Intelligent Enterprise

Intelligent Enterprise and TechWeb are not the New York Times, so we get to publish some of the news that's seemingly Not Fit to Print:

Data warehousing powerhouse Teradata has acquired BI/DW solutions provider Claraview.

The news is there on Claraview's Web site — "Claraview is a division of Teradata Corporation (www.teradata.com), the world's largest company solely focused on raising intelligence through data warehousing and enterprise analytics" — but I don't have a clue why Teradata hasn't seen fit to announce the acquisition. There are a few hints of the take-over out on the Web, and an individual in a position to know told me the deal is (or was) "an open secret."

With this acquisition, Teradata is following in the footsteps of HP, which bought BI consultancy Knightsbridge a bit over a year ago. A strong professional-services arm allows a hardware vendor to better ensure successful customer deployments, and it allows the hardware vendor to better build out solutions targeted to particular industries or business functions. These particular moves — HP's Knightsbridge take-over and Teradata's acquisition of Claraview — position the acquiring companies to better compete with their biggest rivals, HP, IBM, and Oracle.

Teradata is publicly traded with $1.7 billion in 2007 revenues. The company is far smaller than HP, IBM, or Oracle — its market valuation is less than one-third Sun Microsystems' — yet its data-warehousing market presence certainly matches that of its much-larger competitors. Smaller data-warehouse appliance vendors including Netezza and DATAllegro are nipping at Teradata's heels, however. The Claraview take-over will help Teradata maintain position.

The deal makes eminent sense for Claraview's principals who started text-analytics vendor Clarabridge in 2005 and who have simultaneously run the latter company, racking up a reported 500% increase in revenues in 2007. (Disclosure: I write a quarterly, editorially independent article for Clarabridge's Bridgepoints newsletter.) The potential growth for an established services firm is going to be slower than that of a software vendor in a rapidly expanding sector. Clarabridge represents the greater opportunity.

That Teradata has a relationship with Clarabridge's rival Attensity suggests that Claraview principals involved with Clarabridge will not remain affiliated with Claraview for long.

Now that the "open secret" is no longer a secret, perhaps Teradata will fill us on plans for Claraview and future directions as an analytical solutions and services vendor.