Progress Software Inc. today announced an agreement to acquire MarkLogic Inc., a manufacturer of NoSQL database management systems primarily used for enterprise data integration.
The purchase price was not initially disclosed, but subsequent reports set it at $355 million.
Progress says the deal provides a unified, enterprise-grade semantic data platform for extracting value from complex data. MarkLogic is a multimodal database that can be used as a document store, a native DBMS for use with Extensible Markup Languages, a Resource Description Framework store, and a search engine.
MarkLogic is a relatively unknown name in the NoSQL world, but it ranks #1 on DB-Engine’s list of Native XML DBMS and RDF Stores and #5 in the Search Engines category.
Founded in 2001, MarkLogic has generated more than $100 billion in annual revenue, according to Yogesh Gupta (pictured), CEO of Progress Software. In 2020 the private he equity firm He was acquired by Vector Capital Management LP.
Gupta said MarkLogic’s technology fits well into the company’s existing data management line, including its OpenEdge relational product and DataDirect integration engine. Core He is rarely used as a NoSQL engine, but “databases are great products and the added value of metadata modeling is a competitive differentiator,” he said.
Heterogeneous data integration
A semantic engine allows you to reconcile data across multiple sources that do not necessarily use the same terminology or syntax. “The same set of information can have different names and terminology, so the meaning is often unclear,” he says. “A semantic database is about finding related data without exact matches. You can build relationships between sources.”
This addresses a thorny problem, especially for large companies with “thousands of suppliers and hundreds of thousands of parts with different terms,” Gupta said. “If you have a database that can ingest from both structured and unstructured sources and apply semantic data modeling, you can streamline it and apply analytics.”
Progress Software has been around since 1981 and reported revenues of $531 million for fiscal 2021, but the company has historically maintained a low profile. About 40% of its revenue comes from OpenEdge, which was first released 40 years ago.
Gupta notes that more than 1,700 software companies ship OpenEdge on an OEM basis, saying, “It’s famous for being embedded in many applications because it’s the database with the lowest total cost of ownership.” says. “Customers want to extend to unstructured data, so they need metadata management and his NoSQL capabilities,” he said, marking Logic as a good fit.
With roots in application development, Progress has sought to diversify into Agile methodologies such as DevOps. A little over two years ago, he acquired infrastructure automation company Chef Software Inc., and in 2021 he acquired DevOps-focused Kemp Technologies, Inc.
