VAR 500 powerhouse Deloitte has acquired "substantially all" of the assets of Oco, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) and business intelligence and analytics vendor. Oco's technologies will play a key role in Deloitte's managed analytics practice, according to Deloitte.
Financial terms of the acquisition, which Deloitte announced Monday, were not revealed. Oco business analytics applications will extend Deloitte's portfolio of services to include hosted analytics applications, expanded support and delivery models for full business analytic solution life cycles, mobile business analytics, benchmarking and industry-specific analytics, and a number of other offerings, the company said.
"More and more businesses are looking for both analysis and real insights gleaned from multiple sources without having to make significant investments in internal infrastructure and support," said Jane Griffin, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Deloitte Analytics leader, in a statement. "This acquisition enhances our ability to help further an organizations' existing business analytics and data management and strategy. We can help businesses realize faster time-to-value through more immediate access to critical business data from disparate sources."
Boris Evelson, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research, said the Oco acquisition is yet more evidence that business intelligence is hot and is a great fit for "any firm with a software-plus-services offering."
In a Monday blog post, Evelson cited acquisitions such as IBM buying PWC, Cognos and SWPSS, HP acquiring Knightsbridge and Veritca, and EMC acquiring Conchango and Greenplum as examples.
"There's no such thing as 'plug-and-play' BI," Evelson wrote. "One always needs to bundle it with services to integrate data, customize metrics and applications, etc."
Expect the trend among consulting and integrator powers buying BI companies to continue, Evelson said, citing Accenture's acquisition of CadenceQuest in 2010.
