Acquisition of ParAccel Technology

Amazon strategically acquired key intellectual property and engineering talent from ParAccel, a company known for its high-performance, massively parallel processing (MPP) columnar database. This acquisition provided the foundational technology that Redshift would be built upon.

Significance

This was a critical pre-cursor to Redshift's development, providing AWS with a proven, specialized database engine rather than building one entirely from scratch. It accelerated Redshift's time to market and ensured a robust core.

Key facts

Year
2011
Type
acquisition
Location
Seattle, Washington, USA (AWS Headquarters)