Why did Oracle buy DataScience.com ?

Enterprise spending on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will exceed $57.6 billion* by 2021. Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison wants a piece of the pie. But that is not the only reason Oracle purchased DataScience.com.

According to a survey of 1600 data professionals conducted by database maker MEMSQL, more than 60 percent of organizations say that Machine Learning (ML) is their top data initiative in 2018. Oracle needs to be part of that conversation for four big reasons:

1. To show existing customers that it can support them in the modern data era by providing powerful, but friendly, data science tools that are as slick as those offered by newer, want-to-be competitors
2. To assure customers that their existing investments in Oracle Applications (SCM,CX,HCM,ERP,EPM), Oracle’s Autonomous PaaS (database, big data, appdev, management, integration, analytics), and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, will not only support their future roadmaps, but also offer a competitive advantage
3. To provide data scientists with easy access to open source and competitors’ tools via the DataScience.com platform. Note that data scientists like to have a wide range of tools and data sets to choose from and that rolling out the red carpet for them raises the odds of obtaining meaningful insights (and not looking for alternative tools and technologies elsewhere.)
4. To establish that it can be as innovative and agile and attract data scientist “rock stars”as well as Alteryx, Databricks, Dataiku, H20.ai and Cloudera , which is trying to enter the space.

While Oracle could have potentially built a copycat solution over time, “Oracle needs to speed up in that area,” Constellation Research Vice President and Principal Analyst Holger Mueller told Digitizing Polaris.

Mueller has a point when you consider that Oracle wasn’t among the 16 vendors mentioned in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms 2018. (IBM, Microsoft, SAP, SAS and Teradata are the more established enterprise vendors who made the cut, while Alteryx, Databricks,H2O.ai, Knime, RapidMiner and others proved to be forces to be reckoned with.)

Constellation Research Founder Ray Wang adds that Oracle has acquired a sexy ML play, or to use his words, “Think of it as a Palantir that works and, isn’t all custom service.” He also points out that DataScience.com has a “trove of talent.”

While Oracle hasn’t revealed how much it spent on the acquisition, based on the enthusiasm it created around the announcement, it wasn’t chump change. What will be interesting to see is whether customers will buy-in or shop for independent data science platform providers.

*IDC Spending Guide Forecasts Worldwide Spending on Cognitive and Artificial Intelligence Systems to Reach $57.6 Billion