AUSTIN—W2O Group, parent of healthcare public relations specialist WCG, has acquired Ravel, an Austin-based company with software assets that specializes in solving data problems for Fortune 500 companies. W2O is absorbing Ravel’s data technology and pending patents, as well as a team of technologists and consultants.

Ravel makes enterprise-grade analytics solutions for discovering insights from big data and develops products that allow enterprise companies to analyze massive datasets with commodity hardware and open source software.

“Ravel will enhance our ability to predict trends based on a combination of historical information and real-time insights so that our clients achieve advantages in the marketplace,” says Bob Pearson, president, W2O Group. “The future of ‘PreCommerce’ and the emerging discipline of social commerce will be largely shaped by an organization’s ability to see the playing field with more clarity than its peers.”

IDC has predicted that total data will grow by 50 times by 2020 and unstructured data (video, email, files) will account for 90 percent of this data stream. As a result, current analytics platforms will decrease in efficiency and new data science approaches will be required to efficiently turn data into insights that drive social commerce and shape behavior online.

Steve Blackmon, Ravel's cofounder and VP, engineering, and its development team, will join W2O as full-time employees and will consult with W2O clients on original projects and enhance and create proprietary tools and technology for W2O companies.