For the German software giant SAP is time to go shopping in Italy. With the acquisition of Askdata, a startup based in Rome with offices in San Francisco, SAP strengthens its ability to help organizations take better-informed decisions by leveraging AI-driven natural language searches. Users are empowered to search, interact and collaborate on live data to maximize business insights.

Available in multiple languages, Askdata’s personalized experience connects live to source applications without moving data, while retaining the complete business context to return meaningful answers and proactive insights.

Askdata applies cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to natural language processing, which gives users the ability to answer any data question with a simple search. Users can interact with data in a simpler way, without having to learn a self-service analytics product, enabling them to extract maximum value from data quickly.

“The data and analytics market is evolving, and it is imperative that we provide simpler user experiences that will empower casual users to be able to make data-driven decisions independently. The ability to cater to a wide range of user profiles will be the primary driver of data and analytics adoption. Askdata provides SAP with a path to lead this transition to the benefit of our customers”, said Irfan Khan, president and Chief Product Officer, SAP HANA Database & Analytics, SAP.

Askdata’s IP will become part of SAP Business Technology Platform and contribute to a next-generation lightweight analytics experience for SAP Analytics Cloud solution customers and to line-of-business applications.

SAP and Askdata have agreed not to disclose the purchase price or other financial details of the transaction.