Idera acquires Yellowfin BI, adds it to developer tools business

Austin, Texas-based Idera, Inc. has announced it has acquired Yellowfin International Pty Ltd, a heretofore independent BI company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Idera, a company perhaps best-known for database monitoring and management tools, also has an array of developer tools, gained through acquisition.

The Yellowfin technology will part of the Idera’s Developer Tools business, even as it nicely complements the database management products. Underscoring that very point, Idera’s press release states that “Yellowfin expands Idera’s product portfolio and complements existing Idera brands in both the Developer Tools and Data Tools verticals.” 

Embedded or bust

Finding a niche in the very competitive BI arena can be tricky. Yellowfin, founded in 2003, was initially focused on data analyst-centric tools, then moved end user-centric self-service and enterprise analytics. Similar to other BI companies trying to gain market traction, Yellowfin added embedded analytics technology — which allows developers to add BI functionality into their own applications — to its bag of tricks.

In a briefing in July of 2019, Yellowfin told me embedded analytics made up more than half of the company’s business, so it’s no surprise that Idera has acquired Yellowfin for its embedded BI offerings. Idera’s products support developers, DBAs (database administrators) and data management professionals, and joining Idera’s portfolio should boost the visibility of Yellowfin’s embedded BI to the customers that need the technology the most. On that notes, Idera’s press release quotes Yellowfin CEO Glen Rabie as saying “We believe Idera provides an excellent home for Yellowfin’s products that greatly extends our scale and geographic reach.”  

Data, analytics and the competition

Other data and analytics-focused company acquired by Idera include cloud data lake provider Qubole in October of 2020, and FusionCharts in March of that same year. FusionCharts technology facilitates creation of dashboards by developers within their applications; Yellowfin’s technology should extend those capabilities significantly.

The strengthened embedded BI capabilities, along with the Qubole data lake offerings and Idera’s homegrown products, like ER/Studio and SQL Diagnostics Manager, will make the company a very interesting player in the analytics world and should help it go toe-to-toe with longtime competitor Quest Software.