Teradata continued to strengthen its standing as a big data expert, announcing this week that it has acquired Think Big Analytics, a consulting and solutions company that is focused exclusively on Hadoop and big data solutions.
“This is the third big data acquisition that Teradata has done in just about a month. We acquired Revelytix, which is a leader in metadata management, data lineage and data wrangling on top of Hadoop, and we also acquired Hadapt, which is a pioneer in SQL on top of Hadoop, and now, Think Big Analytics,” said Chris Twogood, vice president of products and services at Teradata.
This acquisition is all about Teradata’s focus to build more skills around the Hadoop and open source space so that it can be a trusted advisor around helping people understand when to use open source technology, and how to combine that in an analytics ecosystem with commercial technologies, said Twogood. “The Think Big acquisition really augments Teradata’s already strong consulting business. We have got over 5,000 consultants worldwide in over 50 different countries.”
What Think Big Analytics Brings to the Table for Teradata
Twogood cited four key reasons for the acquisition.
First, the Think Big Analytics is a pure-play in the Hadoop open source market with capabilities around the whole Hadoop ecosystem.
Second, the company has a “recipe” for retaining talent and being efficient. While it is headquartered in Mountainview, California, it also has a solution center in Salt Lake, where a number of its consultants are based. These consultants work in a think tank environment and also fly out to customer sites. “It is kind of a near-shore model and they have been able to do it at a lower rate than some of the competitors.”
Third, Think Big has built reusable assets. Through its work with customers it has seen that there are some big data patterns or design patterns for which they could build out software accelerators that help people get into the market faster and get value from data.
And fourth, is the Think Big Academy where customers and the company’s own internal staff can be immersed in a hands-on environment to get up to speed on the latest big data technologies.
Think Big Analytics will remain a separate brand
“We bring depth and years of experience in how to build and deliver in an agile way these new open source analytics systems based on Hadoop and other technologies,” acknowledged Think Big Analytics CEO Ron Bodkin. “Even Teradata struggled to deliver in this area. Customers want integration of new open source assets into their data warehouse and data discovery platforms and existing analytic infrastructure.”
Teradata intends to maintain the Think Big brand because it has a proven model and also because Teradata wants Think Big to retain its vendor-neutral and best-in-class approach, said Twogood. There is a need, he said, for a company that understands all the open source technologies and knows how “to stitch them together to solve real problems.”
More information is available about Teradata and Think Big Analytics, Inc.