IBM announces an agreement to acquire Vivisimo, a provider of federated discovery and navigation software that helps organizations access and analyze big data across the enterprise. Vivisimo is a privately held company based in Pittsburgh. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Vivisimo software captures and delivers information across a broad range of data sources. The software automates the discovery of data and helps employees navigate with a single view across the enterprise, providing insights that drive decision-making for all operational challenges.

The combination of IBM's big data analytics capabilities with Vivisimo software will further IBM's efforts to automate the flow of data into business analytics applications, helping clients better understand consumer behavior, manage customer churn and network performance, detect fraud in real-time, and perform data-intensive marketing campaigns.

“Navigating big data to uncover the right information is a key challenge for all industries,” said Arvind Krishna, general manager, information management, IBM Software Group. “The winners in the era of big data will be those who unlock their information assets to drive innovation, make real-time decisions, and gain actionable insights to be more competitive.”

“Businesses need a faster and more accurate way to discover and navigate big data for analysis” said John Kealey, CEO, Vivisimo. “As part of IBM, we can bring clients the quickest and most accurate access to information necessary to drive growth initiatives that increase customer satisfaction, streamline processes, and boost sales.”

IBM estimates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day from a variety of sources including sensors, social media, and billions of mobile devices around the world, making it difficult for businesses to navigate and analyze it to improve competitiveness, efficiency, and profitability.

IDC estimates the market for big data technology and services will grow at an annual rate of nearly 40 percent to reach $16.9 billion by 2015. Vivisimo brings over a decade of experience and innovation in data navigation and visualization technologies for both structured and unstructured data, making it easier for business users to get value from all of their data and content.

Vivisimo's ability to index and search data across multiple repositories is a distinguishing capability, applicable to all industries and clients. Upon the closing of the acquisition, approximately 120 Vivisimo employees will join IBM's Software Group. IBM will incorporate Vivisimo technology into its big data platform.

Big Data Platform

IBM has developed an enterprise big data platform that allows clients to manage, access, and gain intelligence on the full variety, velocity, and volume of structured and unstructured data.

IBM's big data platform is based on open source Apache Hadoop. The platform makes it easier for data-intensive applications to manage and analyze petabytes of big data by providing clients with an integrated approach to analytics, helping them turn information into insights for improved business outcomes.

IBM's approach to big data challenges blends traditional data management technologies that are well suited for structured, repeatable tasks, together with complementary new technologies that address speed and flexibility, and are ideal for data exploration, discovery and unstructured analysis.

IBM is expanding its big data platform to run on other distributions of Hadoop, beginning with Cloudera. Cloudera is a contributor to the Hadoop development community, and an early provider of Hadoop-based systems to clients across a broad range of industries including financial services, government, telecommunications, media, retail, energy and healthcare.

As a result, Cloudera Hadoop clients can now take advantage of IBM's big data platform to perform complex analytics and build a new generation of software applications.

Special Reports /

IBM Bolsters Data Analytics with Purchase of Vivisimo

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