Continuing to build a portfolio to offer data analysis as a service, systems integrator CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) has acquired PaaS (platform-as-a-service) startup Infochimps.
CSC plans to use Infochimps' expertise to provide both analytics and real-time correlation services to its own customers. Infochimps will be folded into CSC's big data and analytics business unit, led by CSC Vice President and General Manager Sashi Reddi.
Based in Falls Church, Virginia, CSC specializes in building and maintaining large-scale enterprise IT systems. It employs about 87,000 people worldwide and reported US$13.8 billion in revenue for its past fiscal year, which ended in June.
Infochimps will continue to provide its service as a stand-alone offering as well. In order to enhance its offerings, the company can use CSC's consultants, software developers and engineers, security and infrastructure experts, and sales and marketing teams.
This infusion of CSC resources comes at a good time: Infochimps will face some competition in this arena of offering analysis as a service. In April, VMware and EMC spun off Pivotal, which will use a collection of technologies from those two companies to run its data analysis services.
Launched in 2009, Infochimps offers a suite of cloud services for analyzing data, either in real time, by batch analysis, or by ad hoc queries.
The company has built its services on IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) providers Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, and uses data analysis software from Cloudera, Datameer and others.
Cisco, digital coupon provider Koupon Media and global communications company WCG have all used Infochimps' services.
This is the second recent acquisition for CSC in the data analytics space. In October, CSC purchased Columbia, Maryland-based 42Six Solutions, a software development company that specialized in big data processing and analytics.
The Infochimps acquisition closed Tuesday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com