Teradata Acquires London-Based Big Data Partnership

How To Hire Analytical Workers: 10 Traits To Seek

The amount of data collected by enterprises continues to grow, and yet organizations still struggle with getting value out of that data because of a gap in cloud and data skills. To bridge the gap, many vendors from the major Hadoop distributors, to online course providers, to Microsoft are providing online training. This training helps companies teach their existing employees and assists IT workers who want to enhance their careers by acquiring in-demand data analytics and management skills.

That's the backdrop for a new acquisition this week by established data warehouse company Teradata of a company called Big Data Partnership, a three-year-old big data solutions and training business with expertise in in big data technologies such as Apache Hadoop.

[IT workers say they will play a part in their companies' digital transformations. Read IT Organizations Unprepared for Digital Business.]

Teradata, which Gartner ranked as a Leader in its most recent Magic Quadrant report for Data Warehouse and Data Management Solutions for Analytics, is buying this EMEA-based startup for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will become part of Teradata's Think Big consulting practice, and help Teradata expand its customer data science education and consulting efforts into new territory. These services are part of the company's efforts to close the data analytics skills gap for its customers.

"Big Data Partnership brings exciting new capabilities and broadens our analytic services portfolio, enhancing Think Big's expertise and giving our customers more choices, outcomes tailored to their goals, and valuable knowledge transfer," Rick Farnell, senior vice president of Think Big, a Teradata company, wrote in a prepared statement released July 25.  

"We continue to strengthen our world-class solutions business to help our customers design, build and run analytics, and the Big Data Partnership consultancy fits well with Teradata's increasingly strong global analytics practice."

Worldpay, a global payments company based in London, is among Big Data Partnership's customers. It anticipates gaining greater support from the company, now that it is part of Teradata's Think Big.

"The combination of Big Data Partnership and Think Big will provide us with quality data engineering and data science talent [that] will complement our teams in the successful delivery of our big data strategy," Worldpay CIO Mark Kimber wrote in a statement.

The combination of these two organizations may also solidify what analysts already considered a strength for Teradata -- customer experience. In its Magic Quadrant report released this year for Data Warehouse and Data Management Solutions for Analytics, Gartner said that existing Teradata customers reported above-average customer experiences, particularly in the delivery of professional services.

Big Data Partnership's team has expertise in big data technologies including the Apache Hadoop ecosystem, Apache Spark, NoSQL, and search technologies.

More Changes for Teradata

Teradata named Victor Lund as its new president and CEO in May following a first-quarter earnings report that showed a revenue decline of 6% from this year's $545 million compared to the same period last year. The company reported a net loss of $46 million compared to a net income of $22 million for the same quarter a year ago.

Teradata made its database and associated tools available for the first time on AWS by the end of the first quarter of this year. Teradata also recently signed a definitive agreement to sell its marketing applications business.

The company held its annual user conference earlier this month. It featured sessions about the internet of things and sensor data; strategies and frameworks to monetize data assets; real-time, advanced, and predictive analytics; cloud computing and cloud-based analytics; and cyber-security, privacy, and governance.