WANdisco in record Big Data win after British Gas success

Big Data provider WANdisco has announced a major contract with the UK’s largest utilities company.
David Richards of WandiscoDavid Richards of Wandisco
David Richards of Wandisco

British Gas has significantly scaled up the use of the tech firm’s services following an initial trial of WANdisco’s software from March 2014.

The resulting subscription to its Non-Stop Hadoop service is WANdisco’s largest Big Data contract to date, worth around $750,000 (£496,000) over three years.

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The announcement is the latest success for the Sheffield-based business, after a series of large bookings and strong interim results.

David Richards, chief executive at WANdisco, said customers see its technology as “critical” to large-scale data management.

He said: “Enlarging our footprint with existing customers like British Gas, in addition to gathering new customers, is a very important part of our strategy.

“This deal clearly demonstrates our ability to expand a small initial Big Data deployment into a much larger deal.”

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The initial British Gas trial used Non-Stop Hadoop to collect real-time information from the energy provider’s household Smart Meters, which monitor consumption.

Covering one million households, the trial demonstrated cost savings for data storage and processing, as well as minimising data loss and compliance downtime, WANdisco said.

The firm’s Non-Stop Hadoop service will now manage more than twice the amount of data as in the trial, across the whole British Gas infrastructure.

Real-time analysis from its Connected Homes programme will allow “dynamic matching of energy supply with demand patterns,” WANdisco added.

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The British Gas deal follows contract wins from a global US-based credit card and financial services company and the consumer data firm behind Tesco Clubcard.

The unnamed financial institution’s subscription will initially bring in around $250,000 per year, while Dunnhumby’s contract is worth $475,000 across a three-year deal.

In its third quarter booking’s update, the business reported record sales, climbing 56 per cent on the preceding quarter and 21 per cent year-on-year.

While investment in its technology has kept WANdisco’s bottom line in the red, with adjusted losses of $9.5m at its September interim statement, analysts are enthusiastic about the company’s future prospects.

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Investec called the British Gas contract “a critical proof point”. It said: “The British Gas win is important as it represents a blue chip name trialling WANdisco’s technology extensively, and coming back for more.

“The win illustrates how deal value grows in the move from an initial test deployment to permanent. We see the contract as a particular endorsement of WANdisco’s ability to ‘supercharge’ Hadoop scalability and performance.”

FinnCap said it is looking forward to the company’s Q4 bookings update, after a good end to 2014 and “strong positive momentum evident” in its performance.