Microsystems led a $27 million financing round in January 2009 through Meritech Capital Partners. The Bizgres initiative involved multiple collaborators and was supported until around 2008 when the product was renamed simply "Greenplum." Initially, the Sun Fire X4500 platform served as the reference hardware before shifting focus to Linux-based systems.
EMC acquired Greenplum in July 2010 for an estimated $300 million, positioning it as a cornerstone of EMC’s big data division. At that time, Greenplum’s offerings included Greenplum Database, Chorus management software, and Data Science Labs. Its clientele covered various industries including companies like eBay. In 2012, Greenplum was integrated into Pivotal Software.
In 2013, Greenplum released Hawq, a variant designed to utilize Apache Hadoop storage on Hadoop file systems. Both GreenplumDB and Hawq were open sourced in 2015 to promote broader adoption and encourage innovation within the community.
Technology
The Greenplum database developed by Pivotal utilizes massively parallel processing (MPP) within a clustered environment composed of a master node, a standby master node, and numerous segment nodes. Data resides on segment nodes running customized PostgreSQL instances identified by unique content IDs. Tables are distributed across these segments based on user-specified distribution keys. Each segment maintains both a primary and a mirror segment on separate physical hosts to ensure fault tolerance. The master node is responsible for parsing queries and distributing them to segments for execution. The system supports SQL:2003 standards and adheres to ACID transactional properties.
Greenplum competes with other MPP database solutions provided by major players such as Teradata, Amazon Redshift, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba's AnalyticDB, and previously IBM's Netezza. It also contends with columnar databases like HP's Vertica and Exasol, along with data warehousing platforms lacking MPP architecture including Oracle Exadata, IBM Db2, and SAP HANA.
Greenplum Version 7
Unveiled in September 2023, Greenplum Database Version 7 is built upon PostgreSQL 12.12, delivering enhanced performance and expanded features tailored for enterprise-level analytics.
Greenplum Version 6
Debuted in September 2019, Greenplum Database Version 6 is founded on PostgreSQL 9.4 and offers notable improvements in OLTP performance. This release signified a stronger integration with the open source PostgreSQL community and broadened Greenplum’s scope beyond analytics to efficiently handle high concurrency, embedded analytics, and data science tasks.
Greenplum Version 5
Introduced in September 2017, Greenplum Database Version 5 represented a strategic transition by incorporating newer PostgreSQL versions into Greenplum, updating from PostgreSQL 8.2 to 8.3. This edition also launched the General Availability of the GPORCA Optimizer, a cost-based SQL optimizer optimized for large-scale data processing.