Microsoft acquires Citus Data, aims to improve Azure PostgreSQL

Microsoft has been taking open source solutions very seriously over the last few years and its latest corporate acquisition comes to confirm its commitment to this field once again. The latest company to join Microsoft is Citus Data, a Turkish developer with an eight-year history that has been focusing all its efforts in creating various PostgreSQL solutions.

According to Citus Data's co-founders, "Both Citus and Microsoft share a mission of openness, empowering developers, and choice. And we both love PostgreSQL. We are excited about joining forces, and the value that doing so will create: Delivering to our community and our customers the world’s best PostgreSQL experience."

Microsoft's previous investments in the open source field include the acquisition of GitHub, SQL Server on Linux, a multi-model NoSQL database with Azure Cosmos DB, as well as support for Spark and Hadoop analytics. The solution provided by Citus are available as a fully-managed database as a service, as enterprise software, but also as a free open source download.

The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but it should be obvious that — as usual — the Citus Data team will join Microsoft's employees working on PostgreSQL solutions. What will happen with the Citus Data brand and its existing products in time — this is something that remains to be seen.