Appcelerator made its fourth buy in two years  this week, with the acquisition of Nodeable, a small Hadoop startup with big ambitions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed

A few months ago Nodeable launched StreamReduce, a pre-processing solution that organizes data streams before they enter Hadoop. This extra layer makes MapReduce jobs considerably speedier and more efficient.

Appcelerator has apparently been eyeing StreamReduce for quite some time. The first thing the company did after announcing the Nodable buy was open-source the code, which is now available on GitHub under the Apache license. Looking forward, the mobile solutions provider plans to integrate Nodeable’s offering into its enterprise development environment.

Big data can come in very handy for mobile developers. Usage patterns, for example, can be analyzed to identify which parts of an application employees access the most, and coupled with other metrics, this insight can be translated into better usability and performance.

“To accelerate building our next generation mobile platform, we wanted a better way for our customers to quickly analyze the huge volume of data coming in from their apps, in a way that’s intelligent and real-time,” explained Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator. “Nodeable’s StreamReduce™ technology will be a foundational component of our Enterprise Mobile Cloud offering.”

Appcelerator is expanding in all kinds of directions: earlier this year it acquired a startup called Cocoafish, which developed a set of widgets for developers to embed in their web services. These cloud-based template features have been implemented by several major websites, and eventually caught Appcelerator’s eye as well.

The more recent buyout of Nodeable represents another step towards community-driven interactions for the developer space. The community is starting to warm up to the concept of data-driven development, and Appcelerator is jumping on the opportunity to provide them with the tools needed to realize the advantages.