SAP to Acquire KXEN
SAP AG announced plans to acquire KXEN, a leading provider of predictive analytics technology for line-of-business users and analysts. The addition of KXEN promises powerful and easy-to-use predictive capabilities for the extensive customer base of industry-leading cloud and on-premise solutions from SAP.
The market for predictive analytics software is estimated to be worth US$2 billion today and is expected to exceed US$3 billion in 2017. With increasingly pervasive big data environments, companies must not only sense the present but see the future and proactively shape it to their advantage. KXEN technology extends predictive analytics tools beyond data scientists to line-of-business users and analysts in the workplace by automating key modeling and analytical tasks and enabling faster deployment and adoption.The combination of KXEN with the advanced analytics, agile visualization and enterprise business intelligence capabilities from SAP, along with the SAP HANA platform is intended to help companies to harness big data, engage users across the enterprise and aims to execute before their competitors to gain advantages they never thought possible.
“With increased demand for actionable insights from ever-growing volumes of data, broader access to predictive analytics is key,” said Henry Morris, senior vice president for Worldwide Software and Services Research, IDC. “KXEN supports this objective by moving predictive analytics into the cloud and inside of the enterprise applications most popular with end users.”
KXEN is intended to complement existing advanced analytics from SAP, including SAP Predictive Analysis software, a workbench for defining, executing and visualizing predictive analysis. The predictive technology can be used to enhance the value of core SAP applications for managing operations, customer relationships, supply chains, risk and fraud. Additionally, the company plans to incorporate KXEN technology into cloud and on-premise SAP applications built on SAP HANA, including the SAP Fraud Management analytic application, SAP Smart Meter Analytics software and the SAP 360 Customer solution.
This is aiming to help customers use predictive analytics and data mining to make better decisions on petabytes of big data. The acquisition is expected to allow SAP to introduce new predictive capabilities to the portfolio of solutions for more than 25 industries, particularly data-intensive vertical industries such as telecommunications, retail, consumer products, manufacturing and financial services.
“The compelling combination of KXEN with market-leading analytics and business intelligence solutions from SAP intends to deliver the capability organizations need to innovate for growth in high-volume data environments,” said Michael Reh, executive vice president, Business Information Technology, Products & Innovation, SAP. “Just as SAP is revolutionizing visualization, KXEN will allow us to bring predictive analytics to more business users, enabling easier-to-adopt solutions and the delivery of greater value via SAP solutions.”
