ParAccel
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Database management |
| Founded | February 2006 |
| Founder | Barry Zane, Tom Clancey |
| Fate | Acquired by Actian |
| Headquarters | Campbell, California , United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Charles W. Berger (former chairman and CEO), David J. Ehrlich (former CEO), Bruce Scott (former VP engineering), Mark Lockareff (former interim CEO) |
| Products | ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB), Amigo (discontinued), Maverick (discontinued) |
| Parent | Actian |
ParAccel, Inc. was a software enterprise located in California that specialized in a database management system tailored for sophisticated analytics and business intelligence applications. The company was acquired by Actian in April 2013.
History
ParAccel operated as a venture-funded firm concentrating on software for data analytics. It obtained intellectual property assets from XPrime, which had ceased operations in 2005. The company was established in February 2006 by Barry Zane (CTO) and Tom Clancey (interim CEO), initially supported by angel investment.
The initial venture capital financing was secured in August 2006 from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners, and Tao Venture Partners. By 2007, ParAccel maintained offices in San Diego and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with David J. Ehrlich as CEO and Bruce Scott serving as vice president of engineering. In November 2007, ParAccel completed a $20 million second funding round led by Walden Ventures and simultaneously inaugurated an office in Cupertino within Silicon Valley.
In June 2009, the company closed a $22 million third funding round spearheaded by Menlo Ventures. Mark Lockareff assumed the role of interim CEO in January 2010. That same year, the Wall Street Journal recognized ParAccel as one of the top 50 venture-backed companies. In April 2010, ParAccel collaborated with VMware to establish a TPC-H benchmark record at a 1 TB data scale utilizing virtualization technology. Charles W. Berger was appointed chairman and CEO in September 2010.
By early 2011, many of ParAccel’s competitors had been acquired by other firms. In July 2011, the company secured additional funding with Amazon.com leading the round. Amazon later announced its Redshift database service in December 2012, which was based on ParAccel’s technology and became generally available in early 2013.
ParAccel operated offices in both Campbell and San Diego, California. Its main competitors included Greenplum (Pivotal), EXASOL, Vertica (Hewlett-Packard), Netezza (IBM), Oracle Corporation, and Teradata (including Aster Data Systems). The acquisition of ParAccel by Actian took place in April 2013, coinciding with Charles W. Berger’s departure to assume the CEO position at Extreme Networks.
Products
In 2006, ParAccel offered two primary products: Amigo and Maverick. Amigo was designed to accelerate queries on existing data warehouses without replacing them as the primary database, whereas Maverick functioned as an independent data storage solution. Eventually, ParAccel discontinued Amigo to concentrate on Maverick, which evolved into the ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB).
The ParAccel Analytic Database was a parallel relational database system featuring a shared-nothing architecture combined with columnar storage, adaptive compression techniques, and a memory-optimized design. Its database engine was originally derived from PostgreSQL but enhanced specifically for analytic workloads. From version 2.0 onward, ParAccel introduced a new query optimizer named Omne, with substantial improvements implemented in version 3.1 released in June 2011. The platform supports compiled queries and employs a proprietary interconnect protocol to facilitate efficient communication between nodes.
Additionally, ParAccel provided on-demand integration (ODI) modules designed to extend analytic functionalities beyond the core database platform.