Microsoft acquires Citus Data, another open source addition for Azure

Citus Data is an open source extension that will help bring scale to Postgre SQL databases and it seems Microsoft’s interest lay in the fact that customers will have no need to re-architect their existing applications because of its extension nature, versus other fork-like scaling solutions. According to Sudhakar Sannakkayala, the general manager of Azure Data, Microsoft also saw benefit in Citus Data in particular because “customers can take advantage of all the innovations in community PostgreSQL with queries that are significantly faster compared to proprietary implementations of PostgreSQL.” In the announcement of the Citus Data acquisition, Sannakkayala reaffirms the notion that Microsoft’s pivot to the cloud is expanding customer base beyond the walled-garden of Windows and that this approach speaks to the longevity of the company.