IBM Acquires Enterprise Search Software Company Vivisimo To Boost Big Data Analytics

On the heels of acquiring sales data analytics company Varicent last week, Big Blue is making another buy in the data space today— Vivisimo. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Vivisimo, which has raised $6 million in funding, launched as a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon and applies clustering technology to enterprise search. Vivisimo provides enterprises with search software that helps organizations access and analyze big data across the enterprise. Vivisimo products are available for standalone search applications or as OEM versions embedded within partner applications and solutions. The software automates the discovery of data and helps employees navigate it with a single view across the enterprise.

Big Blue says the combination of IBM’s big data analytics capabilities with Vivisimo software will help “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.”

IBM says it will incorporate Vivisimo’s technology into its big data platform.”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,” explains Arvind Krishna, general manager, Information Management, IBM Software Group.

Vivisimo has more than 140 customers in industries such as government, life sciences, manufacturing, electronics, consumer goods and financial services. Clients include Airbus, U.S. Air Force, Social Security Administration, Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. Navy, Procter & Gamble, Bupa, and LexisNexis among others.

IBM, whose big data platform is based on open source Apache Hadoop, says it is expanding its big data platform to run on other distributions of Hadoop, beginning with Cloudera. Cloudera Hadoop clients can now use IBM’s big data platform to perform analytics and build software applications.

It’s no secret that IBM is bullish on big data and analytics. As The New York Times recently reported, IBM has spent $14 billion purchasing analytics companies as part of its Big Data initiative. And considering the company’s acquisitive nature and deep pockets, we can expect more purchase in the big data arena in the near future.