SAP Acquires Big Data Startup Altiscale for $125M
SAP announced today that has closed on its acquisition of Big Data startup Altiscale for a reported $125 million. Founded in 2012, Altiscale specializes in cloud-based Hadoop and Spark services and has raised $42 million in funding in two venture capital rounds to date. According to SAP, Altiscale will operate as a Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) offering from SAP immediately. Altiscale’s CEO Raymie Stata shared the news in a blog post, saying: “Altiscale and SAP share a unifying vision: helping customers create business value by harnessing the flood of data generated by the connected world. In combination, our global resources and deep talent pool will help accelerate our shared vision of a Big Data future.”
SAP and Altiscale are currently working to synchronize both companies’ technology offerings, products and market sector perspectives, and SAP notes that it will be evolving the Altiscale Cloud for integration into the SAP portfolio. The two companies share complementary approaches to deploying Big Data tools. SAP has focused on building its distributed computing solution based on an understanding of requirements coming from enterprise applications, analytics, data platform, data warehousing, and the cloud. In contrast, Altiscale has zoned in on cloud and data infrastructure with its Data Cloud product, which starts with a highly optimized cloud infrastructure.
SAP has a wide variety of use cases for Altiscale in a broad range of areas and industries, including:
- Internet of Things
- Financial services
- Media
- Ad and marketing analytics
- Pharmaceutical
- Telecom
Ken Tsai, Vice President and head of Cloud Platform and Data Management at SAP provides his take on the acquisition: “Altiscale is a natural fit for SAP, as we share our overall focus of helping enterprises derive business value from data – and successfully leverage Big Data. Since Altiscale is a leader in Big Data-as-a-Service based on Hadoop and Spark, it enables SAP to drive end-to-end value in Big Data across the technology, data platform, PaaS, analytics, and application stack.”
SAP and Altiscale will work closely with customers in the coming months to determine how SAP’s future Big Data and other data analytics offerings can best meet each customer’s unique needs.