Rackspace has agreed to acquire cloud-based data, analytics, and AI firm Just Analytics as it aims to strengthen its APAC footprint.

Just Analytics was founded in 2011 and has over 100 employees headquartered in Singapore with others based in Vietnam and India. The company helps clients to design and create scalable data pipelines using its proprietary data platform Guzzle, paired with cloud-based data and analytics services that give customers a unified view of their information assets.

Rackspace said the acquisition brings strong regional ties into the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, as Just Analytics was recently awarded four regional Microsoft partner of the year awards.

The data platform is on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and automates the movement and transformation of any volume, variety, and velocity of data from a range of sources to data pipelines at scale for production. Just Analytics AI also uses Guzzle to deploy predictive capabilities and business intelligence to analyse data from critical business and operational functions for business end-users.

“The acquisition of Just Analytics ties into our growing professional services focus and brings market-leading cloud-based data, analytics and AI capabilities that are in demand from our customers and prospects,” said Kevin Jones, CEO of Rackspace Technology. “In addition, we will benefit from the company’s strong APJ regional ties, talented employee base, and natural evolution up the IT services stack. These benefits will provide a clear tie between our services and important customer business metrics.”

For now, Rackspace will keep the Just Analytics brand for the foreseeable future as it said the company has built a well-known and respected brand among the leaders and customers of Microsoft Azure Data Analytics.

The APAC region continues to garner interest from technology companies, with Google Cloud opening a new region in Melbourne last July. This was the firm’s second region in Australia and its 11th in APAC overall, stating that its customers operating in Australia and New Zealand would now be able to benefit from low latency and high performance of their cloud-based workloads and data.

This was followed in September by AWS saying it would launch its first New Zealand data centre by 2024 by investing around £3.9 billion over the next 15 years and creating 1,000 jobs. The Auckland region is set to be made up of three availability zones and joined the existing 81 zones across 25 geographic AWS regions.