What the author is trying to say is that (IMHO) running a database on a MPP (quite common these days, or easily stood up in a data center or Amazon) is still a pain.

Outside of Postgres, none of the truly open-source databases scale well with MPPs. You're still stuck with mostly single-core processing.

So you can pay good $$$$$ to the commercial database providers to provide you with a good database that may scale to your needs.

Or use Redshift for a great analytics DB at a reasonable price. (Note: we heavily use HBase where I am at, but that's comparing apples to oranges.)