Teradata Acquires Big Data Consultancy Think Big

Just six weeks after Teradata built up its Hadoop prowess through Revelytix and Hadapt acquisitions, it continues to build out its Big Data ecosystem by acquiring a consulting practice called Think Big.

Teradata has its own consulting group, but has watched the four-year-old Silicon Valley firm for some time. The deal will augment its U.S. market strategy and implementation services.

The move marks a continued effort by Teradata to go beyond warehouse and legacy offerings as it looks to a more holistic approach to Big Data technologies and services it can provide. Think Big is a pure-play company that brings experts, an expanded practice of training and recruiting Big Data talent and a portfolio of industry-specific pre-built solutions.

Think Big was one of the first professional services firms that focused exclusively on Big Data opportunities, helping its customers embrace vendor-neutral open source solutions and providing full lifecycle support for Big Data projects. The company is known for its expertise in open source technologies such as Hadoop, NoSQL databases including HBase, Cassandra and MongoDB and Storm for real-time event processing.

Think Big says it has provided strategy and architecture advice to companies such as EMC, Facebook, Intel, Johnson & Johnson and NetApp.

Think Big CEO Ron Bodkin said the two companies "have a huge opportunity ahead to help customers embrace the new wave of Big Data with Hadoop, NoSQL and emerging open source platforms and technologies while leveraging existing investments and skills in traditional data processing systems and Teradata’s deep experience in best-in-class analytics in all industries."

Citing a recent Wikibon survey, Teradata Labs President Scott Gnau noted that 70 percent of companies employ outside professional services consultants to help architect, deploy or run their big data projects. Teradata said Think Big's on-shore deployment model complemented its existing Big Data consulting business, and the Think Big Academy will provide hands-on expert training courses for customers.