VentureBeat

Database software company Greenplum says there’s a simple selling point that sets it apart from the competition: Greenplum databases are the biggest.

That’s particularly true with the recently unveiled Greenplum 3, said Luke Lonergan, a Greenplum co-founder and its chief technology officer. G3 can load more than 3.5 terabytes per hour, meaning it can handle data on a petabyte scale, well above anything that competitors like Teradata can offer, Lonergan said.

“With this release, we’re really hanging out our shingle and saying we can handle that Internet-scale data,” he said.

Storing and analyzing large amounts of data is crucial for many businesses, but it’s a real challenge online, Lonergan said, where Web sites can generate massive amounts of information. Some Web businesses have been leery of traditional databases because “they don’t scale,” Lonergan said, but several online companies are signing on to make use of Greenplum’s new technology. VideoEgg, for example, plans to use G3 to analyze user data and take that information to deliver targeted ads. Skype will use G3 to locate users who abuse the company’s Internet phone system.

Greenplum tried to develop a database of this scale for four years before getting it right, Lonergan said. For one thing, Greenplum is leveraging its relationship with Sun, and using Sun’s Thumper hardware to store data at a much greater density. Storing 400 terabytes takes 38 racks to accomplish using traditional technology, but with Sun’s hardware, Greenplum can store it in seven racks. Greenplum has also developed a set of algorithms that shuffle the data during processing and minimize waste.

Lonergan added that G3 — which is open source — is more flexible than most databases. For example, G3 software can be installed on various hardware systems, rather than being tied to a specific solution. And because G3 was developed using the PostgresSQL engine, Lonergan said it was easy for Greenplum to incorporate languages beyond SQL, making the database usable by a wider audience.

The announcement of G3’s availability follows a last month’s news that the San Mateo-based company raised $27 million in a third round of funding. (Read our coverage.)

Greenplum, a San Mateo company offering businesses an affordable way to sort though hundreds of terabytes of data to become more intelligent about their customers’ habits, has raised $19 million in financing.

Greenplum is significant because it says it provides a database for speedy data warehousing at a tenth of the cost of leading incumbent, Teradata. It does so by working with the new server built by Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, billed internally as the “Web 2.0 server.”

Called the Sun Fire X4500, the server has 48 disk drives and 24TB of storage, a significant amount considering the server is the size of two telephone books. (See Bechtolsheim demo the server in YouTube video below). Tim O’Reilly, a publisher who has in recent years become obsessed with collecting and processing business data to make better business decisions, has used it (see here for more details and a video where O’Reilly speaks with the former Greenplum CEO). O’Reilly discusses how Amazon and other Internet companies will need this technology, because they want to measure clicks, and other customers actions — to understand trends and find ways to boost profits. Greenplum has 15 customers, and announces tomorrow (Tuesday) that it has signed up the largest Phillipines wireless service provider, SMART, which also serves the most SMS messages in the world (the Filipinos really like texting).

Sierra Ventures led a $15 million cash investment, and was joined by existing investors Mission Ventures, Dawntreader Ventures, and EDF Ventures. Comerica Bank provided $4 million in debt. Notably, Sierra was the investor in competitor Teradata. Greenplum sells 100 TB hardware and software for $1.8 million, a tenth of Teradata’s price, co-founder Luke Lonergan tells VentureBeat. Teradata had $1.5 billion in sales last year, and revenue growth of 7.5 percent.

The company named Sun executive Bill Cook as chief executive. Greenplum is built on the high-end open source database, PostgreSQL