Hitachi Buys Pentaho to Bolster Big Data Business
Business intelligence and Big Data analytics vendor Pentaho is being acquired by Hitachi Data Services (HDS), in a deal that is set to close in June.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, Pentaho CEO Quentin Gallivan told Enterprise Apps Today that the deal is the largest private Big Data acquisition transaction to date. Gallivan said Pentaho looked at various acquisition deals and multiples to substantiate that claim.
Among those past deals, Pentaho's open source rival Jaspersoft was acquired by Tibco in April of 2014 in a $185 million deal. Going a step higher, Salesforce.com acquired RelateIQ for $390 million.
“This intent to acquire Pentaho is commensurate with the strategic nature of this market,” Gallivan said. “It is a highly strategic acquisition for HDS.”
Pentaho Brand
Pentaho and Hitachi were not total strangers prior to the acquisition announcement. The two companies had an existing OEM relationship. As part of the acquisition, Gallivan noted that HDS wants to retain Pentaho talent and continue to invest in helping Pentaho expand and accelerate its standalone Big Data platform business.
“Upon the close of the proposed acquisition, Pentaho becomes ‘Pentaho, a Hitachi Data Systems company' and will retain its brand and continue to execute its current business model,” Gallivan said. “They (HDS) want us to enhance and expand our Pentaho brand and work together with the HDS Social Innovation team to drive a shared analytics platform and solution set to capture the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) market.”
Open Source Difference
HDS will respect Pentaho's long history as an open source technology vendor, said Gallivan, noting that Pentaho's open source heritage and development model was a core differentiator that attracted HDS.
“Pentaho will continue to embrace and engage the open source community to encourage innovative contributions and extensions to its platform,” Gallivan said. “We will continue to work together as an extended developer community to drive innovation in open source, Big Data integration and business analytics.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Apps Today and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
Sean Michael is a writer who focuses on innovation and how science and technology intersect with industry, technology Wordpress, VMware Salesforce, And Application tech. TechCrunch Europas shortlisted her for the best tech journalist award. She enjoys finding stories that open people's eyes. She graduated from the University of California.
