糖心视频

Morning Markets: Microsoft just bought something called BrightBytes, which makes something called DataSense. Let’s explore.

This morning in a carefully-worded blog post that it is “bringing BrightBytes Data Management platform DataSense into the Microsoft Education family,” a deal that appears to involve 聽SaaS product along with its “data management聽team.”

BrightBytes is a San Francisco-based software company whose DataSense product aggregates, measures, and shares data relating to technology and education. Per the company’s website, DataSense is akin to a central hub through which all sorts of education data can pass, allowing for centralization.

Reading the language of both the Microsoft and BrightBytes blogs (, and ), it isn’t entirely clear if Microsoft bought the smaller company outright, or merely the DataSense portion of it. I’ve emailed Microsoft’s communications team for clarifications on the scale of the deal, including how it impacts personnel.

Update: The sale is for DataSense, not BrightBytes as we’ve described and now confirmed with the company. The only impacted personnel are management folks associated with DataSense itself.

BrightBytes itself has raised a over several rounds, most recently a that came with $33 million. led that deal. Moving backward through time, led the firm’s which weighed in at $15 million. BrightBytes’s聽 was a small, 2013 vintage $2.5 million affair led by .

Most venture-backed companies raise more often than BrightBytes has in recent years. A 3.5-year gap between investments can, therefore, be read as either bearish–the company couldn’t raise more external capital–or bullish, that the firm could achieve venture-level results without raising new, dilutive monies.

Today’s deal isn’t Microsoft’s first of the year, notably. The company picked , according to Crunchbase data. Microsoft has聽, including four known companies last November alone.

All of this matters as it shows a regular appetite in Redmond for smaller shops. There was once a time in which Yahoo was a leading acquirer of smaller tech companies. I wonder if Microsoft is slowing growing into its shoes. The difference, of course, is that Yahoo liked buying small, consumer-focused affairs. Microsoft’s acquisition list is a bit more enterprise-focused, unsurprisingly.

For more on the pace of acquisitions by the biggest companies in tech, head here and .

Top Image Credit: .