Hewlett-Packard has announced it’s signed an agreement to acquire cloud analytics platforms provider Vertica for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition of Vertica the electronics giant can enhance its data optimization offerings portfolio with real-time, large-scale analytics.

“In today’s highly competitive environment, customers need the ability to manage the increasing amounts of data and growing streams of information with more flexible, more dynamic architectures,”

Big Data is becoming increasingly significant for the enterprise, and HP acquired the data analytics platform provider selected by one of the fastest growing companies in the industry. Vertica Analytics Platform was announced as Groupon’s platform of choice for analyzing customer data and scaling business intelligence. The platform can be deployed on Amazon EC2, which is a highlighted benefit for app publishers seeking scalable solutions and self-sustained IT management.

Analytics is about to become a very powerful industry, and related tools will be helping companies to assess their big data, make necessary changes to their offerings/ads and adjust themselves to ever changing landscapes. This is especially important for the mobile area, where HP is working hard to shift its product lineup around increased production and webOS.

When asked why HP made the decision to acquire Vertica, they tell us,

Vertica is attractive to HP for many reasons:

• Vertica has leading technology to enable real-time business analytics. Vertica has developed a unique compressed columnar architecture from the ground up that delivers faster performance at less cost than traditional solutions. The scalable architecture supports industry-standard hardware platforms, including HP Converged Infrastructure solutions, business critical systems, and virtual and cloud environments.
• Vertica’s “load-and-go” technology delivers immediate value to users by allowing customers to get started quickly and scale to their needs with consistent functionality, leading performance, and low cost. The Vertica technology will deliver against the HP Instant-On Enterprise strategy, providing real-time insight into data.
• Vertica has proven success with more than 300 customers around the world and has a strong presence in the telecom, financial services, healthcare, Internet gaming, and media and marketing industries.
• Vertica is an HP partner. A number of HP customers already run Vertica solutions on HP servers and BladeSystems.

Big data analytics extend way beyond just HP, with some recent news coming from LinkedIn, which recently launched a new set of business analytics tools.  From social networking to mobile advertising, analytics is a powerful necessity of scaling up and out, and maintaining a strong understanding of the rapidly expanding market. For the cloud, data analytics and big data are two very hot topics, and they’re branching industry developments of their own. We’ve looked at emerging services like  Infochimps, which recently received its first round of funding, taking in a handsome $1.2 million in funding from DFJ Mercury.