Rackspace buys Singapore firm to bolster analytics capability in APAC

Rackspace Technology has acquired Singapore-based Just Analytics for an undisclosed sum to boost its data analytics capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in emerging markets like Vietnam.

That is according to Sandeep Bhargava, its managing director of Asia-Pacific and Japan, who noted that although the company offers an array of managed cloud infrastructure services, it was looking to get into the data and analytics space in a meaningful way.

Rackspace has analytics delivery capabilities in India, but not in Southeast Asia, said Bhargava, adding that the acquisition will plug that gap as the company looks to grow its business in Asia-Pacific, which accounts for 5% of the company’s overall business.

“We were thinking if we should take a few million dollars and build that capability locally ourselves, and at around the same time, Just Analytics came, and we thought there would be good synergy for both of us,” he told Computer Weekly.

Founded in 2011, Just Analytics offers a proprietary data platform exclusively on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace that is used to design and create data pipelines. It also offers cloud-based data and analytics services that transform data into insights.

Bhargava said the acquisition will bring deep expertise in the Azure data platform and access to a wider talent pool. It will also pave the way for Rackspace’s expansion into Vietnam, where Just Analytics has quadrupled its business in the past two years.

“Vietnam is not only growing from a talent perspective – it is also a growing economy from a customer-base perspective as well,” said Hemanta Banerjee, founder and chief architect of Just Analytics. “That’s why we chose Vietnam as a place for us to grow our engineering talent.”

Just Analytics’ Vietnam outfit is staffed by over 75 employees who are not only involved in software development, but also serve local customers and run projects across Singapore, Vietnam, Western Europe and the US.

Rackspace said it will keep the Just Analytics brand for the foreseeable future as the latter has built a respected brand among customers of Azure Data Analytics.

Meanwhile, the two teams have banded together to chart product directions, among other areas. Banerjee, now a member of Rackspace’s global chief technology officer council, is also working with global teams to leverage customer wins and tap ideas that have worked in other regions.

“The whole point of this combination is for us to double down on data [and] take data as a practice to the next level, and we are working very closely as a team to make that happen,” said Banerjee.

According to IDC, data and analytics revenues are tipped to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15.6% between 2019 and 2024, driven by demand from enterprises that increasingly see analytics as an essential business need to enable digital trust and resiliency.

“The data market is really exploding from more businesses building real-time intelligent applications that require extensive use of data, artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Banerjee. “It’s not just something you do for monthly reporting anymore – it’s part of your business model.”