Today, September 27, SAP officially announces its completed acquisition of Altiscale, which provides a high-performance, scalable Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) solution that uniquely includes full operational services.

Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., Altiscale has been named a leading provider of BDaaS by Forrester Research. Altiscale will operate as a focused and integrated BDaaS offering from SAP to help accelerate and operationalize Big Data deployment in the enterprise.

Several key factors drove SAP’s decision to acquire Altiscale.

• The two companies have complementary approaches to implementing enterprise Big Data solutions. SAP has taken the approach to build its distributed computing solution for Big Data based on deep understanding of requirements coming from enterprise applications, analytics, data platform, data warehousing and cloud platform. Altiscale has focused on cloud and data infrastructure with its Altiscale Data Cloud offering, which starts with a highly optimized cloud infrastructure, continues with a Spark and Hadoop data platform.

• 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.

• Altiscale offers high job performance, reliability, and economic performance for Hadoop and Spark in the cloud. It has an established and very satisfied customer base that includes a variety of industries, including financial services, telecommunications, media, ad tech, and marketing analytics.

• SAP’s initial foray into Big Data processing began with its investment in SAP HANA Vora, a distributed computing framework that extends Spark’s execution engine to address some key inefficiencies in processing Big Data for business use. Through this experience, SAP saw the unique challenges faced by businesses in the provisioning, scaling, and operation of Hadoop in a production environment. Altiscale directly addresses these challenges, providing the customer with full-service Hadoop and Spark in the cloud to boost performance, eliminate roadblocks, and accelerate customer go-live. The combination of Altiscale and SAP HANA Vora will enable SAP to provide a holistic and accelerated Big Data solution, allowing businesses to quickly achieve positive business impact from Big Data.

• Altiscale is a great fit beyond SAP’s Big Data strategy. It is also integrates well with a number of SAP strategic initiatives, such as SAP HANA Cloud Platform, IoT, analytics, LoB cloud apps, and business networks. Altiscale’s Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) capabilities enable SAP to offer a much more comprehensive and robust enterprise solution that meets the unique needs of customers on their digital transformation journey.

There are many use cases for Altiscale in the following areas and industries:

• IoT : Uses include manufacturing, utilities, transportation, smart cities, and more.
• Financial services : Applications include fraud detection, cybersecurity, and achieving a 360-degree customer view.
• Media : Examples include advertising optimization and recommendation engines.
• Ad tech and marketing analytics : Uses include multi-channel analytics and advertising attribution.
• Pharmaceutical : Drug research, market segmentation, and supply chain optimization are all examples.
• Telecommunications : Altiscale can be used to optimize billing and facilitate churn analysis.

You can find case studies and use cases here.

SAP and Altiscale are currently working to synchronize both companies’ technology, products and market perspectives. We will be systematically evolving the Altiscale Data Cloud for integration into the SAP portfolio.

As we go forward, SAP remains committed to honoring all customer contracts and ensuring high customer satisfaction. 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.

by Ken Tsai Ken Tsai is vice president and head of Cloud Platform and Data Management, Product Marketing at SAP