ParAccel, Inc. was a

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

-based

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

company. It provided a

database management system In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and an ...

designed to provide advanced

analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data, which also falls under and directly relates to the umbrella term, data sc ...

for

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) consists of strategies, methodologies, and technologies used by enterprises for data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of BI technologies include Financial reporting, reporting, online an ...

. ParAccel was acquired by

Actian Actian is an American software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California that provides Analytics, analytics-related software, products, and services. The company sells database, database software and technology, Cloud computing, cloud en ...

in April 2013.

History

ParAccel was a venture-backed company focused on developing software for data analysis. It acquired some

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

from the company XPrime, which ended operations in 2005. It was officially incorporated in February 2006, founded by Barry Zane who became chief technology officer, Tom Clancey as interim-CEO, and was first funded by

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible de ...

s. In August 2006 the first series of

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

came from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Bay Partners and Tao Venture Partners. In 2007 the company was based in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

, with an office in

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in Washtenaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851, making it the List of municipalities in Michigan, fifth-most populous cit ...

. David J. Ehrlich was chief executive, and Bruce Scott, vice president of engineering. In November 2007, a second round of $20 million included previous investors and was led by Walden Ventures. In December the company opened an office in

Cupertino, California Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose, California, San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The ...

(part of

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

). A third round of $22 million in June 2009 was led by

Menlo Ventures Menlo Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, California with an additional office in San Francisco, California. The firm was founded as one of the earliest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley in 1976 and provides technology ...

. In January 2010 Mark Lockareff replaced Ehrlich as interim chief executive. In March 2010 the ''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' listed ParAccel in a list of 50 top venture backed companies. A result from the TPC-H benchmark from the

Transaction Processing Performance Council The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), founded in 1988, is a non-profit organization founded to define benchmarks for transaction processing and databases, and to publish objective, verifiable TPC performance data to the industry ...

in April 2010 had record performance at 1 TB data size using VMware. Charles W. Berger was appointed chairman and CEO in September 2010. By early 2011 many of its competitors had been acquired. During its July 2011 funding round, existing investors were led by

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

. In December 2012, the

Amazon Redshift Amazon Redshift is a data warehouse product which forms part of the larger cloud-computing platform Amazon Web Services. It is built on top of technology from the massive parallel processing (MPP) data warehouse company ParAccel (later acqui ...

database service was announced (and generally available in early 2013) using ParAccel technology. ParAccel was based in California with offices in Campbell and

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

. Competitors included

Greenplum Greenplum is a big data technology based on MPP architecture and the Postgres open source database technology. The technology was created by a company of the same name headquartered in San Mateo, California around 2005. Greenplum was acquire ...

(from Pivotal), EXASOL,

Vertica Vertica is an analytic database management software company. Vertica was founded in 2005 by the database researcher Michael Stonebraker with Andrew Palmer as the founding CEO. Ralph Breslauer and Christopher P. Lynch served as CEOs later ...

(from

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

Netezza IBM Netezza (pronounced ne-teez-a) is a subsidiary of American technology company IBM that designs and markets high-performance data warehouse appliances and advanced analytics applications for the most demanding analytic uses including enterpr ...

(from

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

, and

Teradata Teradata Corporation is an American software company that provides cloud database and Analytics, analytics-related software, products, and services. The company was formed in 1979 in Brentwood, California, as a collaboration between researchers a ...

(including its

Aster Data Systems Aster Data Systems was a data management and analysis software company headquartered in San Carlos, California. It was founded in 2005 and acquired by Teradata in 2011. History Aster Data was co-founded in 2005 by Stanford University graduate stu ...

technology). ParAccel was acquired by

in April 2013. Berger left at that time to become CEO of

Extreme Networks Extreme Networks, Inc. is an American networking company based in Morrisville, North Carolina. Extreme Networks designs, develops, and manufactures wired and wireless network infrastructure equipment and develops the software for network managem ...

Products

In 2006 ParAccel offered two different products: Amigo and Maverick. Amigo was designed to accelerate queries directed at an existing data warehouse while leaving the data warehouse as the database of record. In contrast Maverick was designed as a stand-alone data store. ParAccel discontinued Amigo in favor of the stand-alone offering which evolved into the ParAccel Analytic Database (PADB). The ParAccel Analytic Database was a parallel relational database system using a

shared-nothing architecture A shared-nothing architecture (SN) is a distributed computing architecture in which each update request is satisfied by a single node (processor/memory/storage unit) in a computer cluster. The intent is to eliminate contention among nodes. Nodes do ...

with a columnar orientation, adaptive compression, memory-centric design. ParAccel's DBMS engine is built for analytics, initially based on

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

. ParAccel began phasing in a new optimizer (Omne) in release 2.0 and made significant changes to Omne in subsequent releases (3.1 released in June 2011). ParAccel implements compiled queries, and a proprietary interconnect protocol for inter-node communications. ParAccel offered on-demand integration (ODI) modules for analytics and data outside of the ParAccel Analytic Platform.

References

External links

* {{web archive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120207091300/http://www.paraccel.com/, title=Official website Business intelligence companies Data warehousing products Software companies based in California Defunct software companies of the United States