Alteryx buys ClearStory Data – the clearance sale of big data analytics vendors has started

Alteryx has announced the acquisition of Silicon Valley neighbor ClearStory Data on April 4, 2019, apparently to get hold of ClearStory Data’s technology and engineering team. 

Rumors about ClearStory Data trying to find a buyer have been circulating in the market for over a year. That it took so long could be for several reasons, but maybe the list of suitors was not very long or potential acquirers were not close enough to the asking price.

As vendors and buyers mature, specialists have a harder stand

Alteryx is most probably using the acquisition to extend the functionality of its product, conforming to the general market trend towards product portfolios offering broader functionality. Another good example of this trend is Tableau, formally specialist for only visual analysis who now has developed a data preparation product and acquired several data management and advanced analytics vendors over recent years. Customers often used Tableau and Alteryx alongside each other for their complementary capabilities: Alteryx for data preparation and advanced analytics, and Tableau for visual analysis and dashboarding/reporting. Now their offerings are getting increasingly competitive.

Specialization in certain key capabilities is a typical feature of companies in emerging software market segments. Whether it is called big data analytics, data discovery, self-service BI or visual analytics – many new vendors were created around the year 2010 with the rise and growing popularity of big data technology such as Apache Hadoop and Spark. They complement and enhance big data platforms with data management, visualization and analytical capabilities. Just a few examples are Datameer, founded in 2009, ClearStory Data and Platfora in 2011 (both since acquired), and Zoomdata, Arcadia Data and Looker, as well as data preparation vendors Paxata, Tamr, and Trifacta all in 2012.

The next phase: consolidation

Around ten years on, we are now entering the next market phase of consolidation. Customers’ demands have evolved over time towards enterprise platforms that can be used for more use cases and lessen the burden of running a swarm of tools in an organization. At the same time, big data workloads are increasingly being moved to public cloud providers’ data platforms, creating new challenges and competitors.

So owners and investors in these software companies will need to take a hard look and decide whether the company can continue to grow on its own or whether integrating it with a larger acquirer makes more sense.

For these reasons, I am certain that we will see more acquisitions like this in the next few months. Stay tuned!

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About Carsten Bange

Dr. Carsten Bange is founder and managing director of the Business Application Research Center (BARC), an IT market analysis and consulting group he founded in 1999. 

Carsten holds a PhD in management information systems, is a frequent speaker at IT conferences and seminars and has served as an analyst and management consultant on business intelligence, data management and digitization strategy, organization, architecture and technology selection for over 20 years.

He can be reached at: [email protected]

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