Software AG will take over the Apama technology teams based primarily in Cambridge, UK, Bedford, USA, and Hyderabad, India. Also included are the global Apama sales and technical teams.

Apama was founded in 1999 by Cambridge PHD graduates John Bates and Giles Nelson and sold to Progress Software for $25.4 million in 2005.

Widely used in the algorithmic trading sphere, Apama CEP allows organisations, including financial institutions, to correlate and analyse business activities across multiple data streams in real-time and take immediate action in response.

Software AG says that the acquisition will help its big data push, combing Apama with its own low-latency messaging and in-memory technology to help clients analyse, and react quickly to, vast amounts of business information.

The Apama product brand will be kept and Software AG says it will also continue to expand the platform's focus areas, including capital markets trading, risk and surveillance, as well as more broadly location and context-aware customer experience management and fraud prevention.

Robin Gilthorpe, CEO Terracotta, Software AG, says: "This acquisition is a major step in delivering on our strategy of empowering enterprises to derive meaningful business insights and value from big data."

Last year Progress embarked on a major restructuring in a bid to improve its lacklustre financial performance. As well as slashing its workforce, the firm outlined plans to divest 10 non-core product lines and focus on key offerings, including Apama.

News of the deal comes just days after the last remaining independent CEP vendor StreamBase was acquired by Tico Software.