If you haven’t heard, Greenplum was just bought by EMC. This, to me, was not unexpected. Smaller players need a lot of funds to create compelling products in this space. Even with a compelling product (and Greenplum’s product is compelling), getting to that next stage may very well require a deep pocketed sugar mommy (or in the case of EMC, sugar daddy). And don’t even get me started about cracking the corporate IT garden. You really want to have a big name player attached to you in some way, shape or form. Other companies left in this space would do well to start looking. I do wonder where Vertica is going to land. And will anyone purchase Dataupia? Will Netezza join the ranks of the big boys or will it too get acquired?

The database markets are saturated. There are a ton of companies fighting over the same spaces: spaces that is getting served by a lot of open source projects and/or by the major appliance players. NoSQL and cloud are changing the rules. The appliance companies are trickling down with software solutions to match their screaming hardware (or, in the case of Oracle, trickling up). The landscape is changing and companies not playing with heavy hitters are doing the work themselves. And finding that up to a point, it’s really not horrid. That last part is due, in no small measure, to companies like Facebook and Google releasing their code to the open source community. Additionally programs like Drizzle, I believe, are already creating a compelling argument that open source projects can supply 90%+ of a database user’s needs with lot less pain than a few years ago. Add in memcache and, well, I don’t envy any database company targeting data sents under a few hundred gig.

For any new database company to make it, to me, they need to offer some compelling, game changing ideas. I’ve heard a few bantered about – and some are neat. However game changing? I haven’t seen it. VoltDB? Infobrite? Neat but not game changing.

I really need to stop writing about database companies and start talking more about my awesome new vocational field – robotics.

And now for something completely different. I love lego. I love Ted. Together you get this wonderful talk.