ServiceNow acquires FriendlyData for natural language interfaces

ServiceNow said Wednesday that it's acquiring the technology of FriendlyData, a two-year-old company based in San Francisco that provides a natural language interface for databases. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

FriendlyData makes it easier for non-technical users to ask quantitative questions in plain English. ServiceNow plans to embed the natural language query (NLQ) technology into the interfaces of the Now platform, applications for IT, Human Resources, Security Operations, Customer Service Management, partner products and for developers.

"With this technical enhancement, our goal is to allow anyone to easily make data driven decisions, increasing productivity and driving businesses forward faster," Pat Casey, SVP of development and operations at ServiceNow, said in a statement.

Earlier this year, ServiceNow struck a similar deal, agreeing to acquire Parlo, a Silicon Valley-based startup that brings natural language understanding into enterprise systems.

ServiceNow has made a series of additional acquisitions in the past year. In the spring, the company bought SaaS management company .VendorHawk. Last fall, ServiceNow scooped up SkyGiraffe, makers of a no-code platform that help businesses design mobile apps for enterprise systems.

The SkyGiraffe deal came just a few weeks after ServiceNow bought San Diego, Calif.-based design studio Telepathy, which was also aimed at helping customers create business apps that deliver consumer-based intuitive experiences.