Salesforce and Google spent just billions on Big Data because of Microsoft

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Google said it would spend $ 2.6 billion in cash to buy Looker, a start-up company .

try to put both Google's cloud business and Salesforce in better positions with more business analytics software for their cloud-based customers, where data is the biggest buzzword, but where the two companies had not met their potential.

"Both of the two things [deals] really reinforce the strategic importance of data," said Mike Tuchen, CEO of Talend, helping companies integrate data across the cloud and on site. "Every business awakens to the power of data to fundamentally change their business. "

Tuchen pointed out that these two deals are probably the first in a wave that comes for a second generation of data analysis companies. In 2007, IBM Corp.

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bought Cognos, Oracle Corp.

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bought Hyperion and SAP SE

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bought Business Objects. "All the products are long in the tooth," he said. "Customers go through a strategic upgrade cycle. You see the strategic importance of the cloud … I don't think we're done."

But the biggest reason for the first wave of second-generation deals is Microsoft's

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increasingly stronger position.

"Microsoft has strengthened the game," said Maribel Lopez, chief analyst of Lopez Research. "The competitive pressure for both Salesforce and Tableau is the fact that Microsoft's story is much better than it was before."

According to Gartner Research, Microsoft is listed as the leader in a recent analysis and business intelligence platform report, with cautious comments that the company only offers its software on its Azure service.

With Tableau, it hopes that Salesforce will be able to integrate business analysis across its various offerings, where data for different industries and products is located. Salesforce has a lot of data in different places that may be related, Lopez noted. With more analysis software, customers can extract data from the various Salesforce clouds they use, such as customer relationship management, marketing, and sales, and, for example, identify certain issues with a customer.

"I think it's because of Microsoft," said Sudheesh Nair, general manager of privately held ThoughtSpot, who was cited as one of the fastest growing analytics companies in the same Gartner report. "Power BI, Office 365, they have their own complete stack. They do a great job of summarizing it on Azure," he said.

Nair said he thinks there might be more similar M&A deals in the future, but he hopes to finally take ThoughtSpot publicly. "I'm a big fan of public corporations. But having said that, nobody can predict the future."

Boris Evelson, an analyst at Forrester Research, described the business intelligence market as "very mature," with most features and abilities that are increasingly commoditised. "With dis-commoded features and price pressures (in large companies, Microsoft charges below $ 4 per user per month) it becomes increasingly difficult for independent BI vendors to remain profitable," he said in an email. "Only big vendors like Microsoft / Google / SF / etc. can compete on price. So it's less about how much competitors are paying. It's about what discounts everyone can give to big business customers and still be profitable."

Lopez agrees that there will be more consolidation in the area, because there are a lot of little analytics companies, "it's just islands."