Microsoft has acquired BlueTalon, a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup that builds data governance and compliance software for Fortune 100 companies.
The BlueTalon team will join Microsoft as part of its Azure Data Governance group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The IP and talent acquired through BlueTalon brings a unique expertise at the apex of big data, security and governance,” Rohan Kumar, corporate vice president with Azure Data, wrote in a blog post. “This acquisition will enhance our ability to empower enterprises across industries to digitally transform while ensuring right use of data with centralized data governance at scale through Azure.”
BlueTalon lists less than 30 employees on LinkedIn. The company started after founder Pratik Verma launched the startup in 2013 using technology he created with his father.
“We realized the technology could be used to help govern data in new data systems such as Hadoop,” wrote Eric Tilenius, BlueTalon’s CEO since 2014, in a blog post. “Our customers soon started asking for us to extend our coverage to other databases – they were building large data estates that had a heterogeneous mix of data platforms. With the help of an amazing and talented team, we were able to build the first truly Unified Data Access Control solution to govern on-premises data estates.”
BlueTalon also saw increasing demand from customers needing help migrating data to the cloud. As it began exploring partnership opportunities with cloud providers, “Microsoft deeply impressed us,” Tilenius wrote.
This is Microsoft’s fifth acquisition of 2019. The company’s cloud services generated as much revenue as all its other businesses combined, including mainstays like traditional software licensing and hardware, for the first time last quarter.
