SAP Buys Altiscale To Drive Big Data Push

SAP has completed the purchase of Altiscale, giving the German software giant access to the startup’s big data-as-a-service (BDaaS) platform, which will be integrated across the SAP portfolio.

Altiscale provides its BDaaS in the form of cloud-based Hadoop and Apache Spark big data storage infrastructure through the Altiscale Data Cloud, and handles the ingesting and processing data with the Altiscale Insight Cloud.

This ensures data it can be made ready for use in business intelligence software such as Tableau, R and Excel.

With the acquisition, SAP effectively gains another layer in the services it can offer amidst its own big data services, which have grown out of the likes of SAP HANA Vora.

Altiscale, SAP and big data

While SAP has been flirting with big data for some time, particularly given the capacity for HANA to link into Hadoop clusters, its big data strategy is not as mature as its core focus on providing enterprise software and an in-memory relational database management system.

Mixing Altiscale into its big data strategy will see SAP not only broaden what it can offer its customers, but also avoid the need to offer integrate with third-party BDaaS tools and services.

SAP said the acquisition of Altiscale is a “natural fit”, as the startup shares the software giant’s ambitions to provide businesses with way to extract valuable information from data, and gives SAP another feather in its cap when it comes to offering data services which cover big data, on-premise and cloud database platforms, analytics and enterprise applications.

The company envisions using Altiscale’s BDaaS in use across a wide range of industries, such as financial services, pharmaceuticals, telecoms and the media, as well as aiding the use of big data within Internet of Things (IoT) networks found in smart cities and manufacturing.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but SAP was clear that Alitscale will operate under its banner and be a focused BDaaS offering from SAP.

While SAP has big data in its sights on one hand, it is also keen to make waves in the IoT arena, having joined forces with fellow German company Bosch to link IoT focused services together.

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