A DWA is designed specifically for high performance big data analytics and is delivered as an easy-to-use packaged system.
Most DW appliances use massively parallel processing (MPP) architectures to provide high query performance and platform scalability.
In creating the first data warehouse appliance, Hinshaw and Netezza used the foundations developed by Model 204, Teradata, and others, to pioneer a new category to address consumer analytics efficiently by providing a modular, scalable, easy-to-manage database system that’s cost effective.
Advances in technology reduced costs and improved performance in storage devices, multi-core CPUs and networking components.
Open-source RDBMS products, such as Ingres and PostgreSQL, reduce software-license costs and allow DW-appliance vendors to focus on optimization rather than providing basic database functionality.
DATAllegro, prior to acquisition by Microsoft, partnered with EMC Corporation and Dell and implemented open-source Ingres on Linux.
The market has also seen the emergence of data-warehouse bundles where vendors combine their hardware and database software together as a data warehouse platform.