I’m delighted to announce that the technologies produced in the Quickstep project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now been acquired by Pivotal! This is an exciting announcement that now provides a path to commercialize the Quickstep technology, with an opportunity to further revolutionize the already industry leading query tools in the Pivotal Big Data Suite.
This move shows that Pivotal, already a leader in data, remains committed and is passionate about bringing cutting-edge technology to their enterprise customers. It is also a fantastic example of the Wisconsin Idea, which encourages the faculty, students and staff at the University of Wisconsin to extend the reach of their work to far beyond the physical boundaries of the university.
A natural question that many of you may have is why Pivotal. Let me answer that using a famous quote by Gary Comer, the founder of Lands’ End, and on whose board I have been privileged to serve for about a year. Gary used to say, “Take care of the customers and the rest will take care of itself.” This is a really powerful statement, and eloquently summarizes what many of us technologists painfully learn when we do startups that need to blend technology with a sustainable business strategy.
Let’s dig deeper into this quote and see what it means for Quickstep. Quickstep has created data processing technologies that run efficiently on modern hardware with multi-core processors, large main memories, and newer NVM (non-volatile memory) storage technologies. It also allows one to build applications across a rich variety of domains, including traditional SQL analytics.
So, how do you get this technology to a customer in a way that solves a meaningful problem, and in a measurable way? To do that, you must also develop end-to-end solutions that the customer can deploy and run in a manner that is not just easy, but also allows them to have full control over the data platform.
To make this happen, you need the following: Awesome technology, a sustainable business strategy, and flawless execution. With this acquisition, we have a path to cover all these three crucial aspects.
- Quickstep will augment and enrichen the formidable offering of the Pivotal Big Data Suite.
- Pivotal has an amazing management team with deep experience in enterprise, and any big data company must have an enterprise strategy to provide enough degrees of freedom in the underlying business model for it to flourish in the long run.
- Then, there is the Pivotal Way. This is about flawless execution that builds the best solutions for customers leveraging Pivotal Big Data Suite, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Pivotal Labs. This cohesive suite of software and services allows any enterprise to develop with the level of productivity usually reserved for Internet giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Combined with a trusted sales and field engineering workforce, Pivotal helps organizations be more productive, scalable and agile to drive their business forward.
The ingredients for success are all here, and I can’t think of a better fit for the Quickstep technologies than at Pivotal. My team and I look forward to working with the rest of Pivotal, and provide compelling solutions to Pivotal customers that give them an edge in big data. Along the way, of course, we hope to have a ton of fun and see if we can leave a long lasting impact in the field of data.
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