Location data such as the distribution of a company’s offices should be more intuitive to visualize than cold business figures, but the task is difficult in practice due to the complexity of geospatial information.

QlikTech International AB is moving to ease the challenge for users of its dashboarding software today by acquiring analytics provider Idevio AB. The Swedish firm has developed a system for visualizing geospatial data that uses patented algorithms to speed up the rendering of large maps. Its software can understand what regions users wish to examine, extract only the details that are relevant to their work and check for overlaps to ensure no information is loaded twice.

Several additional optimizations are then carried out in the background to ensure everything runs as smoothly as possible. The outcome, according to Idevio, is a significant reduction in the amount of computational power needed to visualize geospatial data. This makes it possible to carry out analytical work faster while freeing up infrastructure for other tasks.

Qlik will integrate the technology into its data visualization tools to help customers manipulate their geospatial data more easily. In addition, the acquisition buys the company a number of value-added tools that Idevio has built on top of its system, most notably a cloud-based business intelligence platform called GeoAnalytics.

The service allows users to overlay business information such as sales records on their maps to easily identify areas of interests. A retail franchise, for instance, could employ GeoAnalytics to find promising expansion destinations.

Qlik is bringing the technology under its brand and will start selling GeoAnalytics as an add-on for customers that work with geospatial data. The integration effort is apparently coming along quite fast, which is not surprising given that Idevio is a partner of the visualization giant that has long provided support for its software. The acquisition marks one of Qlik’s most significant business moves since it was itself bought by private equity firm Thoma Bravo LLC last year.

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