SAP Buys Altiscale To Score Big On Big Data Posted on : Sep 28 - 2016

In a notable buyout, Walldorf, Germany based SAP has completed the buyout of Altiscale, adding to its big data capabilities. Atilscale can be called an enterprise known for ‘Big data-as-a-service’ (BDaaS), will help SAP develop big-data solutions for customers who may not be able to build it and run it on their own, especially from the financial standpoint.

The financial details of the deal have not been revealed, but the aim has always been clear, that SAP wants to now get into the area of proving big data capabilities to businesses, bringing them at par with internet giants like Yahoo. Google, and Amazon, as per Mike Eacrett, Vice-President of Product Development, Big Data, at SAP.

With the technology world scoring big on big data as one of the areas of future growth, big data adaptability is still a bit far way, in terms of the numbers game atleast. According to Gartner Analyst Merv Adrian, only 15% of this year’s surveyed businesses admitted to using big data capabilities during their production cycles.

If the experts are to be believed, a host of factors like deficit in skilled personnel in the area, time-value imbalance, to even a lack of trust seems to be holding back the enterprises. If not anything, the level of expertise needed to make any real credible efforts, is a lot, which can be difficult for some organizations to convert into mentionable results.

The Altiscale story

Altiscale was launched in 2013, with an aim to become the ‘big data dial tone’. Founder Raymie Stata explained the motives as “vast majority of companies who will not be able to build and run it (enterprise grade, elastic) Hadoop on their own, so that they too can participate in the transformations ahead.”

Unlike the concept the concept of ‘Hadoop on Cloud’ or ‘Spark on Cloud’ or even ‘Analytics on Cloud’, Altiscale will be providing big data services as a managed and curated offering to customers. The reason why this is different, and why it is important at the same time is because, if companies are to match the tech giants like Yahoo and Amazon, the expertise of specialized engineers required is high, other than robust cloud infrastructure which is flexible for expansions as well, other than doing the entire exercise at a feasible cost.

It is to then be noted, that most of the engineers at Altiscale gained experience working on big data and Hadoop for enterprises like Yahoo, Google, Cloudera, Hortonworks, LinkedIn, and even Databricks, as clarified by Kevin Leong, the Vice-President of Product Marketing at Altiscale.

Why is Altiscale-SAP deal a win-win all around

SAP is already going in aggressively with new Big Data products, such as SAP HANA and SAP HANA Vora, which when morphed with Altiscale’s capabilities, will make SAP one of the strongest forces in the world, when it comes to Big Data capabilities. One of the people following the deal closely, is Doug Henschen, analyst at Constellation Research.

He added, “Altiscale would enable SAP to help customers with high-scale data capacity and data pipelines without relying on third-party vendors.”

For Altiscale too, there is indeed a decent bit to gain. Beginning with the financial backing needed for improving upon BDaaS products, SAP’s capabilities like places like Europe and the working relationships developed over decades with top brass CEOs and CIOs, should convert into successful transactions for the future. SAP has a footprint of 300,000 customers across 190 countries, 95 million cloud users, and 74% of business transactions touching their systems, the hold on enterprise technology of SAP is nearly undisputed. In other words, Altiscale ought to be able to lean on that for major deals of the future, in the BDaaS market.

Eacrett also mentioned, “We’re looking at integrating Altiscale with SAP Hybris, Success Factors, SAP Analytics, Siemens IoT and others, in areas like CRM, Ad Tech and Marketing Analytics (multi-channel analytics and advertising attribution) ERP and others.”

While it is one of those tech deals with tremendous potential. one needs to keep a close watch on how things roll out for the most important people of Altiscale, who have been the centre of building its capabilities, mainly the engineers in question, who will also be crucial for future prospects of the company.  Source