IBM Seeks Big Data Domination with Vivisimo Buy, Cloudera Support
When it comes to growing its Big Data analytics portfolio, IBM is showing no signs of letting up.
Big Blue announced its acquisition of Pittsburgh, Pa.-based Vivisimo, a privately-held maker of federated discovery and navigation software for Big Data analysis. Financial terms are being kept under wraps, but IBM did reveal that 120 Vivisimo employees will move to its software group.
Vivisimo's software discovers and extracts information from a variety of sources, including email, databases, Web pages and document stores, and presents results via a Web console. Additionally, it respects access rights, customizing results for a user's level of access relative to the requested information.
And in keeping with a trend that's transforming other segments of the business software market like CRM, Vivisimo has embraced social. The software's social search capability supports annotating, tagging and ranking to stimulate information sharing and collaboration among workforces as they embark on business intelligence initiatives.
The software firm has more than 140 customers, including Procter & Gamble, Airbus and LexisNexis, along with several government and military agencies like the Social Security Administration, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Vivisimo is the latest in a string of business intelligence and Big Data analytics acquisitions for IBM. Earlier this month, the company acquired Varicent a maker of sales performance management (SPM) software. In September, it snapped up Algorithmics for its risk analytics technology and i2 for its fraud prevention and security smarts.
What IBM Gains with Vivisimo
According to IBM, the Vivisimo buy strengthens its Big Data analytics products and services lineups. Vivisimo's technology will help IBM clients discover what influences consumer behavior, improve network performance and enable real-time fraud detection, among other use cases.
Mike Davis, senior analyst at Ovum, believes the two companies make a good fit. “Vivisiomo’s Velocity search compliments IBM's analytic tools for discovering the information ‘nuggets' that are often obscured by the rapidly increasing volumes of corporate and associated social media data,” he states.
The industry can use all the help it can get in finding those nuggets, says IBM. According to its own estimates, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day. This includes data from a variety of sources, both human- and machine-generated. IDC forecasts this explosion of data will give rise to a $16.9 billion market for Big Data products and services by 2015.
Cloudera Support
Not one to let a Big Data opportunity pass it by, IBM is also expanding the reach of its Apache Hadoop-based platform by joining other big names that support Cloudera, such as Oracle, which earlier this year announced it would use Cloudera's distribution of Hadoop to power its Big Data Appliance.
Describing Cloudera as a top contributor and an early provider of Hadoop-based systems to scores of businesses across several industries, IBM says the move will open new doors for the company's Big Data solutions and services offerings.
Davis thinks IBM chose wisely. “Cloudera is respected for providing not only a distribution of the open source Hadoop platform for Big Data, but also for delivering the support, professional services and training that enterprises require before they will deploy open source software,” he states.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
