Insightsoftware on Thursday acquired Izenda, marking the ERP vendor's second acquisition of an embedded analytics vendor in eight days.
On April 7, Insightsoftware, founded in 2000 and based in Raleigh, N.C., acquired Logi Analytics, which specializes in providing capabilities that enable developers to build analytics applications. At the time of that acquisition, Insightsoftware said that Logi would continue to operate independently.
Izenda, meanwhile, will now be merged with Logi.
Financial terms of Insightsoftware's acquisition of Izenda were not disclosed.
Izenda, founded in 2002 and based in Atlanta, is an embedded analytics vendor whose platform is designed to enable organizations to enhance business applications by embedding reports and dashboards.
The vendor, which claims 3 million end users, offers no-code tools that connect to databases and web services, and using natural language processing its users can explore, manipulate and visualize their data.
Izenda appeals to small and medium-sized businesses and line-of-business users. Therefore, with Logi's embedded BI platform designed for application developers, Insightsoftware's two acquisition targets complement one another, according to Mike Leone, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.
"While on paper you'll see some overlapping embedded capabilities, there are a fair amount of differences in how the businesses address the embedded analytics space," he said.
As a result, he continued, with its acquisitions of Logi and Izenda, Insightsoftware is entering the embedded BI market with capabilities that appeal to a broad audience. In addition, given their different target users, there's little overlap between the customer bases of Logi and Izenda.
One thing these acquisitions do for all parties involved is provide a level of much-needed scale in a hot, rapidly growing market. And the result will likely be that the whole will absolutely be greater than the sum of its parts.
Mike LeoneSenior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
"One thing these acquisitions do for all parties involved is provide a level of much-needed scale in a hot, rapidly growing market," Leone said. "And the result will likely be that the whole will absolutely be greater than the sum of its parts."
Likewise, Doug Henschen, a senior analyst at Constellation Research, said the combination of Logi and Izenda will benefit both.
"The Izenda acquisition is a consolidation play, with Logi gaining Izenda's tech and customer base," he said. "Izenda will be folded into Logi, which [has] a stronger presence in the embedded market and more wherewithal to sell and support the combined embedded portfolio including Izenda's products."
Henschen added that in addition to furthering Izenda's ability to sell and support its capabilities, combining with Logi under Insightsoftware will expose Izenda's customers to a broader array of embedded analytics tools.
Izenda customers will also benefit from Logi's customer-support strengths and products such as Logi Report, a pixel-perfect reporting system that wasn't available from Izenda, he said.
Insightsoftware has made close to 20 acquisitions, and according to CEO Jim Triandiflou, its acquisitions of Logi and Izenda are evidence of the vendor's commitment to enhancing its analytics capabilities.
InsightSoftware's acquisition of Izenda on April 15 was its second purchase of an embedded analytics vendor in eight days.
"Acquiring Logi Analytics a few weeks ago was a big step in this direction," he said in a prepared statement. "Adding Izenda furthers our position with … application teams around the world."
Beyond Insightsoftware's own heightened interest in embedded analytics, the vendor's acquisitions over the past eight days are evidence of the importance enterprises are placing on embedded analytics.
Embedded analytics integrates business intelligence tools with business software such as ERP and customer relationship management systems so users can have access to analytics within their everyday workflows and make real-time decisions.
"I'm seeing a big uptick in interest in embedded analytics, both from software and SaaS vendors and from enterprises and businesses that don't identify as software or SaaS companies but that are nonetheless coming up with internal- and customer-facing applications that need to be data-driven," Henschen said. "Analytics is a pervasive component of innovative software and services."
After a period of relative quiet for analytics industry mergers and acquisitions, Tibco acquired IBI -- formerly Information Builders -- in October 2020. Qlik bought Blendr.io, also in October 2020, and on March 31, ThoughtSpot, a vendor some speculate might be an acquisition target itself, purchased SeekWell.
That followed a flurry of acquisitions from July 2018 through June 2019, which began with Qlik's acquisition of Podium Data and ended with Google's purchase of Looker for $2.6 billion on a Friday and Salesforce's $15.7 billion acquisition of Tableau the following Monday.
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget.
