In a blog post today, Microsoft Corporation announced that it has acquired Metanautix in an effort to provide services to companies that find it difficult to efficiently use data.
On Friday, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Palo Alto, California-based startup Metanautix; in a move which will apparently advance Microsoft's ongoing pursuit of enterprise analytics.
Metanautix was founded back in September of 2014, by Toli Lerios and Theo Vassilakis, who have formerly
worked for Facebook and Google tech companies, respectively.
Metanautix's product can pull information in from a variety of private and public cloud data sources, including traditional data warehouses, NoSQL databases like Cassandra and business systems like Salesforce.
Though terms of the Metanautix deal were not disclosed in full, the startup was backed by only $7 million worth of capital, including a significant injection from venture firm Sequoia. Metanautix has essentially created a tool dubbed as Quest, which allows SQL queries against any data regardless of where it is.
In a blog post, Mr. Vassilakis said Metanautix was aimed at building the Quest data, compute engine by integrating the data supply chain, which could enable scalable SQL access to any data. It's cheaper than having to shift all data into a central system. "In the coming months, we will have more to share about how we will bring Metanautix technology into the Microsoft data platform, including SQL Server and the Cortana Analytics Suite", says Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president, Data Group, Microsoft.
Microsoft has not exactly revealed any details about how it will use the new acquisition. He added that the unit looks forward to reaching the next level with Microsoft within three years, and expects big things with SQL Server and Azure.