Amazon Web Services buys NICE to strengthen cloud offerings, boost customer base

Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud computing arm, has bought the Italian software and service company NICE for an undisclosed sum. AWS is after NICE’s 2D and 3D desktop cloud virtualization software that allows 3D developers and game designers access to work remotely from any type of computer.

This works because the hardware required to render the 3D images is supplied by the cloud not the computer that the developer is using to access their designs.

Another reason that AWS could be interested in NICE is to gain access to European customers with high performance requirements, such as 3D games developers. After all just last year Amazon launched more C4 instances just for this type of high performance customer.

At the time Amazon explained that those instances are meant for applications where CPU performance is paramount. These include "high-traffic front-end fleets, MMO gaming, media processing, transcoding, and High-Performance Computing (HPC) applications".

Constellation Research founder, R Ray Wang believes AWS gets quite a bit out of this deal.
"The NICE acquisition gives Amazon a good trove of IP, access to good clients and a good presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). These IP capabilities help with performance and some newer features that can benefit the overall Amazon platform", Wang tells TechCrunch.

For now at least, NICE will continue to operate as before, retaining its brand name, customers, and current projects.

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