Pivotal Greenplum Database

Greenplum

Type	Division of Pivotal Software
Industry	Big data technologies
Founded	2003
Headquarters	San Mateo, California
Products	Database management system software

Greenplum was a big data analytics company headquartered in San Mateo, California. Greenplum was acquired by EMC Corporation in July 2010. Starting in 2012 its database management system software became known as the Pivotal Greenplum Database sold through Pivotal Software.

Greenplum, the company, was founded in September 2003 by Scott Yara and Luke Lonergan. It was a merger of two smaller companies Metapa (founded in August 2000 near Los Angeles) and Didera in Fairfax, Virginia. Investors included SoundView Ventures, Hudson Ventures and Royal Wulff Ventures. A total of $20 million in funding was announced at the merger. Greenplum, based in San Mateo, California, released its database management system software based on PostgreSQL in April 2005 calling it Bizgres. Rounds of venture capital of about $15 million each were invested in March 2006 and February 2007.

In July 2006 a partnership with Sun Microsystems was announced. Sun, which had also acquired MySQL AB, participated in a round of $27 million investment in January 2009, led by Meritech Capital Partners. The Bizgres project included a few other members, and was supported through about 2008, when the product was just called "Greenplum" as well. The Sun Fire X4500 was a reference architecture and used by the majority of customers until a transition was made to Linux around that time. Greenplum was acquired by EMC Corporation in July 2010, becoming the foundation of EMC's big data software division. Although EMC did not disclose the value, it was estimated at $300 million. Greenplum's products at the time of acquisition were the Greenplum Database, Chorus (a management tool), and Data Science Labs. Greenplum had customers in vertical markets including eBay. It became part of Pivotal Software in 2012.