Two unrelated acquisitions in enterprise data software closed on the same day, July 6, and both point the same direction: established data platform vendors are buying specialized technology rather than building it internally, to catch up on lakehouse architecture and embedded analytics respectively.
SAP completes its acquisition of Dremio
SAP announced on July 6 that it had completed its acquisition of Dremio, an open data lakehouse platform, first announced in May (SAP News Center, 2026). Financial terms were not disclosed.
The stated purpose is to let SAP Business Data Cloud combine SAP and non-SAP data for analytical and AI workloads without moving or converting it first. Dremio's technology is Apache Iceberg native, meaning it works directly against open table formats rather than requiring data to be copied into a proprietary store. SAP said the acquisition is meant to give AI agents built on its platform real-time access to data that currently sits outside SAP systems, without the extract-transform-load step that has historically separated SAP data from everything else a company runs (SAP News Center, 2026).
Industry analysis of the deal has focused on that ETL question specifically: whether folding a general-purpose lakehouse engine into an ERP vendor's data cloud actually eliminates the integration tax enterprises pay to connect SAP data to non-SAP systems, or whether it moves that tax somewhere else in the stack (Futurum Group, 2026). SAP has not published benchmark figures addressing that question, and none should be assumed until it does.
Actian folds in Jaspersoft's embedded analytics
The same day, HCLSoftware announced it had completed its acquisition of Jaspersoft, an embedded analytics and reporting business it agreed to buy from Cloud Software Group in December 2025, and integrated it into Actian, HCLSoftware's data and AI division (Actian, 2026). Financial terms were not disclosed.
Jaspersoft brings a widely deployed open-source reporting engine plus a commercial embedded analytics product used to build pixel-perfect reports and dashboards inside other software products, along with a partner network of roughly 90 partners across 44 countries and close to 1,000 business customers (Actian, 2026). Actian said it plans to build what it calls agentic BI capability directly into the Jaspersoft product line, rather than running Jaspersoft as a separate reporting tool alongside its existing data management portfolio (HCLTech, 2026).
The acquisition is a narrower bet than SAP's. Where SAP bought general lakehouse infrastructure, Actian bought a specific, already-distributed embedded analytics product with an existing customer and partner base it can sell agentic features into immediately, rather than a platform it has to convince customers to adopt from scratch.
Two different bets on the same problem
Both deals answer the same underlying pressure: enterprise data vendors are being asked to support AI agents that need governed, real-time access to data, and neither SAP nor Actian had that capability in-house at the speed the market is asking for. SAP bought breadth, an open lakehouse engine that can sit under any data source. Actian bought distribution, an embedded analytics product already running inside other companies' software. Building either from scratch inside a large vendor's existing product organization typically takes longer than an acquisition closes.
Neither deal is unusual in isolation. Acquisitions in the data platform category happen regularly. What is notable is that two, from different buyers solving different problems, closed on the identical date, which suggests both companies were working to have new AI-related data capability in market before the second half of the year rather than treating the timing as coincidental to any single announcement cycle.
What to watch next
Article 10 of the EU AI Act, covering data governance and lineage requirements for high-risk AI systems, enters force on August 2, 2026. Any enterprise using agentic AI features built on newly acquired data infrastructure, including SAP's Dremio-based lakehouse and Actian's Jaspersoft-based reporting layer, will need to show it can trace where that AI's underlying data actually came from. Whether either vendor has lineage tooling ready ahead of that date has not yet been addressed in either company's public statements.
Sources
- SAP News Center, "SAP Completes Dremio Acquisition" - https://news.sap.com/2026/07/sap-completes-dremio-acquisition/
- SAP News Center, "SAP to Acquire Dremio to Unify SAP and Non-SAP Data to Power Agentic AI" - https://news.sap.com/2026/05/sap-to-acquire-dremio-unify-sap-and-non-sap-data-power-agentic-ai/
- Futurum Group, "Can SAP Finally Kill the ETL Monster? The Dremio and Prior Labs Acquisition Explained" - https://futurumgroup.com/insights/can-sap-finally-kill-the-etl-monster-the-dremio-and-prior-labs-acquisition-explained/
- Actian, "Actian Expands Data Management Portfolio with Jaspersoft Embedded Analytics and Reporting" - https://www.actian.com/company/press-releases/actian-expands-data-management-portfolio-with-jaspersoft-embedded-analytics-and-reporting/
- HCLTech, "Actian Expands Data Management Portfolio with Jaspersoft Embedded Analytics and Reporting" - https://www.hcltech.com/en-us/press-releases/actian-expands-data-management-portfolio-jaspersoft-embedded-analytics-and-reporting