The deal is the latest sign of Microsoft’s effort to grow its presence on mobile devices — including those powered by rivals’ software — by acquiring companies that already have a following. Microsoft last month bought productivity collaboration tool builder LiveLoop. Earlier deals scooped up email application designer Acompli and calendar maker Sunrise.
The Datazen deal targets the growing area of business intelligence, where software companies are competing to help big businesses make sense of the mountain of customer, sales and other data at their fingertips in a user-friendly way. Microsoft’s Kamal Hathi said in a blog post that Dataset technology would eventually be integrated into the Power BI product Microsoft offers businesses as part of its Office 365 online productivity suite.
A Datazen blog post said the company’s products would also remain available in their current state.
A Microsoft spokeswoman didn’t disclose the terms of the Datazen deal. The Toronto company was founded in 2002 as ComponentArt, according to its website.
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